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Johannes BRAHMS (1833-1897)
7 Fantasien op.116 [24:22]
3 Intermezzi op.117 [17:01]
6 Klavierstücke op 118 [26:02]
4 Klavierstücke op.119 [17:23]
Nicholas
Angelich (piano)
rec. 15-19 August 2006, MC2, Maison de la Culture, Grenoble VIRGIN CLASSICS 3793022 [24:22
+ 60:38]
Nicholas Angelich pulled a fast one on Virgin here. Or rather,
a slow one. Let me explain. Brahms’s wonderful farewell to the
piano, the twenty pieces making up his opp.116-119, were too
long
for a single disc in the LP era, but on CD the habit has
grown of grouping them all together. A record purporting
to be by Joyce Hatto takes a comfortable 72:40. A few minor
repeats are omitted, but I doubt if they’d have added more
than a couple of minutes to the length. On Brilliant, the
slightly more expansive Håkon Austbø nevertheless comes in
at 77:09 (see review). I have the famous Julius Katchen performances
on LP, but his opp.117-119 take about ten minutes less than
Angelich’s so there is plenty of space left for op.116 on
CD. I note that DG have issued Wilhelm Kempff’s performances
of all twenty pieces on a single disc. So when Virgin booked
Angelich to record the series, no doubt they reckoned on
getting a CD’s worth. The trouble is, his performances spread
to 85 minutes …
Their solution is to issue a “twofer”, in
which the short CD dedicated to just op.116 is described
as a “bonus disc”. This brings the issue in line with other
full price single-disc competitors. The trouble is, from
Brilliant you get another “twofer”, with opp.116-119 on one
disc and the other containing opp.10, 76 and 79. However,
for reasons I will explain later, I personally wouldn’t consider
Austbø acceptable at any price.
There’s always the risk, when a disc presents unusual features, of “reviewing” it
before hearing it. When requesting these records from our
Webmaster I added some such phrase as “with misgivings about
the two CDs since one should be enough if the music is played
at the proper tempo”. But of course, you can’t really pre-review
musical performances in accordance with some mathematical
principle. My misgivings were pretty well allayed as soon
as the record started playing – I started from op.117, by
the way. It’s true that in virtually every case Angelich
opts for the slowest possible interpretation of Brahms’s
directions. But only the slowest possible one. I found
no case where he actually goes below the bottom line.
By this I mean that there is no case where his tempo is so
slow that his combination of clear phrasing and naturally
warm tone cannot hold the listener. The music never falls
apart, as it sometimes could in Glenn Gould’s curious takes
on a selection of these pieces. He came closest to losing
me in the F major Romance (op.118/5), but several of his
competitors are rather heavy here too. I heard some appallingly
personalized Brahms from Alexander Mogilevsky a while back
(EMI CDM 5 67934 2) and was a little afraid I might be getting
more of the same. But in terms of phrasing and dynamics these
performances are generally faithful to the score and free
of exaggerations.
What the cumulative effect of Angelich’s slowish tempi does do
is to explore quite specifically – but never sentimentally – the
more melancholy, tragic aspects of the slower pieces, and
the more stoic aspects of the faster ones. If you turn to “Joyce
Hatto” you will find in opp.117-119 a warmer-hearted, more
equably tempered Brahms. One can imagine that this is how
Clara Schumann might have illustrated these pieces to her
pupils. In a centrally satisfying way, the pianist concerned
plays these pieces rather as Sir Adrian Boult conducted the
symphonies. As basic Brahms, you can hardly go wrong.
I should perhaps say that I began this review some time ago
since I was sent a white label advance copy of the records.
The
Hatto scandal had not yet burst. I was partially tempted
to expunge all references to this recording – which you will
obviously not be able to obtain in that form – from the present
review. On the other hand, when the pianist has been identified
the comparisons will remain valid (see review). Note that
I say opp.117-119, though. Listening to op.116, I get the
idea
it’s a composite
version. No. 5 receives just about the most exquisitely poised
performance you can imagine, sheer perfection. No.6 is out
of line with the rest of the disc in being extraordinarily
slow – slower than Angelich, though there is a rugged conviction
to it. No.7 is tossed off almighty fast, and all three have
a different acoustic. Rereading my original review was a
little disconcerting. I find that I had duly noted all these
signals, yet was unable or unwilling to see where they led.
To take up the threads from the paragraph above, just as
I recognize that there are some listeners for whom Boult’s search for
an ideal architectural balance swept some of the composer’s
more troubled aspects under the carpet, so there will be
listeners who find “Hatto” too comfortable. They might turn
to Julius Katchen for a riveting exploration of Brahms’s
exposed nerve-ends. When I first heard these performances
years ago I resisted them, feeling they were so personalized
as to be almost anarchic. In general, strongly personalized
performances tend to lose their spell with repeated hearings,
but in this case I have shifted my ground over the years.
Every time I hear these performances I marvel anew at the
way Katchen seemingly invents the works on the spot, while
at the same time displaying such total sympathy with Brahms’s
world that what would be aberrations in other hands sound
like pure magic.
Other listeners again may well find Angelich’s deeply considered,
expansive but not indulgent, performances their own point
of entry into the world of late Brahms. At present the “Hatto” only
proves that there are some more fine performances out there
when we’ve found them. So Angelich can be warmly recommended,
especially to those looking for sound a bit more modern than
Katchen’s – or Kempff’s – early analogue stereo. I picked
up the Austbø, encouraged by the very low price and also
thinking, well you never know, it might be …. but it isn’t.
Unfortunately he has a habit of playing chords slightly arpeggiated
which I found quite intolerable. Its not just a question
of left-hand-before-right, as many pianists of the old school
used to do, quite often he seems to be playing a banjo not
a piano. I didn’t get used to this as the disc went on, indeed,
I found myself just waiting for each chord and asking “will
he arpeggiate it or will he play it together?”. After a while,
since I was not expected to review the disc, I gave up and
just sampled here and there. If you don’t think this mannerism
will worry you, his tempi and colouring are usually well
chosen, though I did note a fast and rather insensitive op.116/6.
And I must say I noted a few pieces, such as op.118/4, which
perhaps do not lend themselves to his particular mannerism
except occasionally, and emerge rather impressively.
I would like to offer now a few fairly random considerations.
I have already mentioned the beautiful “Hatto” performance
of op.116/5. In op.118/4 the pianist attains a towering passion
on the
last page which I find unmatched elsewhere. His/her fierce
steadiness in op.118/3 is also exceptional and I would rate
him/her supreme in these three pieces.
In op.118/5 Julius Katchen attains a transparency of voicing and a
liquid beauty which makes all the others sound a little lumpy.
This Romance seems to belong to him alone.
In op.116/7 it is Angelich’s turn to stand above the others - but
I haven’t heard Katchen in op.116 - with a massive, black,
seething passion. He makes a real epic out of it and I hope
to hear him in the op.79 Rhapsodies before too long.
Sviatoslav Richter’s op.119 is as intensely personal as Katchen’s,
yet is achieved without the noddings and nudgings which make
Katchen an acquired taste. If Katchen is exploratory, I would
describe Richter as visionary. As ever, he is an artist of
extremes, slower than anybody in nos. 1 and 3, faster than
anybody in 2 and 4. The Richter recorded legacy of these
three Brahms sets is the usual mix of abundance and frustration.
Op.117 seems not to have interested him at all; scattered
performances, some more official than others, exist of op.118
nos. 1, 3 and 6, plus all of op.119, usually singly, occasionally
as a group. I personally listened to op.119 in an off-air
taping of a broadcast recital he gave in Milan in 1965. This
does not appear to have been published – maybe one of the
several companies interested in Richter should be negotiating
with RAI. The recital brings nothing new to the Richter discography – the
other items are Beethoven op.31/3, Ravel Miroirs 2 and 3
and the Prokofiev 2nd Sonata – but neither of
the other two complete performances of op.119 known to exist,
both also from 1965, is available at the moment so it would
fill a gap.
Staying with the Russians, Gilels’ op.116 (DGG) is famous,
but I know his interpretation only from an off-the-air version
of a
live performance he gave in Milan at about the same time
as the recording. Assuming the interpretation remained broadly
similar, he has a noble simplicity in the first four which
leaves all the others standing, but I am a little puzzled
by his treatment of the remaining three.
The young Hélène Grimaud’s op.118 (Brilliant 92117 – 5 CDs but
cheap ones - see review) is not wholly outclassed by all this
competition. Basically
hers is a homely approach closest to “Hatto” - it isn’t the “Hatto” in
case anybody’s wondering - with occasional hints that she
has been listening to Katchen. Surprisingly I liked her more
than anybody in no.6 – surprisingly because such an intensely
introspective piece would logically be furthest from the
grasp of a teenager. I hope she will return to this repertoire
on disc ere long.
One of my own teachers, Ilonka Deckers-Küszler, trained in
an early 20th century Central Europe where Brahms
was still a living memory. She would have the Rhapsodie op.119/4
go
no faster than Angelich’s broadly majestic account. This
may provide some authority for his tempo. On the other hand,
she had the op.119/3 Intermezzo skip along in a way none
of the pianists discussed so far do. Interestingly, this
interpretation is provided by two other pianists whose roots
went back at least as far. Moiseiwitsch makes a real charmer
of the piece. If he seems too capricious for Brahms, Kempff’s
Schubertian lilt is less easily dismissed and for me his
is the outstanding interpretation of this particular intermezzo.
I am speaking now about a BBC Legends release which includes
this and op.119/1. Unfortunately I don’t know his DG recording
which, on this showing, ought to have a great deal to offer.
In op.119/1 he is alone among the pianists here to believe
that, since the time signature is 3/8 not 3/4, Brahms’s Adagio
refers to the bar not the single three beats within
it. He therefore provides a more free-flowing version, and
logically he is right.
The debate on how to perform these inexhaustible pieces could go on
for ever. No performance can embrace everything that is in
this music but it should be clear by now that anyone seeking
a version in fine modern sound will find in Angelich a consistent
and powerful interpreter. By emphasizing the bleak, tragic
aspects of the music he causes it to look forward towards
Mahler rather backwards towards Schubert. A distinctive achievement.
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