Dux has issued all three Szymanowski piano sonatas in one twofer,
and there’s the rub. It seems hard on the performer to
begin with commercial considerations, but because of the split
between the discs the total timing is 84 minutes. I’d
hoped that Dux would have reflected that this is really one
CD’s worth (give or take four minutes) by reducing the
price bracket, but having checked I see that they haven’t
and that this is selling as a full price double. I would hope
they reconsider. The performances are good, but the cost will
deter many from acquiring this release, especially as the First
Sonata is an early, rather uncharacteristic work, and potential
purchasers will waive the opportunity to hear it.
As I said, the performances of Gajusz Kęska are good. In
Szymanowski’s greatest sonata, the Third, he is not as
arresting as his fellow Pole, Anderszewski, on Virgin Classics.
Nor is he quite as consistently accomplished as Martin Jones
in his extensive trawl through the composer’s works; though
Jones’s sonata performances come in the context of a 4
CD Nimbus set, so I’m not sure that necessarily advances
things much, unless you want to collar the lot in one go.
So, whilst Kęska is not as glitteringly colouristic as
Anderszewski, nor as probing of the music’s impressionist
moments, his slightly more measured approach brings its own
rewards. Less vertical in his responses, and cooler, he nevertheless
evinces fine rubati and ensures that the music’s artful
but ceaseless flow is well conveyed. Its rigour and strenuous
appeal is not universally admired, but to those responsive,
Anderszewski’s elucidation of the Third Sonata’s
tauter moments, and its fugal ones too, will come as welcome
evidence of the music’s sheer profusion and cleverness
of invention. One gets a good sense of the manifold thickets
as well as the textual and metrical problems encountered;, though,
with Kęska and also the sense that he has coursed them
with intelligence.
I sense even more identification with the Second sonata, whose
late romantic moments, and heroic chording especially, bring
out the bravura in Kęska. He works towards the climaxes
splendidly, and vests the unsettled second movement with a sense
of benevolence. One thing to which I think he is especially
drawn is the Lisztian element embedded in Szymanowski’s
music, because he responds to it with alacrity and power. So,
too, the rather undigested fugal feint here, which is not nearly
as suavely embedded in this work as it was to become in the
1917 Third sonata.
The First Sonata was written in 1904. It’s predicated
structurally on Chopinesque grounds, though it exudes Lisztian
eruptions and in the slow movement one encounters a distinctly
Beethovenian sound world. These influences, not yet fully rationalised,
and certainly not expressively integrated, do however reveal
something important about his musical development. The dappled
lightness of the finale, with some harp-like harmonies, show
an obvious debt to impressionism, but also point the way forward
to his more mature writing.
So, this release does usefully capture, in good sound, the pianistic
Szymanowski in sonata frame of mind. But, I must return to my
first paragraph and hope that Dux reconsiders its pricing structure.
Jonathan Woolf
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Gajusz Kęska (piano) 