Piatigorsky has been
bedevilled, at least in the United Kingdom,
by a somewhat high-powered, "transatlantic"
image deriving, perhaps, from his collaborations
with Heifetz, Rubinstein and also Primrose.
The outer movements of the Saint-Saëns,
which he and Reiner seem agreed to drive
as hard as they can, do not belie this
view, yet grace and warmth are to be
found later on.
A torso of the
Dvořák concerto (just the first
movement) survives from a concert given
in 1932 under Nikolai Malko and can
be heard on Danacord. It reveals a powerful
personality and a very free style of
interpretation. Yet his only pre-war
studio recording of a concerto,
the Schumann included here, is quite
different; straightforward and musicianly,
it failed to capture my imagination.
Why?
The work itself is
not without its problems. While any
pianist dealing in the romantic period
is likely to number the Schumann concerto
for piano among his favourites, cellists
perhaps find some difficulty in cherishing
it as dearly as the Dvořák
or the Elgar, and may even prefer the
innocent charm of Saint-Saëns no. 1.
Yet it need not sound as bland as here.
Casting around for alternatives I find
I have only off-the-air versions; however,
these did help to clarify a few things
in my mind. First of all, a few
timings:
Caramia/Celibidache,
Naples 1968 23:07
Piatigorsky/Barbirolli 24:37
Navarra/Caracciolo,
Naples 1961 24:54
Fournier/Somogyi, Milan
1963 25:21
Mainardi/Kurtz, Rome
1961 25:51
I apologise to readers
for discussing performances they cannot
hear, though recordings were certainly
made by Navarra (with Ančerl,
which should be interesting) and Fournier
(I wonder if no-nonsense Sir Malcolm
Sargent gave him as much space as Laszlo
Somogyi?).
The first thing that
emerges is that performances do not
actually differ all that much as far
as tempi are concerned. It is curious
to find that the swiftest version is
conducted by Celibidache but since the
admirable Giacinto Caramia doesn’t command
the same range of dynamics and nuance
as the others (he did some excellent
work as a chamber musician), the conductor
was probably happy to abet him in a
flowing version with a particularly
dashing finale.
The next point is that
the faster performances – Caramia, Piatigorsky
and Navarra – fail to convince us that
Schumann is not on automatic pilot.
The extra time taken by Fournier and
Mainardi may not seem to amount to much,
and yet the former, with his intimate
tonal shading, and perhaps even more
the latter with his autumnal, dark-brown
tone, illuminate so many dark corners
of the work and bring them to light.
My final point is that,
while Mainardi in some ways penetrates
most deeply of all, there is evidence
that he is teetering on the verge of
the slowest possible tempi the work
will take. This is particularly noticeable
when the orchestra takes over. Efrem
Kurtz loyally avoids trying to move
things on, but he sometimes seems to
find the textures hard to fill at this
speed. I wonder if a recording exists
anywhere of Mainardi with his long-term
partner Carlo Zecchi, something of a
specialist in filling slow tempi?
The impression of an
admirable cellist who fails to engage
me deeply continued with the encores.
Elegantly musical, they fall between
the two stools, neither ennobling the
flimsier pieces (something Heifetz could
do on the violin) nor making them succeed
in spite of themselves by sheer charm
and personality (the Kreisler way).
As Ignaz Friedmann showed, with the
original piano version, Rubinstein’s
tawdry Romance in E flat can be
made to say something, but you have
to do far more than just play it neatly
and nicely. Tchaikovsky’s "None
but the lonely heart" is usually
heartbreaking, however often you hear
it, but here it flows too easily, the
dramatic interruption of the climax
going for nothing. The Schubert is rather
horrible, both cellist and pianist chunkily
refusing to engage with the composer’s
pained lyricism.
I don’t want to suggest
that Piatigorsky’s place among the great
cellists is undeserved, but I fear the
evidence is to be sought elsewhere.
The recordings are fairly good for their
age, particularly the Schumann which
doesn’t sound 16 years older than the
Saint-Saëns, so it’s no good blaming
it on them.
Christopher Howell
see also review
by Glyn Pursglove and Jonathan
Woolf
Gregor Piatigorsky (cello), London Philharmonic
Orchestra/John Barbirolli (1), Ralph Berkowitz
(piano) (2), RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra/Fritz
Reiner (3) 
