No sooner had I put down Imogen Cooper’s Schumann recording
on Chandos (see
review)
than I was up for another
Fantasiestücke from Freddy Kempf
on BIS. I hugely admire his Prokofiev concertos recording for the
same label (see
review),
so the opportunity to hear some of his solo Schumann was an opportunity
not to be missed.
The Potton Hall location is a current favourite for chamber music
and piano recordings, excellent results being produced from there
by the likes of
Noriko
Ogawa. Different repertoire calls for different approaches, but
it is interesting to hear a sunny and light sound from Ogawa’s
Mozart disc, where this Schumann is distinctly darker and more mid-range
heavy. It’s like the difference between brand new oak panels
and those weathered by a patina of time. This is a good piano sound,
bringing out a full bass sonority and nice warmth of expression. You
might initially want to push it through your speakers with a little
more volume than normal to gain the full picture, but by the end of
the
Études symphoniques you will know all about this
Steinway D, and might even find its serial number has imprinted itself
onto your left woofer.
Comparing Kempf with Cooper in the
Fantasiestücke is an
education. The opening,
Des Abends, is given plenty of rubato
by Cooper, who uses a swifter tempo to draw out exquisite shapes from
that melodic line. Kempf is slower but straighter, preferring to make
time stand still in a movement of rapt wonder. There is something
to be said for either approach, but it’s like comparing two
entirely different pieces. The drama of the following
Aufschwung
is a compelling and urgently poetic drama from Kempf, swifter than
Cooper, who spends more time layering dynamics and bringing out the
different melodic voices from top, middle and bass. There is a coherence
to Kempf’s approach and a satisfying sense of character from
his playing here, but he does miss that rhapsodic sense that certain
passages might have been plucked from the A minor
Piano Concerto.
The Cooper/Kempf comparison continues in this vein with Kempf pulling
the music around less, but still bringing out masses of expression
and such beauty of tone that it sometimes seems like an angel has
landed on the piano lid and given voice. I love Cooper’s playing
and still do even after the Kempf experience, but there are numerous
places where his directness of approach with the material brought
out a little ‘ah’ of startled amazement. Take
In der
Nacht for instance, where Kempf keeps us in a state of nervous
anticipation with his dynamic extremes. Cooper is also wonderful here,
but makes those expulsions of sound a touch more shapely in a slightly
slower tempo, and is therefore less nervy and anxious sounding. If
you want your Schumann to shake you up in the darkness of the night
then Kempf is your man. The only place he makes me itchy is in the
character theme which opens
Fabel, played so slowly it makes
me anxious for the wrong reasons. This is a theme with vital personal
associations for Schumann but isn’t much more than a cadence.
Play it expressively by all means, but stretching it beyond the lyrical
doesn’t add to its meaning in my view.
Blumenstück is a fine piece, and one of the two manuscripts
Schumann gave to his bride Clara in 1840 as a gift on their wedding.
Kempf’s performance is uncontroversial, swifter than Horowitz
in his classic Columbia recording, and less extreme in bringing out
the melodic lines. Kempf creates and maintains an intimate feel with
the piece, not burdening it with too much added poetry or perfume.
Schumann’s
Études symphoniques have been the subject
of a certain amount of push and pull with regard to editions and composer’s
intentions, and the booklet helpfully tells us that Kempf’s
version is based on Schumann’s own 1852 revisions, plus two
movements left out from the 1837 version, and including five variations
composed in 1834 but not published until 1890. In other words, ‘the
full works’ is what we have here, and magnificently played by
Freddy Kempf, with elegance and technical fluidity, as well as keeping
all of that nervous tension and rapidity of mood change which these
grandly arching sequences of variations demand.
I first caught a whiff of Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s recording
of this work on one of those promo collections (see
review),
but his 2006 live Warner Classics recording, while not quite as complete
as Freddy Kempf’s, is a very good choice for its vibrancy and
lack of pretension. A more full-fat version can be had on the Regis
Alto label with Alfred Brendel, though this swings towards the kind
of individualist stance which both Aimard and Kempf have tended to
avoid, at times giving the music added layers of interpretation which
can make following the score a trial for the uninitiated. Sviatoslav
Richter is the one to go for from the Regis label if you are out for
a bargain. There are myriad more or less recent versions, including
another remarkable but also rather personalised performance from Mikhail
Pletnev on Deutsche Grammophon, Ivo Pogerelich’s at times painfully
slow and ‘deep’ recording from the same label, and Murray
Perahia’s rather decent but hard to find CBS recording, the
list goes on… I rooted out my copy of Sergei Edelmann’s
performance on the Triton label (see
review)
to make a comparison with something on SACD and this remains a fine
performance, though not up to Freddy Kempf’s standard - just
compare the way Kempf makes something almost akin to Shostakovich
out of the remarkable
Variation 7 [Étude VIII] and you
won’t be going back to Edelmann, good though he is.
Freddy Kempf to my mind offers the best of these various worlds while
of course creating one of his own. He equals the warmth of sonority
and sense of anticipation in Brendel’s opening
Thema
without pulling at the rhythms, and at each point of contact - leaving
aside the lesser-known variations - comes up trumps in terms of tempo
and communication. The suspensions of
Étude III for
instance are nicely stressed without distorting the flow of the music,
and the tempo is just right for the traversing notes to create harmonic
colour without drawing attention away from the melody. Schumann can
be fantastically banal in this piece, and Kempf responds to the plod
of
Variation 3 [Étude IV] with an imperturbable touch
between the proverbial rock and the other hard place. Excitement aplenty
is to be had, for instance in the rapid
Agitato of
Variation
5, and the whole thing is a white-knuckle ride through the following
Allegro Molto during which the safety of the bass strings seems
at risk. It’s not all drama, and the sensitivities of several
of the
op. posth. variations and the penultimate
Variation
9 all create their own intimate spaces, the sense of danger from
Schumann the actor and teller of scary stories is however never very
far away.
You may already have a big bucketful of Schumann, and will probably
be wondering if this is worth adding to this deepening resource in
these stricken times. If you are a fan of the
Études symphoniques
then I would say a resounding yes. You may check your version and
see if it has all of those missed out variations, in which case you
will want a more complete version in any case. Freddy Kempf makes
the case for this edition most emphatically, and the standard never
dips. The
Blumenstück is a nice extra but not decisive,
but if you are looking for a
Fantasiestücke with plenty
of imagination but a bit less added
Fantasie then this is the
place to try anew. BIS’s recording is magnificent, and by the
end of the
Finale of the
Études symphoniques
you will be able to reconstruct the grand piano in your living room
by ear alone. Yes, it really
is that big.
Dominy Clements
[69:46] 
