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GRAMOPHONE AWARDS SHORTLIST 2017 for instance, at 0’30” after the four duplet chords the way he holds the dominant seventh chord under the five succeeding chromatic flourishes. Clever – and effective colouring – though not precisely what Liszt notated. In this miraculous little tone-poem and No 9, ‘Ricordanza’, Trifonov shows he can do delirious ecstasy without crossing the line into vulgar exhibitionism, and can control on the turn of a sixpence the pace and dynamics of these highly charged and emotional works. The final A flat major chord of ‘Ricordanza’ leads attacca into the F minor onslaught of ‘Etude X’ (another exciting, individual touch), the last page of which is scintillatingly articulated. This is unquestionably one of the great recorded performances of the Transcendental Studies. The three sets of studies on CD2 are equally compelling, with Trifonov’s eye for pointing up subtle details likely to appeal to Lisztian connoisseurs – the left hand’s rhythmic support in ‘Gnomenreigen’, for example – who are unlikely to complain about putting a bar up an octave in the E major section of ‘Un sospiro’ or adding a tremolo E flat in the last bars of the second Paganini Study. A major bonus is to have all three of the S144 Concert Etudes in sequence – surprisingly rarely encountered, for while No 2, ‘La leggierezza’ and No 3, the aforementioned ‘Un sospiro’ have enjoyed myriad recordings, the first of the set, ‘Il lamento’, is hardly known at all, possibly because it has less obvious attributes of a study than its companions. It’s a wonderful piece, and at 9’07” one of the longest of all Liszt’s études. Almost as scarce are all six of Liszt’s Paganini Etudes (No 3 is the ubiquitous ‘La campanella’), though only a few months ago I welcomed Goran Filipec’s account (Naxos, 6/16). Apart from No 1, ‘Tremolo’, in which I feel he is unnecessarily deliberate, Trifonov has the edge, if only for the astonishing ‘Arpeggio’ (No 4) and a simply scintillating ‘Tema con variazioni’ (on the famous A minor violin Caprice), which compares exactly with Marc-André Hamelin’s account (Hyperion, 11/02). Every decent record collection should have at least one version of all four sets of these studies. It is quite a feat for a single pianist to deliver what are, in effect, top-of-the-pile performances of almost all of the 23 separate titles – but that is what Trifonov offers. Even if you have Berman, Cziffra and Berezovsky in the Transcendentals, and Hamelin and Graffman in the Paganini Studies, you will want to hear Trifonov, who also has the benefit of superior recorded sound (the piano is closely but not claustrophobically captured by Marcus Herzog, with the occasional pedal thump). Trifonov’s is the best kind of virtuoso playing, where one is hardly aware of the notes being played, allowing one to simply bask in the genius of Liszt’s musical narrative and the transcendant execution of an awesomely gifted pianist. Jeremy Nicholas Mozart . Schumann Mozart Fantasia, K475. Piano Sonata No 14, K457 Schumann Fantasie, Op 17. Thema mit Variationen, ‘Geistervariationen’, WoO24 Piotr Anderszewski pf Warner Classics F (CD + ◊) 9029 58885-5 (79’ + 36’ • DDD • NTSC • 16:9 • PCM stereo • 0 • s) DVD: ‘Je m’appelle Varsovie/Warsaw is my Name’, a film by Piotr Anderszewski and Julien Condemine It’s questionable whether Mozart intended his C minor Fantasy, K475, to be yoked with the C minor Sonata, K457, in performance. Although he published the pieces together, the assumption that the one is an ‘ouverture vers la Sonata’, as Warner’s booklet-note writer would have it, is surely open to challenge. Why should they be played cheek by jowl when a listener is likely to find that they are autonomous works, of exceptional ambition, that have little to say to each other? Artur Schnabel, Alfred Brendel, Edwin Fischer and Clifford Curzon all agreed; while other fine artists have disagreed, their number now including Piotr Anderszewski. In the Sonata Anderszewski is rather selfconscious. Why such stentorian fortissimo left-hand octaves at the beginning? I regretted too his fallibility in the timing of pauses and silences in the second and third movements. The slow movement, one of the finest in Mozart’s piano sonatas, should convey the presence of a theatrical character with something to sing about, but that effect is only fitful here. The work is not completely inhabited and revealed. In the Fantasy I take issue with exaggerations of tempo and dynamics pushed to extremes. This is edgy Mozart, recorded as long ago as 2006. The Schumann Fantasy dates from 2013 and shows the consummate player of this composer we already know. The first movement is the most powerful manifestation of the composer’s genius and his most successful and original essay in a large form. Most pianists want to measure themselves against its demands; I count Anderszewski’s well-recorded version among the best. A current runs through and a line held. His control of mass and pace in the second movement is masterly and allows him to bring to it a welcome variety of sound. When the virtuosity called for in the coda arrives you know he will be on top of it. Sviatoslav Richter, at a quicker tempo, encompasses the coda with no feeling that it has been tacked on to the rest. He recorded the Fantasy for EMI at their Abbey Road Studios in 1961 (3/93) and it remains one of his finest achievements. I shall continue to return to Anderszewski’s new version with pleasure but with Richter you sense that, like an eagle in flight, he is without peer in surveying the entire terrain. Anderszewski’s CD is completed by the last music Schumann wrote, the so-called Ghost Variations. When you love the music of a composer everything is important, but in Schumann as late as this you’re conscious of the difficulty he had in generating notes. The contrast with the Fantasy couldn’t be greater. Schumann managed the last of the five variations in 1854 after being pulled from the Rhine by the bargemen. We are not quite done. A ‘bonus’ DVD is offered here which is a 36-minute film by Anderszewski entitled Warsaw is my Name. The title is explained by a short passage of eloquent prose at the beginning that we are invited to read as it scrolls. We’re to take it as personal, I’m sure, and it makes you sit up. Then, without words, there are pictures, on the move but measured, asking us to look, follow, walk, accompany: along the river and the streets, in parks and across bridges, taking in monuments, vistas, apartment blocks, the trams, plus some footage of the destruction of the city in the Second World War. But this is no travelogue. We see through Anderszewski’s eyes and take in his counterpoint of image and music as he plays – three Chopin mazurkas (complete) and the concluding section of the A flat Polonaise, part of Szymanowski’s ‘Scheherazade’ (from Masques) and Third Sonata, and every note of Webern’s Variations Op 27 (electrifying). As an assemblage it is convincing, companionable, persuasive, hugely intelligent, unpredictable, totally without cliché. I know I shall always want to listen to Anderszewski, but if he’s also going to make films occasionally that’s also fine by me. Stephen Plaistow 30 GRAMOPHONE SHORTLIST 2017 Click on album covers to buy from CLASSICAL gramophone.co.uk
page 33
Opera GRAMOPHONE AWARDS SHORTLIST 2017 Berg ◊ Y Wozzeck Christian Gerhaher bar �Wozzeck Gun-Brit Barkmin sop �Marie Brandon Jovanovich ten �Drum Major Mauro Peter ten �Andres Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke ten �Captain Lars Woldt bass �Doctor Chorus of Zurich Opera; Philharmonia Zurich / Fabio Luisi Stage director Andreas Homoki Video director Michael Beyer Accentus F ◊ ACC20363; F Y ACC10363 (101’ • NTSC • 16:9 • 1080i • DTS-HD MA5.1, DTS 5.1 & PCM stereo • 0 • s) Recorded live, September 2015 Wozzeck sees red: the red moon; a bloody knife; flames in the sky. Zurich Opera’s production, directed by Andreas Homoki, is washed in radiation-yellow, a sickly glow evoked by lighting designer Franck Evin that might look painterly were it not such a chemical shade of jaundice. It picks out where real cheeks, chins and noses meet the cracked, heavy white facepaint on the characters’ faces. Caught in close-up by Michael Beyer’s sensitive video direction, perhaps you glimpse more human reaction than Homoki really wants you to see. Büchner’s drama, Woyzeck, was written in the 1830s but reclaimed by expressionists in the 20th century. Homoki offers a synthesis between the two worlds. A puppet theatre – the costumes and wigs say English seaside more than central European marionettes – is conjured up through Michael Levine’s ingenious set: concentric wooden frames from which characters can appear and disappear as if manipulated by giant unseen hands. As the world slides away from Wozzeck – ‘it’s an abyss, I feel dizzy’, the soldier complains – so even this precarious perspective crumbles. It’s also a reminder that, just as the set can be shuffled, so can the drama itself, because Büchner’s scrambled collection of scenes had no obvious order. This is a finely honed production that follows its premise to an absurdist conclusion with slick theatricality and dispassionate zeal. The children in the final scene are all sinister doll-like versions of the adult characters. They include a pintsize, preening Captain (with tricorn) and the Drum Major, whose own plus-size headgear is set off by a tumescent plume. Marie (Gun-Brit Barkmin) is a wide-eyed Victorian strumpet with scarlet rag-doll hair; her and Wozzeck’s child is a true puppet, blank eyes in its wooden head. All sentimentalism is banished here. So, largely, is the opera’s plea for justice and compassion. It is left to Christian Gerhaher’s Wozzeck to fight that battle, which he does with formidable diction and great lyrical beauty, offering, where he can, a still centre in the tumult. Perhaps the baritone has come to the role a shade too late; there’s a world-weariness here that suggests this soldier had long since given up the fight. Barkmin shines, at least vocally, with a bright jugendlichdramatischer sound that she stretches to raw, raddled contrition as the screw turns. Brandon Jovanovich’s muscular tenor gives (sorry) real thrust to his priapic Drum Major, and Wolfgang AblingerSperrhacke’s Captain sings with silky venom. The dramatic chiaroscuro comes from the orchestra. Fabio Luisi’s incisive conducting slices artfully between Berg’s fatty cuts of late Romanticism (I’m sure I’ve never heard Baron Ochs join the waltz at the Heuriger tavern) and his queasy dissonances and eerie numbergames. The orchestra, rapier-sharp and cutting to the quick, offer much more than Swiss precision. Neil Fisher Britten ◊ Y The Rape of Lucretia Christine Rice mez �Lucretia Allan Clayton ten �Male Chorus Kate Royal sop �Female Chorus Duncan Rock bar �Tarquinius Matthew Rose bass �Collatinus Michael Sumuel bass-bar �Junius Catherine Wyn-Rogers mez �Lucia Louise Alder sop �Bianca London Philharmonic Orchestra / Leo Hussain Stage director Fiona Shaw Video director François Roussillon Opus Arte F ◊ OA1219D; F Y OABD7206D (114’ + 17’ • NTSC • 16:9 • 1080p • DTS-HD MA5.1, DTS5.1 & PCM stereo • 0 • S/s) Extra features: ‘Post-War Britten: the History of Lucretia’; ‘Innocence Corrupted: a Conversation with Fiona Shaw’; Cast Gallery Recorded live at Glyndebourne, August 9, 2015 Fiona Shaw’s production of Britten’s first chamber opera opened during the Glyndebourne tour in 2013 – the composer’s centenary year – and was revived at the main festival two years later, when this DVD was filmed. In the opinion of many, it marked a belated homecoming. The opera was written for and premiered at Glyndebourne in 1946, and the accompanying documentary chronicles the impact of post-war austerity on both the subject and scale of the piece – that it was a chamber opera had as much to do with financial necessity as artistic choice – and outlines the consequences of the subsequent UK tour that led to an eventual rift between Britten and John Christie. The aftermath of the Second World War to some extent forms Shaw’s starting point. She dispenses with the idea that the Male and Female Choruses (Allan Clayton and Kate Royal) should be detached from the action and reimagines them as a pair of archeologists, themselves traumatised by war, who piece the opera’s narrative together from what they unearth during a dig, and whose relationship and beliefs are challenged by what they find. The concept allows Shaw to probe both the work’s unstable mix of pagan brutality and Christian moralising, and its sometimes troubling sexual politics. Clayton develops an initial fascination with Tarquinius’s insistent sexuality, gleefully carrying him piggyback to Rome during the first-act interlude, before turning away in revulsion as the danger to Christine Rice’s Lucretia becomes increasingly clear. Royal, in a crisis of faith, soon abandons the Bible we find her clutching at the start and later proffers Lucretia the crucifix she wears round her neck in the unavailing hope of providing some comfort. In a scene which Shaw appears to have toned down between 2013 and 2015, the couple copulate, consensually but desperately, in the immediate aftermath of the rape. Shaw is careful in her handling of the relationship between Lucretia and Duncan gramophone.co.uk Click on album covers to buy from CLASSICAL GRAMOPHONE SHORTLIST 2017 31

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Opera

GRAMOPHONE AWARDS SHORTLIST 2017

Berg

◊ Y

Wozzeck Christian Gerhaher bar �Wozzeck Gun-Brit Barkmin sop �Marie Brandon Jovanovich ten �Drum Major Mauro Peter ten �Andres Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke ten �Captain Lars Woldt bass �Doctor Chorus of Zurich Opera; Philharmonia Zurich / Fabio Luisi Stage director Andreas Homoki Video director Michael Beyer Accentus F ◊ ACC20363; F Y ACC10363 (101’ • NTSC • 16:9 • 1080i • DTS-HD MA5.1, DTS 5.1 & PCM stereo • 0 • s) Recorded live, September 2015

Wozzeck sees red: the red moon; a bloody knife; flames in the sky. Zurich Opera’s production,

directed by Andreas Homoki, is washed in radiation-yellow, a sickly glow evoked by lighting designer Franck Evin that might look painterly were it not such a chemical shade of jaundice. It picks out where real cheeks, chins and noses meet the cracked, heavy white facepaint on the characters’ faces. Caught in close-up by Michael Beyer’s sensitive video direction, perhaps you glimpse more human reaction than Homoki really wants you to see.

Büchner’s drama, Woyzeck, was written in the 1830s but reclaimed by expressionists in the 20th century. Homoki offers a synthesis between the two worlds. A puppet theatre – the costumes and wigs say English seaside more than central European marionettes – is conjured up through Michael Levine’s ingenious set: concentric wooden frames from which characters can appear and disappear as if manipulated by giant unseen hands. As the world slides away from Wozzeck – ‘it’s an abyss, I feel dizzy’, the soldier complains – so even this precarious perspective crumbles. It’s also a reminder that, just as the set can be shuffled, so can the drama itself, because Büchner’s scrambled collection of scenes had no obvious order.

This is a finely honed production that follows its premise to an absurdist conclusion with slick theatricality and dispassionate zeal. The children in the final scene are all sinister doll-like versions of the adult characters. They include a pintsize, preening Captain (with tricorn) and the Drum Major, whose own plus-size headgear is set off by a tumescent plume. Marie (Gun-Brit Barkmin) is a wide-eyed Victorian strumpet with scarlet rag-doll hair; her and Wozzeck’s child is a true puppet, blank eyes in its wooden head.

All sentimentalism is banished here. So, largely, is the opera’s plea for justice and compassion. It is left to Christian Gerhaher’s Wozzeck to fight that battle, which he does with formidable diction and great lyrical beauty, offering, where he can, a still centre in the tumult. Perhaps the baritone has come to the role a shade too late; there’s a world-weariness here that suggests this soldier had long since given up the fight. Barkmin shines, at least vocally, with a bright jugendlichdramatischer sound that she stretches to raw, raddled contrition as the screw turns.

Brandon Jovanovich’s muscular tenor gives (sorry) real thrust to his priapic Drum Major, and Wolfgang AblingerSperrhacke’s Captain sings with silky venom. The dramatic chiaroscuro comes from the orchestra. Fabio Luisi’s incisive conducting slices artfully between Berg’s fatty cuts of late Romanticism (I’m sure I’ve never heard Baron Ochs join the waltz at the Heuriger tavern) and his queasy dissonances and eerie numbergames. The orchestra, rapier-sharp and cutting to the quick, offer much more than Swiss precision. Neil Fisher

Britten

◊ Y

The Rape of Lucretia Christine Rice mez �Lucretia Allan Clayton ten �Male Chorus Kate Royal sop �Female Chorus Duncan Rock bar �Tarquinius Matthew Rose bass �Collatinus Michael Sumuel bass-bar �Junius Catherine Wyn-Rogers mez �Lucia Louise Alder sop �Bianca London Philharmonic Orchestra / Leo Hussain Stage director Fiona Shaw Video director François Roussillon Opus Arte F ◊ OA1219D; F Y OABD7206D (114’ + 17’ • NTSC • 16:9 • 1080p • DTS-HD MA5.1, DTS5.1 & PCM stereo • 0 • S/s) Extra features: ‘Post-War Britten: the History of

Lucretia’; ‘Innocence Corrupted: a Conversation with Fiona Shaw’; Cast Gallery Recorded live at Glyndebourne, August 9, 2015

Fiona Shaw’s production of Britten’s first chamber opera opened during the Glyndebourne tour in 2013 – the composer’s centenary year – and was revived at the main festival two years later, when this DVD was filmed. In the opinion of many, it marked a belated homecoming. The opera was written for and premiered at Glyndebourne in 1946, and the accompanying documentary chronicles the impact of post-war austerity on both the subject and scale of the piece – that it was a chamber opera had as much to do with financial necessity as artistic choice – and outlines the consequences of the subsequent UK tour that led to an eventual rift between Britten and John Christie.

The aftermath of the Second World War to some extent forms Shaw’s starting point. She dispenses with the idea that the Male and Female Choruses (Allan Clayton and Kate Royal) should be detached from the action and reimagines them as a pair of archeologists, themselves traumatised by war, who piece the opera’s narrative together from what they unearth during a dig, and whose relationship and beliefs are challenged by what they find. The concept allows Shaw to probe both the work’s unstable mix of pagan brutality and Christian moralising, and its sometimes troubling sexual politics.

Clayton develops an initial fascination with Tarquinius’s insistent sexuality, gleefully carrying him piggyback to Rome during the first-act interlude, before turning away in revulsion as the danger to Christine Rice’s Lucretia becomes increasingly clear. Royal, in a crisis of faith, soon abandons the Bible we find her clutching at the start and later proffers Lucretia the crucifix she wears round her neck in the unavailing hope of providing some comfort. In a scene which Shaw appears to have toned down between 2013 and 2015, the couple copulate, consensually but desperately, in the immediate aftermath of the rape.

Shaw is careful in her handling of the relationship between Lucretia and Duncan gramophone.co.uk

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GRAMOPHONE SHORTLIST 2017 31

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