Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 1; Piano Sonata No. 3; Rhapsodies, Op. 79; Piano Pieces, Opp. 117-119
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Composer: Johannes BrahmsConductor: Edo de Waart
Orchestra: London Philharmonic Orchestra
Performer: Radu Lupu
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2006-01-10
Music Label: Decca
Soundtracks:
Music CD 1
- I. Allegro Maestoso
- II. Andante Espressivo-Andante Molto
- III. Scherzo: Allegro Energico
- IV. Intermezzo (Ruckblick): Andante Molto
- V. Finale: Allegro Moderato Ma Rubato
- Theme And Variations In D Minor
- I. Agitato In B Minor
- II. Molto Passionato, Ma Non Troppo Allegro In E Flat Major
- I. Andante Moderato In E Flat Major
- II. Andante Non Troppo E Con Molto Espressione In B Flat Minor
- III. Andante Con Moto In C Sharp Minor
- I. Intermezzo: Allegro Non Assai, Ma Molto Appassionato In A Minor
- II. Intermezzo: Andante Teneramente In A Major
- III. Ballade: Allegro Energico In G Minor
- IV. Intermezzo: Allegretto Un Poco Agitato In F Minor
- V. Romanze: Andante In F Major
- Intermezzo: Andante, Largo E Mesto In E Flat Minor
- I. Intermezzo: Adagio In B Minor
- II. Intermezzo: Andantino Un Poco Agitato In E Minor
- III. Intermezzo: Grazioso E Giocoso In C Major
- IV. Rhapsody: Allegro Risoluto In E Flat Major
- I. Maestoso
- II. Adagio
- III. Rondo: Allegro Non Troppo
Music reviews of Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 1; Piano Sonata No. 3; Rhapsodies, Op. 79; Piano Pieces, Opp. 117-119
Music Review: * * 1/2 Plodding
Rating: 2 Stars
I have been fortunate enough to be present twice when Radu Lupu made audiences sit on the edge of their seats and you could hear a pin drop, except none did. The first time, he played the first seven Preludes from Book I by Debussy, and on Des pas sur la neige he suspended time, playing the last phrases so distantly and softly that they seemed to be echoes of another pianist somewhere else. The second time I heard him play Brahms' Op. 118 klavierstucke with such poetry that the fifth movement elicited applause that interrupted the proceedings (seemed to greatly annoy him), and he lingered over the last pedaled notes of the last movement so slowly and regretfully that you felt he really didn't want the piece to end. The penultimate chord hung in the air, and I mean *hung.* You could have gone out for pizza and come back and that chord still would have been there. Yet the music was not distorted. It was magical, and the audience kept calling him back for an encore, which he failed to provide. (I get the impression Mr. Lupu does not perform for audiences, nor care what moves them. He plays for himself, takes one bow, and walks off stage. See ya.)
Unfortunately, none of that time-stopping magic--that feeling I was hearing the ghost of Artur Schnabel only with a more colorful palette--manifests itself in these recordings. The late Brahms piano works, among my favorite oeuvres in classical music, here get rather plodding treatments. The sonics are off--to hear something truer to Lupu's concert sound, listen to his recorded set of Schubert Impromptus, though even that's not quite right. The phrasing is slow and cumbersome. The drama is missing, the music wanders off and sometimes becomes shapeless, or at least misshapen. Op. 118 should start off with a "kick" for example, and some of those beautiful autumnal colors that hint to us what is to come. Instead we have a rather straightforward reading that sounds like an earnest student playing the piece in a master class. The years of accumulated wisdom and sadness do not show here, nor in the following movement that, if played a certain way, can make me cry, dammit. Here I don't feel a thing, and I want to.
Likewise the other movements here don't build as much as they stay static, at one emotional level. I don't get enough of a story. He doesn't make for me, in other words, a coherent picture of each piece from beginning to end. It's more as though he's reading the notes than living the story of the music. Likewise in the Third Sonata, where, like Richter, he plays the right notes but doesn't get a shape out of it all for me. For this I find Anatol Ugorski's recording absolutely revelatory, bursting with color and fire and yet with perfect control. Too bad it's OOP.
For the triple-digit solo piano works, I am amazed to say that one of the best all-around Op. 118s I've ever heard is Stephen Kovacevich. Amazed because Kovacevich so often plays without a lot of color--I find much of his Beethoven cycle rather pedestrian and without imagination. So it's with true surprise that I report his klavierstucke readings contain plenty of emotion that never loses sight of the structures. For much of the other late works, Elisabeth Leonskaja does the job in beautiful sound, but her Op. 118 suffers from distended phrasing that saps much of the tension. Some people think Kempff is great in these works, but I don't hear it. Pogo is fascinating in the ones he's recorded, finding a darker Brahms rather than a wistful one. For a very MOR approach that's still quite good, without might be called any quirks or eccentricities, Julius Katchen is a fine way to go, but they'd really need a little more input from the interpreter before they'd make it to my desert island, with so many other great recordings available.
Dinorah Varsi does the two Rhapsodies, as well as Brahms' Op. 76, proud. Gould is the sound of one hand clapping--all the notes of Brahms with no input I can discern from the performer. Interesting for a clinical look, it's almost like consulting an urtext of a score, but it's not what I'm looking for every day. Glad I own it, though.
Richter disappoints a bit with the sonatas (he seems okay until you've heard Ugorski or Katchen), but his three excepts from Opp. 118 and 119 performed in Leipzig in 1963 have some fascinating, unorthodox and outsized ideas. It's amazing how he can get from thunderous chords to churchly pianissimos without ever appearing to shift gears--why couldn't he do this in the Decca CD of the sonatas? Ernst Levy left us a tantalizing sample in an incomplete set (recorded live, but the recording equipment went awry and some of it was lost), and what we have is a flaccid and technically-challenged reading of Op. 118's first movement (with his titanic Liszt and Beethoven performances he must have had the chops, but was perhaps underrehearsed), a very sentimental second movement, and an underpowered third movement.
The piano concerto here has been bettered, well, all over. Gilels, Kovacevich (again!), Freire, Curzon, Backhaus, and even Ashkenazy all immediately come to mind for incisiveness, raw emotion (remember how revolutionary this work was in its day; I don't get a sense of that here), and spontaneous fire that this performance needs. I can't see any reason for keeping this in my collection, and the short running time makes the third disc skimpy. I know Lupu can do better than most of what's here because I've heard him do it in concert. Maybe he needs the feedback of an audience, even though he seems to ignore us!
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Description of Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 1; Piano Sonata No. 3; Rhapsodies, Op. 79; Piano Pieces, Opp. 117-119
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