I’ve heard Joshua Pierce’s
recording of the First Concerto and
it seems to me somewhat more successful
than this performance of the Second.
Pierce is an athletic and commanding
player and despite some moments to the
contrary is not an exponent of the Bang
and Crash school in Brahms. But the
first disappointment is that he has
been accorded the kind of recorded balance
more befitting one of the Titans of
the 1950s. Think of the kind of thing
upon which Rubinstein insisted and indeed
was insisting well into the 1970s and
you’ll have some idea of how over-prominent
is the piano. It comes at the cost of
obscuring and clouding some significant
orchestral detail – notably some counter-themes
that should be heard but are frustratingly
deficient in the balance. And in the
first movement subsidiary piano material
is promoted at the expense of the orchestral.
Pierce’s approach is
to favour rather brittle attacks. He’s
not brusque, exactly, or insensitive
but another cost of the recording comes
at the expense of dynamic variance.
Frankly, as well, a certain weariness
came across me as he launched ever onwards
buffeted by the unequal balance. Allied
to this is the fact that Pierce tends
to force passagework in a virile but
terse way. It means that the slow movement
is rather matter-of-fact and the finale
very much too dogged. The Bohuslav
Martinů Philharmonic Orchestra
sounds oddly unconvinced by the whole
affair – and in addition their principal
horn has a saxophonic tone.
There are two fillers.
The Franck is a rather Lisztian tone
poem and though the balance still favours
the pianist it’s less one-sided – or
seems so at any rate. It would really
need someone like a Moiseiwitsch to
bring this evocative but not entirely
successful work fully to life. Pierce
has all the notes but the brooding and
the mercurial are not perhaps ideally
realised. Liszt’s bombastic Concerto
Pathétique is a worthwhile
discovery. The grandioso is on full
show in this performance. Pitting filigree
piano treble against static low brass
is fully effective – and well brought
off here – and Liszt certainly spins
a suggestive flute line. Whether the
Parsifalian brass at the end is as impressive
I’ll leave to you to decide.
And whether you’ll
be prepared to take a punt on fillers
given the unsatisfactory Brahms is a
more seriously moot point.
Jonathan Woolf
Joshua Pierce (piano); 
