Category Archives: CD

Great Violinists – Menuhin

Leave a reply

Sonatas for violin and piano opus 30 no 2 in C minor
& opus 47 in A (Kreutzer);Rondo in G WoO 41 (Beethoven)
Rondo in B minor opus 70 (Schubert)

Yehudi Menuhin (violin) Hephzibah Menuhin (piano)

TPT: 01:18:14
Naxos 8.110775

reviewed by Neville Cohn

 

 

This is a disc worth having if only for the pleasure of listening – and re-listening – to the Menuhin siblings revelling in their musicmaking in Beethoven’s Sonata in C minor from opus 12.

The first movement has an urgency, a youthful drive that carries the listener along with it in a performance that leaps from the speakers. Here Hephzibah Menuhin is wondrously nimble and fluent at the piano. The pair are hardly less communicative in the slow movement, the violin line like some sublime ribbon of velvety, warm tone. This is musicianship which should be compulsory listening for anyone who has listened to recorded performances by Yehudi Menuhin made during his long decline. Forget those sad performances. Rejoice instead as you experience the marvel that was Menuhin when at his peak.

The siblings are in glorious form in the scherzo, piercing to the heart of this engaging instance of Beethoven at his most puckishly lighthearted. The concluding allegro is beyond reproach. Some surface hiss and crackle remind us of the age of the recording

This wondrous interpretation was captured for posterity by HMV at EMI’s studios in London in March 1938.

Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata is given a very much less persuasive reading. Recorded a year earlier – in 1934 – it is a classic instance of how uneven Menuhin could be as a musician. At times, which became fewer and fewer over the years, there was a god-like perfection about his playing, which enabled him to produce performances of ineffable beauty. Not so here.

Although there are episodes, tantalisingly few, that reveal Menuhin in good form, there is too much about the presentation that is ponderous and effortful, an impression augmented by some wowing in the introduction to the work. It’s not clear whether this relates to the original recording.

The day before the Menuhins recorded the C minor sonata, they went to the EMI studios in London to make a pressing of Beethoven’s little Rondo in G. It’s a gem, its carefree, high-spirited essence captured to the nth degree.

Again, to underscore how erratic Menuhin could be even in his heyday, listen to the Schubert Rondo, recorded a few weeks later.

Here, the siblings sound inspired; the introduction is frankly magnificent. There’s a good deal of portamento in the style of the time in a reading that is alternately imperious and lyrical. At more robust moments, there’s rivetting rhythmic cut and thrust in this exultant performance.

© 2005 Neville Cohn


Brahms Piano Concerto No 1 in D minor Ballades, opus 10

Leave a reply

ARTHUR RUBINSTEIN (piano) & ZUBIN MEHTA (conductor)
Israel Philharmonic Orchestra
JULIUS KATCHEN (piano)
DECCA Eloquence 466 724-2
TPT:1:10:17

   reviewed by Neville Cohn 

It’s a fascinating exercise, after listening to the polonaises recorded by Rubinstein in middle age, to consider the last concerto performance he ever recorded, his first ever for the DECCA label – and the only one. Special permission had to be sought from RCA Victor, to whom Rubinstein had been contracted for many years. RCA permitted the recording to go ahead on learning that all royalties from the DECCA disc would go to a benevolent fund for retired musicians of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra with whom Rubinstein recorded Brahms’ Piano Concerto No 2.

This was Rubinstein’s concerto recording swansong and it says much for physical resilience that he not only steers a safe way through this musical minefield but invests the playing with a nobility – the distillation of a lifetime’s musical thought and endeavour – that makes for compelling listening. The CD booklet points out that one of the trickier passages needed to be re-recorded by the old man and then spliced into the main tape. It is superior musical surgery; no scar is evident. While understandably playing at a more deliberate pace than would have been the case had Rubinstein been fifty or even fifteen years younger, the powers of expression, the ability to summon up his trademark massive tone where required and to caress the ear in quieter moments, is astonishing testimony to Rubinstein’s durability as both man and musician. Zubin Mehta galvanises the IPO which provides a sensationally fine accompaniment for the old magician. There’s a Brahms bonus: the Ballades, opus 10 presented with all the insight we have come to expect of Julius Katchen.


Sydney International Piano Competition 2000 (Concertos)

Leave a reply

ABC Classics 461 654-2 (2-CD)
TPT: 2:32:25

 

reviewed by Neville Cohn 

A 2-CD pack on the ABC Classics label is devoted to performances recorded during the 2000 Sydney International Piano Competition, including those of top laureate Marina Kolomiitseva’s astonishingly persuasive account of Liszt’s Grande Etudes de Paganini. They mark her irrefutably as a worthy winner; these excruciatingly taxing pieces hold few fears for the young Russian who invests each of these studies with poetic insights. Her virtuosity is extraordinary, her hands sweeping up and down the keyboard as nonchalantly as if dusting the furniture. This, as well as faultless tremolo (which gives an imperious quality to the playing), makes “Etude No 2” unforgettable, an amalgam of dazzling flourishes and heart-easingly expressive filigree arabesques. In “Etude No 4”, staccato notes evoke images of sparks in stygian darkness. Kolomiitseva is triumphant, too, in Tchaikowsky’s Concerto in B flat minor – and how wonderfully she invigorates this most tired of war horses. Drawing from a deep well of expressiveness, Kolomiitseva, whether expounding the concerto’s lyrical qualities or hurling great bolts of sound, Zeus-like, at the ear, plays as if the work were specially written for her.

Also spilling out of this splendid musical cornucopia is Vera Kameneva’s account of Mozart’s K467 in C, now known to millions as the Elvira Madigan Concerto. A born Mozart player, Kameneva brings an exultant quality to the opening of the work. Often, the presentation pulses with vitality, as meaningful in its way as delicato note-streams, fragile as gossamer. And the finale glows with power. Christopher Hogwood, too, sounds in his element as he directs the Australian Chamber Orchestra. Yet another instance of high calibre keyboard ability is Evgeny Ukhanov who gives a near-perfect assessment of the music in Rachmaninov’s Concerto in D minor.

 

Lang Lang (piano)

Leave a reply

HAYDN: Sonata in E; RACHMANINOV: Sonata No 2; BRAHMS: Six Pieces, opus 118; TCHAIKOWSKY: Dumka, Nocturne in C sharp minor; BALAKIREV: Islamey

 

Telarc CD 80524
TPT: 1:18:28

reviewed by Neville Cohn

Lang Lang’s debut recording – of a recital before an audience at Seiji Ozawa Hall, Tanglewood – marks him instantly as a classicist of unusual ability. A musician to his fingertips (no pun intended), his reading of Haydn’s Sonata in E, Hob XVI:31 is a model of its kind, lucid, cogent, exquisitely phrased: I hung on every note. So, too, I dare say, will anyone interested in poised, finely considered accounts of keyboard music of the classical era. A performance worthy of the highest praise, it makes for irresistible listening. At its most persuasive, Lang Lang’ pianism here is reminiscent of Lili Kraus at her best – and this is high praise.

Although only eighteen years old when he made this recording, his account of the Haydn work has a maturity of expression one more usually associates with an arrived master. Certainly, his performance sounds as if he was drawing on decades of musical experience. I very much admired, too, Lang Lang’s reading of Tchaikowsky’s Nocturne in C sharp minor, given a deeply expressive interpretation that allows its inherent simplicity to register meaningfully on the consciousness.

 

And while this young pianist gives a satisfactory performances of Rachmaninov’s sprawling Sonata in B flat minor (the slow movement was exquisitely introspective), he comes across primarily as a musician most at home in works of the classical era, less so in virtuoso vehicles such as Balakirev’s Islamey which lacks the drive and brilliance that others more suited to the genre such as, say, Horowitz, might bring to their playing. Brahms’ opus 118, six of the master’s miniature gems, is least persuasive; these mainly autumnal musings are entirely satisfactory in notational and tonal terms. But for all the beauty of nuance brought to bear on the music, the sunset, valedictory nature of much of the writing proved elusive, especially in the “Intermezzo in E flat minor”; Solomon’s breathtakingly insightful recording of the early 1950s still reigns supreme. Despite these reservations, there’s every reason, on the evidence of this recording (especially the Haydn sonata) to believe that in time this phenomenal young artist will be able successfully to plumb the expressive depths of opus 118. Hopefully, too, those responsible for such matters will encourage this exceptionally sensitive pianist to place more readings of Haydn – and Mozart – on disc.


PORTRAITS Jean-Yves Thibaudet (piano)

Leave a reply

thibauChopin, Liszt, Francaix, Gershwin, Debussy, Mendelssohn, Nyman, Ellington, Satie, Ravel

TPT: 2:28:44
DECCA 476 159-5 (2-CD)

 

  reviewed by Neville Cohn

 

 

In yet another fine 2-CD issue in the DECCA SBS series, pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet is showcased in a compilation that lasts just under two and a half hours. Especially in the French repertoire, Thibaudet shapes to the demands of the music like Moet and Chandon to a goblet.
I savoured his account of Debussy’s Pour le Piano. In the Prelude, and unlike that famous recording of some decades ago on a Columbia LP by Walter Gieseking which is informed by a softly mellow sound, Thibaudet brings glittering tone to flawlessly stated note streams. I admired, too, his account of the Sarabande which comes across like a little marvel of dignified introspection ¬ and the lightness of touch in the Toccata is everything one could have wished for.
In Ravel’s Piano Trio, Thibaudet is joined by stellar co-musicians violinist Joshua Bell and cellist Steven Isserlis in a recording of breathtaking quality. Pantoum is magical with its delicate, quasi-pointillist sounds and feather-light buoyancy. The inherent solemnity of the Passacaille is near-perfectly evoked, the perfect foil for the finale in which gossamer-delicate, souffle-light textures at high speed astonish the ear.
Central to much of Thibaudet’s playing is a quality of elegance, wonderfully apparent in Mendelssohn’s Andante and Rondo Capriccioso, drawing on the deepest wells of expressiveness in the opening pages and demonstrating prestidigitation in the capriccio that places Thibaudet comfortably to the fore of current finger-Olympians. Thibaudet’s interpretation impressively captures the elfen nature of much of the writing; it is an interesting contrast to Julius Katchen’s famous DECCA LP recording made years ago which is tonally very much more substantial.
Thibaudet’s skill in executing rapid, silvery-toned, delicato treble traceries with the nonchalance of mastery is much in evidence in Liszt’s Rigoletto Paraphrase.

And of his account of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No 2, it is the slow movement that is most memorable, coming across in so thoughtfully lyrical a way as to sound like an extended, beautifully considered nocturne briefly interrupted by abrupt declamations midway. Thibaudet is soloist with the Rotterdam Philharmonic conducted by Valery Gergiev. And he is a flawless soloist with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal under Charles Dutoit in Francaix’s engaging Concertino – but sounds not entirely in sympathy with Liszt’s Hungarian Fantasy.
Can there be a more hackneyed Chopin nocturne than his opus 9 no 2 in E flat, regularly massacred at the hands of earnest young piano players at eisteddfodau. Listen, then, to Thibaudet’s account – and give thanks that such artistry exists to unlock the exquisite potential of this little piece.
There’s also a vignette by Duke Ellington – A single petal of a rose – its quiet, introverted beauty evoked to the nth degree.
© 2004