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Date: | Tue, 21 Sep 1999 19:19:53 +1200 |
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Deryk Barker recommended for Liszt:
>Keyboard: Piano Sonata in B minor. Can anyone recommend a modern versoin?
>All my favourites are pre-1950. Actually Pollini is pretty good.
Arrau (late '60s, early '70s) brings great humanity and understanding to
the work. The 'slow movement' (the sonata is through-composed) gains a
Wagnerian breadth and suggestiveness, reminiscent of the love duet in the
second act of Tristan.
If you don't mind a slightly acidic sound and a very interventionist
interpretation, get Ernst Levy on Marston from the mid '50s. I don't think
you'll ever hear a more dramatic and daemonic reading, and the intellectual
control behind it is rock-solid. Here the slow movement begins with rapt
stillness, but soon builds to a mixture of orgasmic passion and sheer
terror; the scherzo sounds like a sneering caricature of the opening; and
when the D major 'grandioso' theme re-appears in the recapitulation, it is
like a drained and ghostly memory of its former self. The ending has a
black pessimism which dissolves into glacial stillness. The pianism itself
is stupendous - the range of dynamics and colour is huge. For only two
examples: at one climactic point in the recapitulation, you think Levy
can't get any louder, and then suddenly the piano erupts in something close
to a thunderclap. And the final low b is like a ghostly shiver - almost
inaudible. Once you've heard this version you'll never think of the piece
the same way again.
Felix Delbruck
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