Chopin: Preludes Op 28; Sonata No 2; Polonaise in A flat Op 53. Evgeny Kissin (piano) (RCA)
As Evgeny Kissin gets older, his playing seems to become more youthfully adventurous and exploratory. Here, in typical fashion, it's often startling in sonority and emphasis. And it's currently unique in its sheer pianistic panache - his wind-in-the face velocity and growling thunder are Kissin's alone. There's simply no one else around today for whom the piano is such a toy completely under his control. That control is used to explore extremes, from dribbling between left hand and right (rather than sounding them together) to the introduction of bounce where langour might have been expected. It's all as sensationally adrenaline-rich as a 21st-century fairground ride. But, for me, there's an underlying limitation. These are performances which make one think of Kissin rather than Chopin.
- Michael Dervan
Dvor ak: Othello Overture; New World Symphony. Berlin PO/Claudio Abbado (Deutsche Grammophon)
The enormity of the fuss about Simon Rattle's appointment to the Berlin Philharmonic was such that it might have led people to imagine his predecessor was some sort of has-been. But Claudio Abbado is anything but, and here to prove it is a dramatically full-blooded account of Dvorak's New World Symphony, recorded live in Berlin in 1997. Abbado is a sensitive Dvorakian. He doesn't force the drama on the music, allowing it instead to emerge from and remain in scale with a symphony that's easy to relate to as essentially pastoral in character. In short, there's tenderness and poetry aplenty in this reading, and not only in the celebrated slow movement. The Othello Overture, part of the composer's Nature, Life and Love cycle, is equally finely done.
- Michael Dervan
Vaughan Williams conducts Bach's St Matthew Passion (Pearl, 2 CDs)
There are unlikely to be many recordings in this year of Bach celebrations quite as singular as this. Pearl's new set (GEMS 0079) was recorded under Vaughan Williams at the Leith Hill Musical Festival in 1958, the last performance by the 85-year-old composer, given just five months before his death. To our ears today, it's a reading with the fervency and style of another era. Vaughan Williams loathed the sound of the harpsichord, so piano and electric organ are used as continuo. The chorus is large, the orchestral bass-line bulky, the tempo adjustments blatant. It was a performance attuned in style, pacing, and even length, to its conductor's view of 20th-century taste. All in all, a remarkable document in the history of performing style, as well as of one creative genius's commentary on another.
- Michael Dervan
