Records
Piano pieces
Peter Phillips
The last few weeks have yielded an impressive batch of records for solo piano. The bulk of their repertoire is not new, but the interpreters are all of the front rank — Cecile Ousset, Andrei Gavrilov, Murray Perahia, Jean-Philippe Collard — and all these discs contain a challenge to the collector.
Cecile Ousset's version of the Sonata in B minor by Liszt (coupled with the Pagani- ni Studies on EMI 27 0261 1), unusually emphasises the lyricism in the music as against its massiveness, which so many pianists seem to enjoy confronting. Typical of this latter approach was the perform- ance last year at the Proms by Lazar Berman, who gave a vast interpretation, designed to fill the Albert Hall with sound and rival in scope the Bruckner symphony which followed it. Nothing could be further from Cecile Ousset's view, who even makes the great fugue subject of the last section, customarily hewn out of rock, appear supple, building to its climax almost despite itself. Her passage-work at this point, as in the impossibly virtuosic Stu- dies, is kept light and clear, so that what is lacking in sheer strength is made up for in points of detail. Sometimes one wonders whether Liszt actually intended every note to be made so audible — whether an impressionistic wash would not suit his manner of composing better; but there is no doubt that here is a fresh opinion about a sonata that ranks as the greatest single piece of 19th-century piano music.
If that is a large claim, it is knowingly made larger by having heard Jean-Philippe Collard play Cesar Franck's Prelude, Chorale and Fugue (EMI 27 0159 1). This is released with Franck's Piano Quintet in F minor, for which Collard is joined by the Muir String Quartet. Although the quintet is printed in bigger type on the sleeve, it is the piano piece which steals the attention. It is actually quite like the Liszt sonata in some ways: ending with a fugue, making use of cyclic form, and having classical outlines, blurred almost beyond recogni- tion by seething romantic expression. If Franck's classicism was the musical equiva- lent of Ingres's in painting, as is often said, this work requires something more fur- rowed than the marble-smooth brow of Madame Moitessier, even if we allow her her poise. There are even patterns and figures, which Collard plays up well, to predict Impressionism. Anyone with a taste for the big piano sound should be familiar with this masterpiece, and Col- lard's reading of it is highly recommend- able.
Lovers of such music will be less enter- tained by Gavrilov playing Bach's six French Suites (2 discs EMI 27 0173 3). Everything about this recording seems geared towards making the final result as far removed from a harpsichord rendering as possible. That's supportable in itself — it worked very well with Glenn Gould — but something has gone wrong in this case. The microphone gives the impression of having been wrapped in a blanket and, thus protected, put as near the strings of the piano as possible. This eliminates all the familiar brilliance of the harpsichord without any significant gain in resonance. Gavrilov does not have the same genius that Gould had for grasping these short dances and making something highly char- acterised of them. The nuances of the music can glance off him: witness- the Gigue from the 5th Suite, which ends up a jumble of rather unlovely sounds. There has to be a good reason for playing this repertoire on the piano these days — the competition from the other side is very hot.
Murray Perahia's record of piano music by Mendelssohn (CBS 37838) is a collec- tion of the composer's most popular attempts in this medium — the Sonata Op.6, the Variations Serieuses, the Rondo Capriccioso and the Prelude and Fugue Op.35 no. 1. It is tantalisingly difficult to decide how serious this music really is (despite the title of the Variations) and therefore difficult to decide how important to make them sound. The emotional con- tent comes off them easily, and surely pieces like the Rondo Capriccioso are sheer entertainment. Perahia generally keeps the mood light-hearted, for instance in the second movement of the sonata, not over-playing; but when he does tuck in more committedly, as in the third move- ment or the Prelude and Fugue, he gives a valuable view of a composer who was surely capable of more than just writing background music to Woody Allen's films.
Apropos of nothing really, mention should be made of a collection from the HMV Treasury (HMV 29 0422 1) dedi- cated to the earliest extant recordings of Gilbert and Sullivan arias. The best-loved of these were obvious choices for the new phonogram industry when it arrived in Britain in 1898. The first two of the 22 items given here come from that year — the remainder from between 1900 and 1912. Apart from the opening track, the reproduction quality is not at all bad, and the listener is given a strong idea of the types of voice which created the famous roles in these operettas. Many of the original singers are presented — above all Sir Henry Lytton at an early stage in his career, but also Richard Temple as the Mikado (one of the pioneers of the D'Oyly Carte Company), Walter Passmore, Peter Dawson and the exquisite Isabel Jay. None had what we would recognise now as a fully-blown operatic technique, but they concentrated on clarity of diction (neces- sary enough in patter-songs like 'My name is John Wellington Wells' from The Sorcer- er) and on gauging just how much explicit sentiment was acceptable. We might think they occasionally overdo it, but these versions have the ring of authenticity, and happily prove that late Victorians could be as deliciously silly as we may be now.
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