This is the third in Tahra’s Youra Guller series. The others
were TAH630 (now deleted by the company) and TAH650. This new
disc replicates important repertoire. 650 had a performance
of the Beethoven Concerto in G with Ernest Ansermet from 15
January 1958, whilst 630 had a broadcast of Chopin’s F minor
Concerto with, once again, the Suisse Romande but this time
conducted by Edmond Appia, from 10 June 1959.
My reviews of the two can be read here: Beethoven
and Chopin.
It may be helpful just to repeat what I wrote about Guller for
this unfamiliar with her. Her biography is told at some length
in Tahra’s notes for the earlier discs, and a remarkable, compelling
story it is. She was born in 1895 in Marseilles. Her father
was Russian and her mother Romanian and at twelve she entered
the Paris Conservatoire where she studied under Isidore Philipp.
Clara Haskil, who was in Cortot’s class, was a contemporary.
After graduating she made the acquaintance of Milhaud and performed
his music, and that of the other members of Les Six,
as well as specialising in Chopin and toured widely. She fled
Paris in 1941 and returned to Marseilles where she met Haskil
and her sister Jeanne. Guller seems to have been responsible
for aiding Clara Haskil’s escape, though as Guller was herself
a Jew she was in particular danger. She was ill for some
time – living in Shanghai it’s said or maybe Bali for eight
years - before resuming her career in 1955. She returned to
London in that year and travelled to New York in 1971 to play
at a recital in Carnegie Hall. Martha Argerich admired her and
Nimbus recorded her in the studios in 1975. Perhaps typically,
given the shrouded and sometimes fugitive nature of her life,
the exact date of her death seems to be in some confusion; 1980
or 1981, and the location Geneva, Paris or London, though surely
this can be resolved easily enough.
Her performances with Inghelbrecht seem to have generated rather
more heat, and greater phrasal intensity, than in the case of
the two other collaborators. The actual expressive quotient
of her playing isn’t necessarily radically altered but there
is, I sense, a rather deeper response in the case of the Beethoven,
where her first movement cadenza ranges from feathery in terms
of articulation to increasingly bold. The slow movement reprises
her equable, non-philosophic responses, once again wholly unsentimental,
and never aligning itself with the kind of stasis and introspection,
of deep-held depths uttered by such as, say, Emil Gilels. For
those for whom he remains nonpareil, Guller will seem somewhat
matter of fact. She was in her early sixties when she was taped
in the work and although she’s not finger perfect and sometimes
she subdues the bass line too much, the playing is direct, straightforward
and unaffected. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that in both
the Beethoven and the Chopin her performances with Inghelbrecht
are a good two minutes quicker than the traversals with Ansermet
and Appia.
Guller is said to have suffered a crisis of confidence in the
post-war years and surely the punishing nature of her life took
its toll on her technique. I sense her compromised technique
is at the root of the problems in the F minor, which once again
seems to discomfort her from time to time. Again, too, the left
hand accompanying figures don’t provide as much rhythmic spring
as they might — the recording is a little muddy in the bass
too, which doesn’t help. But it’s a rather more involving performance
than the Appia and better conducted, and better performed by
the orchestra (the Suisse Romande had a particularly bad day).
Again the slow movement is the highlight – warmer in tone, and
more naturally phrased, if again still a little aloof.
These are improvements musically on the previous instalments
in this series. Guller divides opinion rather radically, but
this brace of concertos certainly shows her in more communicative
form than before.
Jonathan Woolf
Youra Guller (piano)