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Deutsche Grammophon Adès Piano Concertoa. Totentanzb a Kirill Gerstein pf b Christianne Stotijn mez bMark Stone bar Boston Symphony Orchestra / Thomas Adès DG 483 7998GH (56’ • DDD) Recorded live at Symphony Hall, Boston, b November 2016, aMarch 2019 Gramophone Award 2019 (Contemporary) So is this the last Romantic piano concerto? It might well be; but the work’s precursor In Seven Days – arguably a more focused masterpiece – shows that Adès can do more interesting things with form (and the fertility of a small motif) than when lifting a footprint from centuries ago. There are moments when his 2018 Concerto acknowledges the very precise rotational form of In Seven Days: the treatment of the motif in the first movement (though effect trumps genuine metamorphosis) and the central Andante’s winding-down in a mirror image of the other score’s winding-up. Otherwise we are in the footsteps of Rachmaninov, from the opening pounce to the moments of repose and loneliness, the virtuosity, the whimsical hand separation, the ‘composed’ rubato, the glitz and glamour, the sure-fire burning-out of the first movement (typical of Adès as well as of the Russian) and the slightly hollow hyperactivity of the last. It’s not hard to hear how the work has already had 50 performances scheduled, as it demands that both soloist and orchestra thrill. Are there too many pastiches – the music about music Adès does so well but with an undeniable touch of gaucheness? Yes, but they never last long and the orchestration is beguiling. So sit back and enjoy the ride, the energy, the density of the conversation and the utter brilliance with which it is realised horizontally down the page. Because anyway it might be Totentanz (2013) that’s the true successor to In Seven Days. This proven masterpiece has inexplicably had to wait until now for the release of its first recording and is another work in which the composer rotates a motif (albeit a narrative one) multiple times and proves the fertility of his mind and architectural prowess in so doing. Gerstein and the Boston Symphony pull the piano concerto off with flair but this performance is a cut above. The score – in which Mark Stone’s death lures Christianne Stotijn’s procession of 16 characters from pope to infant into the grave – has had something of a renaissance in the past few years, Adès conducting those soloists (as here) in performances around the world. But it can hardly have sounded as focused or as forensically brilliant as in Boston, with the same structural nous, sustained tension (tempos and volume are expertly ratcheted) and pronounced undertow. The latter comes surely from Adès’s understanding of his own use of cyclic structures, passacaglia and chord sequencing (a favourite one pops up in ‘Der Tod zum Kardinal’) but also from vivid characterisation and potent orchestral playing; the ferocity at the end of ‘Der Tod zum König’ is overwhelming. Christianne Stotijn dials down the lighting but not the intensity in ‘Der Küster’ and ‘Das Mädchen’, and even Mark Stone’s splendidly Mephistophelean Death offers her a warm hand in ‘Das Kind’, for which Adès invokes the ghost of a strophic song somewhere between Schubert and Mahler in lineage. Plenty of composers have moved on. But for proof that Adès does what he does with mind-boggling brilliance, look no further. Andrew Mellor May 2020 Bach Six French Suites, BWV812-817 Murray Perahia pf DG b 479 6565GH2 (92’ • DDD) Gramophone Award 2017 (Instrumental) Recent research shows that, though divorce rates are falling in the UK, there’s an upward trend among the over-50s. The theory is that now we’re longer lived, we’re less inclined to settle for familiar domesticity when we could be off sailing the seven seas. That might account for Murray Perahia – 70 next April – calling time on Sony Classical after an apparently happy marriage of 43 years. So here he is setting off for pastures new with DG; and, honeymoon period or not, the fit looks good with this, his first recording of Bach’s French Suites, pieces that have been in his concert repertoire for decades. In the booklet interview Perahia reveals that his first encounter with Bach in concert was as a teenager when he heard Pablo Casals conducting the St Matthew Passion at Carnegie Hall. Perahia and Casals, though temperamentally very different, have in common a sense of bringing across Bach the man rather than Bach the god. And that’s particularly pertinent in the French Suites, the most approachable – though no less inspiring or perfectly conceived – of Bach’s keyboard suites. As we expect from Perahia, everything sounds natural and inevitable. Ego doesn’t come into it: rather, he acts as a conduit between composer and audience with a purity that few can emulate (I’m put in mind of Goode, Brendel and the new boy on the block, Levit). Ah yes, ‘intellectual’ pianists, I hear you mutter. But to describe any of these figures as merely ‘intellectual’ would be to miss out the huge humanity of their playing. Take the opening Allemande of the Fourth Suite: in Perahia’s hands it’s a sinuous, conversational affair and the way he colours the lines as Bach reaches into the upper register is done with enormous subtlety. Or sample the Sarabande of the same suite, simultaneously intimate yet with true gravity. He brings out the left hand’s largely stepwise motion to a nicety – sometimes reassuring, sometimes questioning. Perahia is not an artist who takes Bach to extremes: he doesn’t intervene in the way that Maria João Pires or Piotr Anderszewski can do to such mesmerising effect. Take the gigues, for instance. Some take the buoyant Gigue of the Fifth Suite at a more headlong pace, yet Perahia’s feels just so: the rhythms are bright and springy, full of energy without freneticism, and joy is palpable in every note. Or that of the Second Suite, which again sounds completely inevitable, even when he spices it, on its repeats, with dazzlingly daring ornamentation that underlines the inherent dissonances within Bach’s counterpoint. Compared to this, Peter Hill seems a touch staid, Ekaterina Derzhavina somewhat terse, though Pires’s utterly forlorn interpretation is compelling in an entirely different way. 4 GRAMOPHONE 4 GRAMOPHONE gramophone.co.uk
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DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON Perahia’s ornamentation could fill the review on its own, for he’s happy to take risks, yet they never sound like risks, so firmly are they sewn into the musical cloth. Sample what he does with the Fifth Suite’s bustling Bourrée, glistening and playful. Or the Anglaise of Suite No 3, which is more unbuttoned in Perahia’s hands than in Angela Hewitt’s precisely imagined account. Preference will come down to personal taste. With some artists, you have a sense that their personality comes across most strongly in the main structural movements of the French Suites – the opening allemandes, pivotal sarabandes and closing gigues. But one of the delights of this set is what Perahia does with the in-between movements. The Air in the Second Suite, for instance, which succeeds a Sarabande as full of pathos as any reading, twinkles with an easy playfulness; or the Loure of the Fifth, its dotted rhythms rendered with such poetry, Perahia’s ornamentation generous yet never overbearing. Or take the pair of Gavottes from the Fourth Suite, the first purposefully busy, the second a moto perpetuo of sinew and determination, but both having – that word again – a real sense of joy. Perahia’s pacing is unerring throughout, and even if you tend to favour this movement slower, that one faster, the sense of narrative that he brings to these suites as a whole is utterly persuasive. Again, examples are manifold, but to take just one, try the Courante of the Sixth Suite, its streams of semiquavers and interplay between the hands a thing of delight. At the double bar, before the section repeat and before embarking on the second section, we get the slightest of hesitations, Perahia pausing just long enough to let the music breathe. It’s as if we exhale with him. All this would count for little were we not able to hear him in such beautifully immediate sound. So we should also pay tribute to Perahia’s longtime producer Andreas Neubronner, engineer Martin Nagorni and king among piano whisperers, technician Ulrich Gerhartz. I’ve only had this recording for five days but I predict a long and happy future in its company. Harriet Smith November 2016 Selected comparisons: Hewitt (2/96) (HYPE) CDA67121/2 Hill (3/16) (DELP) DCD34166 Derzhavina (3/16) (PROF) PH14043 Bartók String Quartets Emerson Quartet DG F 477 6322 (79’ • DDD) Gramophone Award 1989 (Recording of the Year & Chamber) A new cycle of Bartók quartets has to be pretty special if it is to stand out in such select company as the Takács (Hungaroton), Végh (Astrée) and Alban Berg (EMI/ Warner Classics) quartets. The Emerson Quartet’s is, and it does. Their nearest counterparts are the Alban Berg on EMI, in that both ensembles are powerful and refined, pay close attention to the letter of the score, and excel in virtuoso teamwork. The differences are that the Emerson are better recorded, are accommodated on two CDs (the Berg are on three), do not suffer from embarrassing mis-readings, show more imagination in countless details and, perhaps surprisingly, outshine their rivals on their ‘home territory’, namely the virtuosic ‘middle’quartets. The impression one gains from these recordings (I have not seen the Quartet in the concert hall) is of massive tonal projection and superlative clarity, each textural strand coloured and made audible to a degree possibly unrivalled in the recorded history of these works. DG’s close, brightly-lit, yet never oppressive recording quality must share some of the credit for that, of course. Combine this with controlled vehemence, head-long velocity and razor-sharp unanimity (any fast movement from quartets two to five can serve as illustration) and you have a formidable alliance of virtues. At the other end of the scale, precision of sonority in a movement like the central night music of No 4 is no less remarkable, and attention to details of accent is scrupulous. For example, I wondered whether the first violin had fluffed a couple of ‘snapped’ pizzicatos in the following movement; in fact he differentiates between snaps with and without sforzando. It may nevertheless be felt that this imaginative variety of sound is less conspicuous at low dynamic levels and in passages of more or less romantic expressiveness. Indeed, at the outset of No 1 I suspected this would be as real a deficiency as it is with the Alban Berg – after all this work is supposed to be Bartók’s ‘funeral dirge’ for his romance with Stefi Geyer, not a recreation of its passionate high-points. That suspicion is soon dispelled, however – as soon, in fact, as the viola’s appassionato recitative on the third page. It returns, I have to say, in the outer movements of No 6, where the sense of loss which surely lies behind the music is less fully registered than it might be. Again, others have found more inwardness in the opening of No 3 and more mystery, astonishment even, in the slow movements of No 5. Sul tasto ‘one-hair-of-the-bow’ huskiness may be something the Emerson could afford to deploy a little more daringly. These reservations are not meant to deter anyone from buying a set which deserves to be hugely successful and which would be a worthy award-winner. And I certainly don’t want to imply that the performances are inexpressive; on the contrary, they are compellingly intense and passionate, and by no means indiscriminately so. But it would be a pity if the Emerson were to eclipse the rather different merits of the Végh who may not command such a kaleidoscopic range of colour but who conjour up more interesting shadows and probe into more mysterious, intimate corners (the Takács take a broadly similar approach, without reaching quite the same level of artistry). Presumably DG’s commitment to the Emerson means we will have to wait that much longer for the return of the classic Hungarian Quartet recordings to the catalogue; and the famous earlier mono Végh set on Columbia is no less worthy of reinstatement. But for the moment it is a pleasure to welcome the appearance of what must be one of the most exciting chamber music recordings of recent years. David Fanning December 1988 Beethoven Late Piano Sonatas – No 27 in E minor, Op 90; No 28 in A, Op 101; No 29 In B flat, Op 106, ‘Hammerklavier’; No 30 in E, Op 109; No 31 in A flat, Op 110; No 32 in C minor, Op 111. Maurizio Pollini pf DG b 449 7402 (124’ • DDD) Gramophone Award 1977 (Instrumental) Make no mistake, this is playing of the highest order of mastery. Indeed, I am not sure that Pollini’s account of the Hammerklavier is not the most impressive currently before the public, though the instant such thoughts are penned, the noble performances of Eschenbach (DG) and Arrau (Philips) spring to mind, not to mention Brendel (Philips) and Ashkenazy (Decca). Yet not even beside such giants as these as well as Solomon (HMV), Kempff (DG) and perhaps even Schnabel does Pollini’s achievement pale. Readers who attended Pollini’s recent recitals at the Royal Festival Hall will have gramophone.co.uk GRAMOPHONEGRAMOPHONE 5

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DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON

Perahia’s ornamentation could fill the review on its own, for he’s happy to take risks, yet they never sound like risks, so firmly are they sewn into the musical cloth. Sample what he does with the Fifth Suite’s bustling Bourrée, glistening and playful. Or the Anglaise of Suite No 3, which is more unbuttoned in Perahia’s hands than in Angela Hewitt’s precisely imagined account. Preference will come down to personal taste. With some artists, you have a sense that their personality comes across most strongly in the main structural movements of the French Suites – the opening allemandes, pivotal sarabandes and closing gigues. But one of the delights of this set is what Perahia does with the in-between movements. The Air in the Second Suite, for instance, which succeeds a Sarabande as full of pathos as any reading, twinkles with an easy playfulness; or the Loure of the Fifth, its dotted rhythms rendered with such poetry, Perahia’s ornamentation generous yet never overbearing. Or take the pair of Gavottes from the Fourth Suite, the first purposefully busy, the second a moto perpetuo of sinew and determination, but both having – that word again – a real sense of joy.

Perahia’s pacing is unerring throughout, and even if you tend to favour this movement slower, that one faster, the sense of narrative that he brings to these suites as a whole is utterly persuasive. Again, examples are manifold, but to take just one, try the Courante of the Sixth Suite, its streams of semiquavers and interplay between the hands a thing of delight. At the double bar, before the section repeat and before embarking on the second section, we get the slightest of hesitations, Perahia pausing just long enough to let the music breathe. It’s as if we exhale with him. All this would count for little were we not able to hear him in such beautifully immediate sound. So we should also pay tribute to Perahia’s longtime producer Andreas Neubronner, engineer Martin Nagorni and king among piano whisperers, technician Ulrich Gerhartz.

I’ve only had this recording for five days but I predict a long and happy future in its company. Harriet Smith November 2016 Selected comparisons: Hewitt (2/96) (HYPE) CDA67121/2 Hill (3/16) (DELP) DCD34166 Derzhavina (3/16) (PROF) PH14043

Bartók String Quartets Emerson Quartet DG F 477 6322 (79’ • DDD) Gramophone Award 1989 (Recording of the Year & Chamber)

A new cycle of Bartók quartets has to be pretty special if it is to stand out in such select company as the Takács (Hungaroton), Végh (Astrée) and Alban Berg (EMI/ Warner Classics) quartets. The Emerson Quartet’s is, and it does. Their nearest counterparts are the Alban Berg on EMI, in that both ensembles are powerful and refined, pay close attention to the letter of the score, and excel in virtuoso teamwork. The differences are that the Emerson are better recorded, are accommodated on two CDs (the Berg are on three), do not suffer from embarrassing mis-readings, show more imagination in countless details and, perhaps surprisingly, outshine their rivals on their ‘home territory’, namely the virtuosic ‘middle’quartets.

The impression one gains from these recordings (I have not seen the Quartet in the concert hall) is of massive tonal projection and superlative clarity, each textural strand coloured and made audible to a degree possibly unrivalled in the recorded history of these works. DG’s close, brightly-lit, yet never oppressive recording quality must share some of the credit for that, of course. Combine this with controlled vehemence, head-long velocity and razor-sharp unanimity (any fast movement from quartets two to five can serve as illustration) and you have a formidable alliance of virtues.

At the other end of the scale, precision of sonority in a movement like the central night music of No 4 is no less remarkable, and attention to details of accent is scrupulous. For example, I wondered whether the first violin had fluffed a couple of ‘snapped’ pizzicatos in the following movement; in fact he differentiates between snaps with and without sforzando.

It may nevertheless be felt that this imaginative variety of sound is less conspicuous at low dynamic levels and in passages of more or less romantic expressiveness. Indeed, at the outset of No 1 I suspected this would be as real a deficiency as it is with the Alban Berg – after all this work is supposed to be Bartók’s ‘funeral dirge’ for his romance with Stefi Geyer, not a recreation of its passionate high-points. That suspicion is soon dispelled, however – as soon, in fact, as the viola’s appassionato recitative on the third page. It returns, I have to say, in the outer movements of No 6, where the sense of loss which surely lies behind the music is less fully registered than it might be. Again, others have found more inwardness in the opening of No 3 and more mystery, astonishment even, in the slow movements of No 5. Sul tasto ‘one-hair-of-the-bow’ huskiness may be something the Emerson could afford to deploy a little more daringly.

These reservations are not meant to deter anyone from buying a set which deserves to be hugely successful and which would be a worthy award-winner. And I certainly don’t want to imply that the performances are inexpressive; on the contrary, they are compellingly intense and passionate, and by no means indiscriminately so. But it would be a pity if the Emerson were to eclipse the rather different merits of the Végh who may not command such a kaleidoscopic range of colour but who conjour up more interesting shadows and probe into more mysterious, intimate corners (the Takács take a broadly similar approach, without reaching quite the same level of artistry). Presumably DG’s commitment to the Emerson means we will have to wait that much longer for the return of the classic Hungarian Quartet recordings to the catalogue; and the famous earlier mono Végh set on Columbia is no less worthy of reinstatement. But for the moment it is a pleasure to welcome the appearance of what must be one of the most exciting chamber music recordings of recent years. David Fanning December 1988

Beethoven Late Piano Sonatas – No 27 in E minor, Op 90; No 28 in A, Op 101; No 29 In B flat, Op 106, ‘Hammerklavier’; No 30 in E, Op 109; No 31 in A flat, Op 110; No 32 in C minor, Op 111. Maurizio Pollini pf DG b 449 7402 (124’ • DDD) Gramophone Award 1977 (Instrumental)

Make no mistake, this is playing of the highest order of mastery. Indeed, I am not sure that Pollini’s account of the Hammerklavier is not the most impressive currently before the public, though the instant such thoughts are penned, the noble performances of Eschenbach (DG) and Arrau (Philips) spring to mind, not to mention Brendel (Philips) and Ashkenazy (Decca). Yet not even beside such giants as these as well as Solomon (HMV), Kempff (DG) and perhaps even Schnabel does Pollini’s achievement pale.

Readers who attended Pollini’s recent recitals at the Royal Festival Hall will have gramophone.co.uk

GRAMOPHONEGRAMOPHONE 5

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