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Gramophone Awards Shortlist 2016 Instrumental Click on a CD cover to buy or stream from qobuz.com Bach • Beethoven • Rzewski JS Bach Goldberg Variations, BWV988 Beethoven Variations on a Waltz by Anton Diabelli, Op 120 Rzewski The People United Will Never Be Defeated! Igor Levit pf Sony Classical B c 88875 06096-2 (3h 13’ • DDD) Igor Levit’s late Beethoven sonatas (11/13) and Bach Partitas (10/14) on Sony Classical have already made bold declarations of his pianistic and artistic prowess. Now he confirms his appetite for the big entrance with three monuments to variation form, each rooted in its own century, yet all united by the harnessing of maximum variety, maximum discipline. Levit will be stuck for some years to come with the epithets ‘young’ and ‘Russian-born, German-trained/domiciled’. But the instant he touches the piano such information becomes irrelevant. Certainly he can muster all the athleticism, velocity and finesse of a competition winner ready to burst on to the international scene. But like the rarest of that breed – a Perahia, say – his playing already has a far-seeing quality that raises him to the status of the thinking virtuoso. There is, if you care to rationalise, a Russian depth of sound and eloquence of phrasing, tempered by Germanic intellectual grasp. There is also a sense of exulting in technical prowess and energy. But not once in the course of these three themes and 99 variations did I feel that such qualities were being selfconsciously underlined. Levit’s musical personality is as integrated and mature as his technique. And both of these are placed at the service of the music’s glory rather than his own. Which brings me back to the concept of the three-CD set. Now 77, and so far as I know still going strong both as composer and pianist, Frederic Rzewski can hardly complain at daunting comparisons with Bach and Beethoven, since his variation set The People United Will Never Be Defeated! so conspicuously invite them. And whatever one’s attitude to the early-1970s countercultural ideology of the piece, its attempt to fuse that ideology with high-flown classical difficulty, or its occasional nods to ‘extended’ techniques of the time (including some whistling and shouting), it needs to stand on its own feet if it is not to go down in history as a mere folly. Getting to know the work through its dedicatee and first performer Ursula Oppens (a Vanguard LP of 1976), I confess I couldn’t get past the opening few variations before feeling that the concept was more interesting than the realisation and that the militancy of the original had been trivialised rather than enhanced. Rzewski’s own recording exerted more of a spell, despite indifferent piano sound. In 1999 Marc-André Hamelin raised the virtuoso bar a few notches higher, and by virtue of that fact alone the whole experience became more compelling. But now Levit has gone a stage further, with an even wider range of colour and attack, plus an almost tangible sense of mission, which together help to paper over the cracks in the musical invention and make me, for one, attend to Rzewski’s righteous fury and flights of fancy with new respect. Levit’s ‘Improvisation’ (an option allowed by the composer before the final reappearance of the theme) has a summative power that surpasses even Hamelin. As the intelligent if somewhat over-heated booklet-essay opines, Levit is in his element with variation form: ‘identifying with the particular musical situation and at the same time maintaining his distance from it’. That combination is a pre-condition for a topnotch Diabelli Variations, and Levit uses it as a springboard for playing of unfailing concentration and insight. Kovacevich’s 1968 recording, made at roughly the same age as Levit’s, offered a quite extraordinary identification of pianist and composer, holding the balance between wildness and continuity more cannily than in his remake for Onyx 40 years later. To say that Levit can withstand the comparison is the highest praise. Among other outstanding recorded accounts, Anderszewski is more temperamental and occasionally extreme, sometimes making Levit sound a fraction ordinary (as in the state of grace he finds for the final Tempo di menuetto) but more often raising suspicions of mere striving for effect. Schiff on ECM demands to be heard, not only for his own merits but for offering parallel versions on a 1921 Bechstein and a wonderfully clattery fortepiano from 100 years earlier. Levit’s Goldberg Variations range themselves more naturally alongside the patrician intelligence of a Perahia than with the sui generis extremes of a Glenn Gould. At times Perahia’s imagination in repeats arguably betokens a fraction more wisdom. But such fine nuances only emerge in the dutiful process of comparison, rather than in the wholly absorbing experience of Levit traversing another musical peak. Top-notch recording quality, too. If a finer piano recording comes my way this year I shall be delighted, but frankly also astonished. David Fanning Brahms ‘The Complete Solo Piano Music, Vol 3’ Variations on a Hungarian Melody, Op 21 No 2. Piano Pieces – Op 76; Op 118. Waltzes, Op 39 Jonathan Plowright pf BIS F Í BIS2127 (81’ • DDD/DSD) Jonathan Plowright’s complete Brahms piano music for BIS, inaugurated in 2013, has now reached Vol 3, with all its intelligence, subtlety and power in full blossom. Other pianists – Leon McCawley, Stephen Hough and Andreas Haefliger among them – have hinted at a new direction, or perhaps a restoration, in Brahms interpretation. Plowright, in his original, thoughtful way, leads the pack. Thick, muddy textures awash in pedal (sounds patently unachievable on the latest pianos Brahms knew) and leaden tempi so characteristic of the mid-20th-century approach to this music are rapidly and happily becoming things of the past. One thing that makes Plowright’s interpretations so compelling is that they sound totally fresh, as though a fully formed, cultured musician, unencumbered by conventional approaches or received wisdom, took up these scores for the first time in maturity. The results are often unexpected, yet always apt and never less than convincing. The B minor Capriccio (Op 76 No 2) is unrushed, diffident, as though confiding its drolleries in a whisper. The robust 26 GRAMOPHONE AWARDS 2016 gramophone.co.uk
page 27
Gramophone Awards Shortlist 2016 M ilot B aptiste , J ean H ohenbergz G regor : p h o t o g r a p h y Integrated and mature technique: Levit recording Rzewski at Funkhaus Nalepastrasse, Berlin, last March C sharp minor Capriccio (No 5), with its swaggering cross-rhythms and passionate assertions, creates a miniature epic. It’s difficult to think of another performance that delineates the mercurial mood-swings of the C major Capriccio (No 8) with greater finesse and insight. Delicacy and heartfelt sentiment characterise the gracious A major Intermezzo (Op 118 No 2), illustrating Plowright’s gift for evoking sentiment without sentimentality. The story told in the G minor Ballade (No 3) is filled with lean, mean, no-nonsense resolve, while the much-belaboured E flat minor Intermezzo (No 6) emerges here unequivocally powerful, its eloquence partly due to secco staccatos and crystalline textures. The Waltzes, Op 39, for all their unfettered ebullience, present the same wealth of detail that characterises Opp 76 and 118. The Variations on a Hungarian Melody provide a charming overture to the programme. I have a feeling this is going to be the benchmark Brahms survey for some time to come. Patrick Rucker Grieg Lyric Pieces – Arietta, Op 12 No 1; Berceuse, Op 38 No 1; Elegy, Op 38 No 6; Six Lyric Pieces, Op 43; Valse-Impromptu, Op 47 No 1; Melody, Op 47 No 3; Elegy, Op 47 No 7; March of the Trolls, Op 54 No 3; Nocturne, Op 54 No 4; Bell‑Ringing, Op 54 No 6; Homesickness, Op 57 No 6; Sylph, Op 62 No 1; From Early Years, Op 65 No 1; Salon, Op 65 No 4; Wedding Day at Troldhaugen, Op 65 No 6; Sailors’ Song, Op 68 No 2; At Your Feet, Op 68 No 3; At the Cradle, Op 68 No 5; Summer’s Eve, Op 71 No 2; Puck, Op 71 No 3; Remembrances, Op 71 No 7; Homeward, Op 62 No 6 Stephen Hough pf Hyperion F CDA68070 (73’ • DDD) Grieg may not be in the pantheon with the greatest but his freshness of invention continues to give his music a classic quality. He was a born lyricist and his piano pieces and songs established him as a master, not just a miniaturist, unfailingly strong, original and sensitive in their harmonic language. They are equally strong in refinement of rhythm as well. Schumann rather than Mendelssohn was godfather to the 10 volumes of Lyric Pieces, which carry on Schumann’s tradition of the ‘characteristic’ piece whose title so often conceals an intimate experience. Stephen Hough’s selection of 27 is chronological, beginning with the ‘Arietta’ from Book 1 (1867) and ending with Grieg’s recollection of it in ‘Remembrances’ (‘Efterklang’) in Book 10 (1901). The pieces form a poetic piano diary running through his life. There are banalities, here and there, but the boldness and tenderness of the melodic ideas are paramount. You can play the CD through as a recital, compiled as it is with taste and enough concern for variety. Better though to make shorter sequences of the tracks and be drawn in more intently to Hough’s artistry and the cunning with which Grieg took so many choice features of Liszt’s and Wagner’s harmony, compressing them into small spaces and making them his own. He hated his student years in Leipzig and made sure his music after that would stay fresh and northern, and bang up to date. The CD sits nicely alongside such classic selections as Emil Gilels’s of 1974 (DG, 3/75, 2/97) and Leif Ove Andsnes’s of 24 numbers played on Grieg’s own 1892 Steinway (EMI, 4/02). There is also Walter Gieseking from way back (EMI, 4/99): high-class sight-reading, one might say, but far from negligible. If an intégrale of all 66 is your goal (it would never be mine) there is Gerhard Oppitz (RCA, 4/94) and the respected Eva Knardahl (BIS, 11/87, 8/88). A tribute here is also surely due to Peter Katin, who died recently and did gramophone.co.uk GRAMOPHONE AWards 2016 27

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Gramophone Awards Shortlist 2016 Instrumental

Click on a CD cover to buy or stream from qobuz.com

Bach • Beethoven • Rzewski JS Bach Goldberg Variations, BWV988 Beethoven Variations on a Waltz by Anton Diabelli, Op 120 Rzewski The People United Will Never Be Defeated! Igor Levit pf Sony Classical B c 88875 06096-2 (3h 13’ • DDD)

Igor Levit’s late Beethoven sonatas (11/13) and Bach

Partitas (10/14) on Sony Classical have already made bold declarations of his pianistic and artistic prowess. Now he confirms his appetite for the big entrance with three monuments to variation form, each rooted in its own century, yet all united by the harnessing of maximum variety, maximum discipline.

Levit will be stuck for some years to come with the epithets ‘young’ and ‘Russian-born, German-trained/domiciled’. But the instant he touches the piano such information becomes irrelevant. Certainly he can muster all the athleticism, velocity and finesse of a competition winner ready to burst on to the international scene. But like the rarest of that breed – a Perahia, say – his playing already has a far-seeing quality that raises him to the status of the thinking virtuoso. There is, if you care to rationalise, a Russian depth of sound and eloquence of phrasing, tempered by Germanic intellectual grasp. There is also a sense of exulting in technical prowess and energy. But not once in the course of these three themes and 99 variations did I feel that such qualities were being selfconsciously underlined. Levit’s musical personality is as integrated and mature as his technique. And both of these are placed at the service of the music’s glory rather than his own. Which brings me back to the concept of the three-CD set. Now 77, and so far as I know still going strong both as composer and pianist, Frederic Rzewski can hardly complain at daunting comparisons with Bach and Beethoven, since his variation set The People United Will Never Be Defeated! so conspicuously invite them. And whatever one’s attitude to the early-1970s countercultural ideology of the piece, its attempt to fuse that ideology with high-flown classical difficulty, or its occasional nods to ‘extended’ techniques of the time (including some whistling and shouting), it needs to stand on its own feet if it is not to go down in history as a mere folly. Getting to know the work through its dedicatee and first performer Ursula Oppens (a Vanguard LP of 1976), I confess I couldn’t get past the opening few variations before feeling that the concept was more interesting than the realisation and that the militancy of the original had been trivialised rather than enhanced. Rzewski’s own recording exerted more of a spell, despite indifferent piano sound. In 1999 Marc-André Hamelin raised the virtuoso bar a few notches higher, and by virtue of that fact alone the whole experience became more compelling. But now Levit has gone a stage further, with an even wider range of colour and attack, plus an almost tangible sense of mission, which together help to paper over the cracks in the musical invention and make me, for one, attend to Rzewski’s righteous fury and flights of fancy with new respect. Levit’s ‘Improvisation’ (an option allowed by the composer before the final reappearance of the theme) has a summative power that surpasses even Hamelin.

As the intelligent if somewhat over-heated booklet-essay opines, Levit is in his element with variation form: ‘identifying with the particular musical situation and at the same time maintaining his distance from it’. That combination is a pre-condition for a topnotch Diabelli Variations, and Levit uses it as a springboard for playing of unfailing concentration and insight. Kovacevich’s 1968 recording, made at roughly the same age as Levit’s, offered a quite extraordinary identification of pianist and composer, holding the balance between wildness and continuity more cannily than in his remake for Onyx 40 years later. To say that Levit can withstand the comparison is the highest praise. Among other outstanding recorded accounts, Anderszewski is more temperamental and occasionally extreme, sometimes making Levit sound a fraction ordinary (as in the state of grace he finds for the final Tempo di menuetto) but more often raising suspicions of mere striving for effect. Schiff on ECM demands to be heard, not only for his own merits but for offering parallel versions on a 1921 Bechstein and a wonderfully clattery fortepiano from 100 years earlier.

Levit’s Goldberg Variations range themselves more naturally alongside the patrician intelligence of a Perahia than with the sui generis extremes of a Glenn Gould. At times Perahia’s imagination in repeats arguably betokens a fraction more wisdom. But such fine nuances only emerge in the dutiful process of comparison, rather than in the wholly absorbing experience of Levit traversing another musical peak. Top-notch recording quality, too. If a finer piano recording comes my way this year I shall be delighted, but frankly also astonished. David Fanning

Brahms ‘The Complete Solo Piano Music, Vol 3’ Variations on a Hungarian Melody, Op 21 No 2. Piano Pieces – Op 76; Op 118. Waltzes, Op 39 Jonathan Plowright pf BIS F Í BIS2127 (81’ • DDD/DSD)

Jonathan Plowright’s complete Brahms piano music for BIS, inaugurated in 2013,

has now reached Vol 3, with all its intelligence, subtlety and power in full blossom. Other pianists – Leon McCawley, Stephen Hough and Andreas Haefliger among them – have hinted at a new direction, or perhaps a restoration, in Brahms interpretation. Plowright, in his original, thoughtful way, leads the pack. Thick, muddy textures awash in pedal (sounds patently unachievable on the latest pianos Brahms knew) and leaden tempi so characteristic of the mid-20th-century approach to this music are rapidly and happily becoming things of the past.

One thing that makes Plowright’s interpretations so compelling is that they sound totally fresh, as though a fully formed, cultured musician, unencumbered by conventional approaches or received wisdom, took up these scores for the first time in maturity. The results are often unexpected, yet always apt and never less than convincing.

The B minor Capriccio (Op 76 No 2) is unrushed, diffident, as though confiding its drolleries in a whisper. The robust

26 GRAMOPHONE AWARDS 2016

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