After warmly received recordings of Brahms for the Chandos label (see
reviews
here and
here), Barry Douglas now turns his attention to
Schubert. One might consider starting a series with a composer’s final
sonata a daring move, but there is no real reason not to. With impressive
sound and our soloist on what seems like top form, this looks like a
promising prospect.
Nothing would be more boring than having every musician record the same
music in the same way, but this said, Schubert’s
Piano Sonata D.
960 demands a certain amount of adjustment from a dreamt of ‘ideal’
which, for me at least, is probably akin to chasing the crock of gold at the
foot of a rainbow. Two artists have come close in recent years, and
Rian de Waal and
Marie João Pires are still high on my list of
references, with Valery Afanassiev’s ECM recording as my wild card secret
guilty pleasure. Pires is a ‘safe’ comparison, but her pedal-free approach
to passages in the second movement are as different to Douglas’s rich
sustain over a swifter tempo as chalk is to cheese. In this regard Douglas
is more conventional, but in this and other aspects of the work we have to
ask ourselves ‘what is convention?’, in other words, who do we follow, and
why don’t we create our own conventions?
So, what are the points you might find yourself needing to get used to in
Barry Douglas’s recording? The lyrical line of the opening seems a bit too
micro-managed to my mind. It’s something I’ve managed to get used to – just
about, but there are little
ritenuti in some of the descending
eighth notes or quavers which seem a little over emphasised. Douglas also
likes to give an expressive stretch here and there to the melody, which runs
into trouble when these need to synchronise with an ongoing accompaniment in
the bass, alberti or otherwise. These are all observations of fractional
details, but once perceived they are hard to ignore. Much better to listen
to the wider sweep of the music and just enjoy of course, but Schubert was a
composer of songs and if you feel the lines are being played in a way not
natural to a singer then you get hiccups.
Douglas quite correctly takes the repeat in this first movement, and the
transition and start of the second section is delicious. There are so many
good and juicy things in this
Molto moderato that it seems churlish
to pick on seemingly minor details, but if it’s perfection you’re after then
every chip off the old pot is going to reduce the value. The second movement
is a gorgeous
Andante sostenuto, which Douglas takes a little
faster, turning in a reasonable 8:07 to Pires’s 9:47. I prefer the world to
stop in its tracks with this movement, but if you prefer it to flow and be
more songlike then Barry Douglas does a lovely job – in particular the tone
of the piano is marvelously rounded. He speeds up a bit too much in the
transition before the recapitulation, which again is just a downhill slide
short of being completely timeless and magical. The
Scherzo is
pretty uncontroversial and Douglas’s playing is light and attractive. He
points out the strange on-beat accents in the
Trio more than some,
but they are distinctive in the score so there’s no reason not to make them
a feature.
Rubato is more of an issue here, with odd slowings-down
feeling perhaps a little overdone. The final movement is great fun though
less daring than Pires, who creates more drama out of the dynamics and light
and shade from those darting harmonic changes. Douglas’s tendency to speed
up at times is also apparent here. These are arguably legitimate
rubati and every dash is compensated for by a drag, but Pires shows
how you can make the music intensely involving without pushing and pulling
so much.
The biggest pieces on this substantial programme are separated by two song
transcriptions by Liszt.
Du bist die Ruh is from the
Vier
Lieder, Op. 39, its slow beauty and almost religious sense of majestic
ecstasy contrasting perfectly with
Ungeduld from
Die schöne
Müllerin.
The
Wandererfantasie is a piece which I’ve had echoing in my mind
from the fortepiano version by Viviana Sofronitsky (see
review), making modern piano versions seem instantly
heavy by comparison. The mighty playing of Paul Lewis was an effective cure
for this (see
review), and while his version is only a few seconds
shorter than Barry Douglas’s the extremes are wider, the drama supremely
intense. The Harmonia Mundi recording is more distant and has less
directness of clarity when compared to this excellent Chandos recording, but
while Douglas’s performance is very fine it doesn’t grab me in quite the
same way as Lewis. The thickest textures don’t have my teeth clenching and
my knuckles whitening as they do for Lewis, who creates a quite operatic
sense of drama between the disarming little tunes which pop out between the
loud bits. The sheer urgency with which he shoves that main theme rhythm at
us is so much more convincing, and you can hear the orchestra at work in
Schubert’s mind as he fights to express a fever pitch of emotion through the
relative poverty of his keyboard.
This is only with regard to the opening section, and both recordings
divide the four main sections of the work by access points. Douglas’s
sonorities and touch are lovely in the second section
Adagio, but
it is Lewis who manages to sustain that grimly funereal feel for longer. I
also prefer his greater intensity in the following
Presto, and it
is his playing of the staggering final
Allegro is the one which
keeps me awake as it goes through my mind at night. Douglas is a touch
slower in this finale, but it is the drop in bite between phrases which
loses it for me here. Lewis manages to hit us between the eyes with every
run and sequence, each step between main themes and each momentary dip,
holding that sense of expectation the piece needs if it is not to become a
really heavy pile of logs we need to drag home in the dark.
I have a real affection for Barry Douglas’s playing. His RCA
Pictures
at an Exhibition was the big new release when I first went to work at
Farringdon Records on Cheapside in the 1980s, so I get a little lift every
time I see his new recordings. When it comes to Schubert I’ll recommend
Maria João Pires for
D 960 and Paul Lewis for
D 760, but
will look out for his further volumes in this series with avuncular interest
and hope it becomes a big success for all concerned.
Dominy Clements
Masterwork Index:
Piano sonata D960
