Composées entre 1879 et 1893, les œuvres pour vioIon et piano de Dvorak réunies ici ne comptent pas parmi les plus jouées de sa musique de chambre. Elles n'ont, il est vrai, ni l'envergure, ni l'ambition de ses quatuors, trios, quintettes et autres œuvres symphoniques. Ce sont des miniatures charmantes, destinées à des musiciens amateurs, comme les Quatre Pièces romantiques op. 75, techniquement et musicalement simples, ou des œuvres plus ambitieuses, comme la Sonate en fa majeur op. 57, dont les prétentions brahmsiennes... ne sont que des prétentions.

On peut donc reprocher au violoniste Ivan Zenaty la platitude de son ton de même que la monotonie de son timbre. Le pianiste Igor Ardasev, en revanche, tire avec une finesse remarquable son épingle du jeu. Trouvant son équilibre entre souplesse et simplicité, il nous offre un piano délicat et perlé, aux aigus cristallins et aux phrasés sensibles.

Une série d'opus où la mélodie est reine, et donnerait bien envie d'y brocher...

Achevée en 1802, la Deuxième Symphonie est l'œuvre d'un maître qui règle ses comptes – ou prend congé – avec la tradition symphonique classique. La Troisième Symphonie «Héroïque» (1802-1804) marque un formidable tournant. Beethoven se révèle plus que jamais dominateur dans la Septième Symphonie (1811-1812): la violence est de nouveau là, jouxtant l'indicible mélancolie du second mouvement.

Comme dans ses enregistrements «officiels» avec Vienne (intégrale) ou Berlin (Eroica, 1961), Karl Böhm (1894-1981) débarrasse ces partitions des scories que des décennies de médiocres interprétations leur avaient fait supporter. Goût, réserve, finesse et une certaine austérité font des présentes interprétations enregistrées en «live» avec l'Orchestre da la Radio bavaroise des témoignages hautement appréciables. Prêtant autant d'attention au détail qu'à la ligne, Böhm demeure, certes, éloigné de visions plus subjectives (Furtwangler, Toscanini, Erich Kleiber, Walter, Fricsay, Karajan), mais laisse dans la Septième Symphonie parler le texte et la splendeur rythmique de l'orchestre. Sa mise en valeur de l'architecture d'ensemble et sa justesse stylistique sont remarquables.

Contemporain exact de Bach, Johann Valentin Rathgeber naquit en Franconie, dans le sud de l'Allemagne. Après des études avec son père organiste, il se consacra à la théologie et entra en 1707 comme musicien et prédicateur au monastère bénédictin de Banz, près de Cobourg. De 1729 à 1738, il voyagea sans autorisation de ses supérieurs en Suisse, en Autriche et en Hongrie puis revint à Banz, où il fut mal accueilli en raison de son escapade.

En Suisse, il séjourna notamment à l'abbaye bénédictine de Muri, dans le canton d'Argovie (Aargau), et y composa une Messe en ré majeur publiée à Augsbourg comme Opus XII en 1733. Longtemps considérée comme perdue, celle-ci fut redécouverte en 2002 sous forme de manuscrit par Thilo Hirsch. Une autre copie puis un exemplaire de l'édition ont surgi un peu plus tard.

Le présent enregistrement, de très haute qualité et aux sonorités transparentes, a été réalisé à Muri. D'une durée d'un peu plus d'une demi-heure, interprétée par un orchestre d'instruments anciens avec trompette marine (grand instrument à une seule corde tout en hauteur, décrit par un document d'époque comme sonnant «à la manière d'une trompette mais de façon plus douce et plus agréable») et partie de timbales reconstituée, cette messe oppose au chœur quatre solistes vocaux. Elle est typique du baroque tardif, à la fois polyphonique et brillante, et mérite d'être écoutée.

Les six concertos de Rathgeber, courts (cinq minutes chacun environ) bien qu'en trois mouvements, proviennent de son Opus 6 intitulé Chelys Sonora et paru à Augsbourg en 1728. Aux cordes avec basse continue s'ajoutent selon les cas une clarinette, un violon, une trompette ou une trompette marine. Le texte de présentation donne sur ces instruments et les raisons de leur utilisation tous les renseignements nécessaires, et dit le peu qu on sait de Christian Gottfried Telonius (ou Teloni), dont un concerto pour trompette marine avec timbales est offert en complement de programme.

Karl Bohm realise avec la Troisieme symphonie dite «Heroique» un modele d...

Romanian Sergiu Celibidache (1912-96), famous for his slow speeds and high...

The Two Romanian Dances is major Bartók: an Allegro Vivace lasting a full five minutes, and a Poco Allegro of four. In dazzling performances, Nicolas Bringuier, born in Nice and not yet 30, makes the sparks fly—without ever seeming to rush. His instrument, a Shigeru Kawai (previously unknown to me), has a dryer, tighter tone than most grand pianos, which suits this music well, pointing up the asperity that Bartók carried over from his folk sources. Performances by Loránt Szűcs in Hungaroton’s Bartók Complete Edition have more local color but nevertheless pale by comparison. Bringuier and his instrument serve the Dirges equally well, allowing generous use of the sustaining pedal without spreading or romanticizing the music. This time Szűcs is bland, characterless.

In Out of Doors, it is Bringuier who suffers by comparison, lacking both the imagination and potency of Murray Perahia on a Sony disc as well as the subtle touch of Erzsébet Tusa for Hungaroton. Reverberant recorded sound (from Jesus-Christus-Kirche, Berlin) doesn’t help Bringuier, blurring some of the most rapid passages. One of the composer’s most distinctive piano works comes across as rather ordinary. The magic is back in the eight Improvisations (by the composer, not the pianist), subtle pieces that require careful attention to mood and much rubato. Perhaps Bringuier is best suited to music that does not rely on great virtuosity; the recorded sound certainly serves better at less than presto.

Bringuier’s Sonata is on a par with Perahia’s, but both are blown away by a stunning 1980 live performance by Youri Egorov in the Concertgebouw (Canal Grande CG 9214). His allegro movements have unmatched excitement, and his daringly slow tempo in the Sostenuto e peasante is mesmerizing. That performance is one of many that made the short-lived Egorov my favorite pianist.

The SACD layer produces smoother, rounder piano tone, but doesn’t help the reverberation—nor does surround sound. I prefer the edgier CD, on which the piano is better able to cut through the reverb. There is some fine playing here, keenly attuned to Bartók’s idiom, but some of the performances are not up to the best available.

These are first CD issues of radio recordings from WDR Cologne. Most of these performers are Hungarian musicians who had studied in Budapest in the 1930s and had known the composer/pianist or heard him play. Solti (and Fritz Reiner) studied piano with the composer; Anda did not, but he attended many of Bartók’s performances. Fricsay recorded the Concerto for Orchestra for Deutsche Grammophon in 1957; Varga joined him for the Violin Concerto No. 2 in 1951, and Anda for the three piano concertos and the Rhapsody in 1959 and 1960. All have seldom been equaled.

The First Piano Concerto, led by Gielen, does not come off as well in this live performance as in the studio recording. Tempos are similar—the Andante a bit slower here—but the Cologne orchestra lacks the polish of Fricsay’s Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, which he had honed into a superb ensemble rivaling that city’s Philharmonic. The Cologne brass have some awkward moments. This monaural radio recording is nowhere near as clear as DG’s stereo one, and many orchestral details fail to surface.

The Second Concerto, led by Fricsay, is better on all counts. The notes say that Anda performed this work more than 300 times, and this live performance at Salzburg was one of his first. His playing has moments of extra frisson, and the accompaniment is fine, although there are a few woodwind shrieks and brass blasts—this was difficult music for orchestras as well as pianists in the 1950s. Things get a tad messy at one moment in the Presto section of the slow movement. Anda may not have had the chops of Pollini or Richter, but his Bartók was more colorful than that of either. This 1952 live recording is much cleaner than the 1957 radio one of the First Concerto. Balances are quite different than in the 1959 stereo; here the piano is in front of the orchestra, there it is more integrated into it. Although DG’s early stereo recording remains preferable, it does suffer from poorly judged post-production: when the focus shifts to one side of the orchestra to hone in on some detail, the piano slides across the soundstage.

This recording of Contrasts is wonderful. Varga, Blöcher, and Anda set a daring tempo for the Verbunkos—more than 10 percent slower than Szigeti, Goodman, and Bartók—and they are not afraid to screech and scratch. The result has a dusky folk flavor beyond any performance I have heard. Varga is mesmerizing, his almost demonic pizzicatos and double stops keeping the intensity level at a peak. Blöcher—WDR Cologne first clarinet—also seems to the manner born, playing as if he were at a village fair rather than in a big-city studio. They turn Contrasts into a masterpiece.

That Anda was a major force in the interpretation of Contrasts is reinforced by his performance of the op. 14 Piano Suite. Again tempos are relaxed, the virtuosic side of the writing played down (but never short-changed), with no loss of intensity. In two other performances at hand, Murray Perahia plays with crystal-clear precision, with every note sounding, but—heard next to Anda—the result is clinical; Dezső Rankí, too, produces little atmosphere, making the Suite seem mere digital exercises. Anda makes these four movements sound like Bartók.

The Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion is often played as a pure virtuoso showpiece, fast and furious and damn the subtleties. This is a thoroughly musical performance, and a most rewarding one. That the pianists are not always together doesn’t matter one whit; it suggests an improvisatory performance relying on the inspiration of the moment. Again, color and atmosphere are brought to the fore, as opposed to sheer technique. I don’t mean to defend a sloppy performance—which this is not—but rather to revel in the spirit and freedom found here.

The recorded sound throughout the second disc is excellent, its monaural character no limitation in any way. Whereas early performances of Schoenberg were universally dreadful, and those of Stravinsky inconsistent at best, the 1950s witnessed the peaks of Bartók performances, many of them by these musicians. This issue is to be treasured, in particular for the stunning Contrasts, which makes it Want List material.

The only item in this collection designated as “live” is the Beethoven piano concerto; it also bears the latest recording date. The rest of the assembly is taken from WDR Cologne Studio recordings made between 1955 and 1960. It is not stated which are in mono and which, if any, are in stereo.

Born in Budapest, Géza Anda (1921–1976) was a pianist I always tended to associate with Bartók, probably because of the Hungarian connection, though his repertoire encompassed a fairly wide range of composers. His highly respected cycle of the complete Mozart concertos with the Salzburg Mozarteum is still available in an eight-disc boxed Deutsche Grammophon set at an incredible bargain price.

For listeners unfamiliar with Anda’s playing and/or those who are newcomers to classical music, the pianist might not be a first choice. His tone, at least on the recordings he made during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, can come across as sounding a bit brittle and steely. Assiduous in matters of technical precision, his playing can also at times seem to be disengaged and lacking in expression. Yet it was precisely Anda’s steeliness of touch and precision of execution that I found so compelling in his Bartók; and his refusal to bedeck Mozart in floral wreaths was refreshing.

Yet virtue in one composer is not necessarily so in another. Anda’s rendition of Beethoven’s C-Major Piano Concerto in this collection sounds literal and aloof. Moreover, what was at the time the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra—today the much-improved WDR Symphony Orchestra of Cologne—was no Berlin Philharmonic. The playing is plagued throughout by poor intonation, mainly, and unexpectedly, in the strings rather than in the winds.

Anda’s performance of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 7 in D is mechanically exact, but essentially dry and humorless. By the time he gets to the late A-Major Sonata No. 28, Anda intuits that he is in a different musical universe, but it is one that makes expressive demands on him he can’t quite seem to relate to. The result is a very strange interpretation characterized by halting phrasing and ritards and diminuendos that seem to run off the shoulder of the road and into a ditch. Also, uncharacteristically for Anda, there is a very noticeable flub at 3: 18 in the second movement.

The Brahms sonata that begins disc 2 marks an improvement in Anda’s playing, though not, unfortunately, in the recorded sound. The sheer bigness of the work—its dynamic and tonal range—swamps the acoustic setting and stresses the recording technology. The highest notes are flattened out and glassy sounding, while the loudest passages must have needed to be compressed in order to avoid breakup. It’s too bad, because it’s in the Brahms Third Sonata that Anda really shines in a reading that reminds me of Richter’s way with the composer, though Richter, for some reason it appears, never recorded the Third Sonata, only the First and Second.

As in the late Beethoven Sonata, Anda is once again a bit adrift in Brahms’s late op. 117 reflective musings. Like someone who senses there is something just beyond his grasp that he desperately wishes to penetrate but can’t, Anda projects onto these pieces a mode of expression that is not natural to them. The result sounds awkward and arch.

As with the Brahms Sonata, Anda is back in his element with Liszt. This is a B-Minor Sonata that goes head to head with some of the best—Richter, Horowitz, and Cziffra, to name just three electrifying versions. One must wait until the end of this two-disc set to get to the red meat of this collection, but the wait is worth it; or, you can just go directly to track 9 on disc 2, and be flabbergasted. For the Liszt alone—and secondarily for the Brahms Sonata, though the sound is poor—I would recommend this set. But if those two works are not of particular interest to you, I’d reserve recommendation mainly for Anda devotees.

Passagework is a little smudged here and there, and sometimes, Backhaus bangs or rushes slightly, but considering that this recording of one of his last concerts was made when he was 85, these small imperfections are easily forgiven. Backhaus specialized in Beethoven’s sonatas—he first performed the complete cycle in 1928—and he goes for the larger structural picture, not all the precise details. His sound is big and generous and his ability to convey the span of long melodic lines is the most impressive aspect of these performances. From early in his career, Backhaus was considered to be a “classicist” whose playing emphasized textual fidelity and served as a corrective to self-indulgent performances of the time, but these things are relative, and by current standards, these performances are refreshingly impulsive and freely paced. Backhaus isn’t afraid to linger or to push forward more than most contemporary pianists, and the music benefits.

Considerable rubato heightens the tender character of op. 31/3’s minuet and the playful one in op. 28. Backhaus plays these two warm-hearted sonatas with real affection and no lack of speed in the fast movements. Op. 31/3’s Presto finale never lets up and is a technically impressive performance by any standard.

Technical limitations hinder Backhaus the most in the first movement of the “Waldstein” and in the finale’s motoric episodes, but he plays the work’s central Adagio sostenuto with convincing rhythmic freedom, and the third movement’s opening theme sings beautifully. He slows way down for the octave glissando passage and plays each octave with an individual stroke.

If the “Waldstein” is, overall, a performance to avoid, op. 109 is a pleasant surprise, a performance that improves as it goes on. Backhaus’s control falters at times in the opening movement with too many arpeggiated chords and some shaky timing, but the prestissimo second movement is solidly played and he rises to the occasion of the third movement’s variations—there is no more beautiful movement in any Beethoven sonata—with an eloquent, unfussy performance that is both technically impressive and emotionally soaring.

Listeners seeking refinement of touch should look elsewhere—almost any pianist I can think of would strive for more subtle balances between melody and accompaniment, more clearly delineated degrees of non-legato or staccato, and more sparing pedal—but I recommend this recording for its documentaton of an important Beethoven specialist playing extraordinarily well, considering his age, in three of the four sonatas. The music-making is very much alive. The miking sounds close, the recording is in stereo, and Backhaus’s Bechstein is a bright, clear sounding instrument.