Another volume marking Vladimir Sofronitsky’s recitals
at the Scriabin Museum has emerged from Vista Vera’s factory
line of releases devoted to this pianist. This time it’s
a single date - 7 March 1956. The composers represented are
Schubert, Chopin and Scriabin, a mainstream choice for this
fabled executant whose position as Scriabin’s son-in-law
is dented only by the facts that he never met the composer,
and that he married his daughter many years after Scriabin’s
death.
There have been at least three problems regarding Sofronitsky’s
legacy on disc; first, the poor quality of some of the surviving
recordings; secondly, the poor quality of the pianos, especially
at the Scriabin Museum; and thirdly, the confusing duplication
of repertoire and dating thereof. This all adds up to a bit
of a nightmare for those who are not, as most of us are not,
experts in his discography.
This March 1956 recital contains seeds of all these problems.
The recording quality is amateur level, and not meant for commercial
release; the piano is out-of-tune, albeit not as disastrously
as was sometimes the case at the museum. What is just-about-tolerable
in a select audience as part of the Sofronitsky coterie, is
a different matter when listened to fifty plus years later on
commercial disc; and Sofronitsky gave recitals of all this music
many times during his career.
His Schubert still divides opinion. But I’d rather listen
to him playing Schubert than to another venerated Russian contemporary,
Maria Yudina. Indeed I probably prefer the limited evidence
of his Schubert to Richter’s, heretical though that might
sound. He adopts none of the distension and over-reverential
slowness that these other pianists do, and the music-making
sounds more healthily direct for it. True, the splintery, compressed
sound doesn’t aid his case but the powerful, indeed passionate
curve of his performance of B flat sonata is exciting, and moving,
to hear. The Chopin Mazurkas become compromised by the piano
to an even greater extent than the Schubert - I assume that
the disc faithfully reproduces the recital running-order, which
seems to be borne out by the fact that the piano goes increasingly
out of tune. Op.41 No.2 has its legato turn tinkly, and the
refined treble of Op.50 No.3 would be even more so but for the
state of the piano. He plays two Preludes; Op.28 No.16 lacks
a codified rhythm, so sounds loose and even out of control at
points. Rubinstein always took this even faster - but much more
firmly. By the time we arrive at the Waltzes from Op.69 and
70, the piano has tuned honky-tonk. One can just about gauge
the plasticity and beauty of Sofronitsky’s phrasing of
Scriabin’s Op.40 No.2 Mazurka, despite the piano and recording
problems. In any case he recorded these three Scriabin pieces
in better conditions elsewhere.
This makes a difficult choice for collectors. For others this
is too laden with problems.
Jonathan Woolf
Vladimir Sofronitsky (piano) 
