A Window In Time

Wednesday, October 27, 1999

RACHMANINOFF PERFORMS HIS SOLO PIANO WORKS: TELARC20 CD-80489

*****

From time to time I will bring you recommendations of some recordings that you really should at least hear if not own. I will attempt to describe what seems important to me about each one of them and why. To begin with there will be a rating system, 5 stars being the highest. It is rare that a critic presumes to acquaint an eager audience with his or her rationale for saying the things that he or she may say. In the often highly charged world of music, which itself is so difficult to bring off successfully, one often must endure some pedantic twaddle about such and so that's supposed to be good when just about everyone knows it isn't. I hope to be a bit more refreshing and perhaps even bracing. My criteria are basically about enjoyment. What possible good can it be if you can't even enjoy it? It isn't supposed to be that kind of medicine is it? Often we are requested to endure something that we do not want to endure for no apparent reason. You will soon find that I brook very little of this and actively encourage others to defy the all too inclusive sentiments of our day and age and stand for nothing that they cannot at least enjoy.

So, we may be trying to scale the walls of Parnassus, at least some of us. Meanwhile we should each be aware that the process is not just fraught with agony but graced with pleasures. In the case of pianism, the listening as well as the playing, some of these pleasures are in fact almost the richest that can be experienced in this brief life of ours. It is hence best to lay down our cudgels and accept with honesty and regard what treasures we may come upon.

Such are these incredible miraculous performances "realized" by Wayne Stahnke. The first thing to note is that the piano used is an immense B?sendorfer grand piano. The sounds of this instrument are so incredibly clear and transparent that sometimes while you are listening you will notice many layers one behind the other as the music plays. The bass section is big and yet perfectly clear. I would like in future to see ALL recordings featuring a piano to state exactly what kind and size it is. This recording certainly gives a credible idea of what this piano sounds like.

I don't know whether Mr. Stahnke was just being modest when he said that "Sergei Rachmaninoff remains unconjured, except in treasured memory." The fact is that Mr. Stahnke has conjured Rachmaninoff about as successfully as is ever likely to be done. The result is quite a revelation. He intends to produce all of Rachmaninoff's extent piano rolls in this way.

Sergei Rachmaninoff began an active career as a pianist in his forties as an émegre to the United States following the Russian revolution. His approach to the piano is quite simply to be its master. I have rarely heard as quick and decisive an attack as this. What I almost see is a pair of large hands that are able to flutter and sting the keys with precision and gravity. The emotional range is quite broad as well. Almost the wisest performances are those where Rachmaninoff is humorous or lightly charming. To be able to do what he is doing with such control and yet present us with such light-heartedness is thrilling. It takes my breath away!

This selection, and there are others which of course I will obtain as I can, begins with the Prelude in C Sharp Minor, perhaps one of Rachmaninoff's most characteristic signature pieces. He was always asked to play it and in fact he hated it. The other one, Prelude in G Minor he likewise sort of licks off. But he really catches some of the internal melodic threads in the second theme, slowing the tempo to do so. The rhythms and tempi are secondary considerations to creating the moments, each one in perfect control. The result is that there is restraint in even the most emotional passages. There is heat without gushing sentimentality. There has probably been more harm done to the cause of romanticism in music and art in general by a disregard for the critical balance between passion and control. Rachmaninoff was creating atmospherics almost as subtle and breathy as the impressionists, often more exotic. But he was never losing his grip, ever.

There are the usual delights; Rachmaninoff's arrangements of Liebesfreud and Liebeslied by Fritz Kreisler, The Flight of the Bumblebee by Rimsky-Korsikov, which he plays as though it were the easiest thing in the world. But there are other incredible treats, his arrangement of a Bizet Minuet and of a Moussorgsky Hopak. His greatness as a pianist lies in the details, the shadows.

When commenting on the incredible impressions this recording was making on me to my friend the symbolist Egyptologist, John Anthony West, he remarked that "while Rachmaninoff may not necessarily be my cup of tea, it is certainly undeniable that he was a great composer." Yes, and truly Sergei Rachmaninoff was probably the greatest pianist of the first half of the 20th Century as well. This recording goes very far in establishing that as fact where before there had only been legend.