After
a slightly surprising slurring of
the first two notes, Sargent conducts
the orchestral ritornello of the third
concerto with a forthright energy
similar to that which he had provided
17 years earlier for another recording
by a Leschetizky pupil, Artur Schnabel,
and perhaps achieves here a superior
formal control. But whereas Schnabel,
on entering, takes up the tale, so
to speak, Moiseiwitsch immediately
gives evidence of a contrasting type
of sensibility, drifting into a delicate
Schumannesque or even Chopinesque
reverie. Since both artists stick
to their respective views it follows
that this movement is more a catalogue
of attractive incidents, with some
piano-playing that is very lovely
in itself, than an integrated experience.
Moiseiwitsch’s slant on the music
is perhaps summed up by his choice
of a cadenza by Carl Reinecke, meltingly
un-Beethovenian in its romantic harmonies
from the opening bars and inspiring
the pianist to a flood of warm but
not always accurate pianism. It is
also a more original piece of work
than any of Reinecke’s actual compositions
which have come my way.
If
in the first movement reason seems to be on Sargent’s side,
in the second it is the pianist’s lovely tone and limpid phrasing
which carry the day, against which the conductor’s elegantly
turned accompaniment sounds merely bland. Best is the finale,
where both musicians settle down to enjoy themselves and have
seemingly found a common view.
This
interesting but hardly essential performance did not prepare
me for the splendours of the Moiseiwitsch/Szell “Emperor”. We
should perhaps bear in mind that in 1950 Moiseiwitsch, though
still engaged in a gruelling schedule of public performances,
was 60 years old and his technique seems at times blurred compared
with the 48-year old who plays the “Emperor”. In the first movement
the recipe might seem the same only more so; Szell conducts
with a forthright trenchancy, but also a textual transparency
and a razor-sharp brilliance which it is rare to hear in London-made
recordings of those years and which, as in the best of his later
Cleveland recordings, still finds time for musicality and humanity.
Moiseiwitsch brings his poetic sensibilities to bear on his
first solo, yet somehow the overall line holds here; he does
not storm at the music and there is an almost music-box-like
clarity to certain some of the two-against-three passages where
other pianists go for the broad outlines, but he never loses
his sense of direction.
This
very fine performance achieves a slow movement of translucent
clarity yet also of great warmth and bursts into a buoyant,
joyful, unhurried account of the finale. The 1938 recording
actually seems to do better justice to the pianist’s tone than
that of 1930. Not the most imperious of “Emperors”, in spite
of having one of the most imperious of accompaniments, but one
worth returning to.
Christopher
Howell
see
also Review
by Jonathan Woolf
