Review/Inward Voice/ Beth Levin, piano

My warmest thanks to James Forrest:

SCHUMANN Kreisleriana. ELIASSON Versione. SCHUBERT Piano Sonata No. 19 in

c, D 958 ? Beth Levin (pn) ? ALDILà 005 (73:30)

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Inward Voice

Audio CD

Naxos of America, Inc.

A very special release … one which reached me just too late to make the

editorial cut-off for issue 39:2 (and 2015 Want List inclusion), despite

Aldila’s best efforts. I have had the advantage of living with this disc

for an extra five weeks or so, and the time has been well spent. No

label currently producing CDs puts more thought, care, and effort in the

quality of its products. This disc is no exception, a flawless pressing

of a technically flawless product, including an aesthetically pleasing

booklet with literate, thoughtful notes and comments by artist and

producer about the music, and also—unique among record companies and

producers—generous comments about the artist and a listing of her major

recordings, past, current, and future, even though on other labels.

Admirable! Those who have read interviews with Christoph Schlüren, or

comments by him, will not be surprised by the foregoing. This reviewer

can only say: fortunate the artist recording for Aldila.

Fortunate, too, is the listener who acquires this latest recording by

American pianist Beth Levin, who was invited to Vienna by Schlüren to

record these three works in October 2014. An artist noted for

imagination and freedom of interpretive response, Levin is ideally

suited both to the nearly phantasmagorical world Schumann conjures in

this comparatively infrequently played work, and also to what is, I

think most will agree, the most elusive of Schubert’s three final piano

masterworks. Discerning listeners will also agree that the short but

intense Eliasson piece makes a wholly apposite connecting work between

the two longer compositions.

Kreisleriana is, for me, one of Schumann’s most enigmatic creations. It

may not be quite as knuckle-crunchingly difficult as some of the

composer’s other works, but it demands virtuoso playing and an

interpreter of considerable psychic insight. Moods shift constantly, and

it can be difficult for both performer and listener to make the

necessary adjustments. The piece does not have a large discography of

first-rate performances. The present release decidedly adds to that

list, however.

I came to the piece through a 1942 Berlin performance by Walter

Gieseking. His large number of preserved wartime Schumann performances

are a decidedly mixed lot, and although the sound is listenable, the

performance is a misfire. Tempo and mood changes are clumsy and it just

doesn’t “work.” A 1953 BBC Legends release is said to contain a much

better performance, but in poor sonics. Another noted Schumann

interpreter, Arthur Rubinstein, did not do a great deal better for RCA

back in the day (as Lynn René Bayley notes in Fanfare 29:6). His

recording is not nearly as bad as Bayley suggests, but, neither is it

particularly distinguished. Surprisingly for this artist, his

Kreisleriana turned out rather uneventful and lacking any unique

insights. Bayley and Jerry Dubins were reviewing in that issue one of

the most striking recordings of the work, that by the mercurial

Peruvian-born pianist Luisa Guembes-Buchanan. Bayley described her as

“tearing” into the work, and both critics, and also Huntley Dent (now

that the recording has been remastered and reissued—see 39:2) praise her

unique vision of the piece. In Fanfare 39:1, Dent also praises a new

release featuring the Swiss pianist Jean-Baptiste Müller, whose

interpretation is equally unique: more laid-back, lyrical, and rather

minimizing the contrasts of mood and tempo with which the work is

replete. In Fanfare 38:6 Alan Swanson writes favorably of another artist

who takes a lyrical approach: Dora Deliyska. Coupled with a seemingly

distinguished Chopin Third Sonata, I am particularly eager to hear

Müller, as I am sure it is a stimulating contrast to Guembes-Buchanan.

However, those two recordings would also be a contrast to Beth Levin,

who, in the full maturity of her art, has captured the shifting moods of

this piece as has no other pianist I have heard. She has said she finds

this work more interesting, more imaginative, than some of the

composer’s better-known and more often performed pieces. Levin creates a

sound world within a relatively contained dynamic scale, achieving

contrast more with accent and chordal emphasis than with any extremes of

tempo or volume. After a dozen hearings or more, I am still enthralled.

The different sections of the work are not separately tracked. It is not

possible to cue individually. That does not bother me a bit in this

work, but it might some.

Eliasson’s sound world is, perhaps surprisingly, remarkably harmonious

as it follows Schumann. This seven-minute work seems longer—not because

it “drags” but rather because it so absorbing both tonally and in

emotional and intellectual content that one does not realize how much or

little time has passed. Opening quietly, there is a continual

underpinning of chords from the left hand. The musical argument as at

first developed in the right hand, mostly. Versione is a serious work

and we will need to hear more of Eliasson’s music to place it in

context. At about 4:30, the tonal and harmonic picture opens up, and

dynamics also increase until the very end, where the music dies away.

Although a premiere recording, the work has been performed prior to

Levin’s taking it up, but this intense performance makes me feel as if,

in some sense, I were present at a creation.

There is little time space between the three selections, and (one of my

few minor caveats) I would have liked a bit more. I felt this more

strongly as the disc progressed to the Schubert than I did regarding the

first two selections.

I would not attempt to compare Levin’s unique vision of Schubert to the

plethora of distinguished recordings of a work which most readers here

will know well, and for which most will have a selection of favorites.

For myself, in recent years, I have listened most often to Schiff’s

November 1992 Vienna recording on Decca. More recently, influenced by

cellist James Kreger, I have been listening to Lupu’s Schubert sonata

recordings, of which D 958 (recorded in Hamburg, 1981) is one of the

more successful to my ear. I have Perahia’s 2002 German recording on

Sony, for which I do not particularly care. I also have a live Brendel

performance from some years back, a notable Minnesota performance which

I had the good fortune to attend. In evaluating Levin’s Schubert, which

by now I think I must have heard 12 or 15 times, I also heard Schiff

three times, Lupu twice, and Perahia once. Timings are often

instructive, but to my surprise, despite differences, they do not

greatly influence my reactions in these instances:

Artist: I II III IV Total:

Levin 8:52 12:37 3:10 10:17 34:56

Lupu 8:20 10:00 2:58 9:41 30:59

Perahia 10:46 8:28 3:11 9:08 31:33

Schiff 10:59 7:43 3:20 9:23 31:05

Levin is often deliberate in tempos but is not “slow.” Here, the

gravitas she brings to the second movement fits her overall conception

of the work and (as with all of these artists) they have so mastered

their tempo relationships that nothing in any of these recordings seems

out of line. Except for the final movement, one of those wonderfully

dashing tarantellas of which Schubert was so fond, I find the Perahia

disc a non-starter. He just “walks through” the first three movements to

my ear but, as can be seen, that impression is not tempo-related.

(Should anyone care, I find movements one and four excellent in his

recording of D 959, and admire his D 960 in its entirety. Go figure!) I

will also note that this is one of the few works in which I do not feel

strongly about the handling of repeats. My normal feeling is that if a

composer indicated a repeat, it should be played; but, that does not

always apply.

Schiff is a bit more firm than Levin (or Lupu) in the first movement,

but also a trifle less lyrical. No one I have heard moves me as much as

Levin in the Adagio. That may because she, more than any other, treats

it as a true adagio. Perahia and Schiff are closer to Andante and Lupu

(as I find so often with his playing), does not seem to hold the

movement together as well as he might, beautiful though many details

are. Lupu is splendid in the third movement but the most restrained of

the four in the last. Schiff and Levin, particularly Levin, treat the

last two movements almost as one; she moves seamlessly to the finale. If

I had to choose only one tarantella, it might still be Schiff, but Levin

has some unique phrasing and accents which delight the mind and ear.

As fine as Levin’s execution is, there is another aspect which adds to

the superiority of the new release (just as it contributes so much to

the Schiff CD). I am speaking of choice of instrument and sonics. In

charming notes to the 1992 recording, Schiff expresses his pleasure that

pianists had not as of then begun playing Schubert on the fortepiano, to

any major degree, and is firm in his choice of a B?sendorfer Imperial in

this instance, expressing also his preference for that choice over a

Steinway. Decca’s superb recording (more distant than the microphoning

of Levin by Schüler’s engineers) sounds superb to this day, nearly a

quarter century later. And, clearly, Schiff played a magnificent

instrument. So, too, Levin, who is captured at somewhat closer range in

what seems the ideal acoustic of the Austrian Armed Forces’ Hall of

Honors. She plays a 1984 B?sendorfer Grand Piano and Aldila offers the

finest recorded piano sound I have heard in a long time—world-class

recording to match the world-class playing. (Schiff has since rethought

his position and, along with Argerich and Pires, is turning to the

fortepiano. See Fanfare 39:1 for a discussion by three reviewers of his

latest Schubert CD).

I hope to hear Levin play the fortepiano someday, and perhaps Chopin on

an érard, as well, but for now, will rejoice in the magnificent sound of

her playing as presented here. I am glad this disc missed consideration

for my 2015 Want List, because it will be a definite candidate for 2016.

These are recorded performances which must be heard! -James Forrest