Current Reviews

Reminisces on the passing of a great pianist, by Chang Tou Liang

Sergei Prokofiev
Piano Concerto No. 1-3

Martha Argerich, piano
Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor



Samuel Barber
Orchestral Works and Concertos
Leonard Slatkin, Charles Munch



Rimsky-Korsakov
Evgeny Svetlanov


Beethoven
Symphony No.9
Piano Transcription by Franz Liszt
Konstantin Scherbakov, Piano



Kronos Caravan

Lazar Berman bestrode the stage of Victoria Concert Hall like a Colossus. But in 1999, this giant bear hug of a pianist was huffing and puffing, having overcome the dozen or so steps that led to the stage. With the toughest part of the recital over, he went on to make music in Chopin’s six Polonaises (Op.26 through 53). At 69, he had lost the nimbleness that made him a legend in the works of Franz Liszt. There were moments of hesitation, technical insecurities papered-over by over-pedalling, but the eternal musician within the man was intact – and it shone through. And the sonority he coaxed – and demanded – from the piano was what the audience came for, and they were amply rewarded. With his encores, the brooding Étude in B flat minor (Op.8 No.11) by Scriabin, Beethoven’s Turkish March from The Ruins of Athens and Liszt’s Sursum corda, he set the Hall ablaze with ecstatic applause and a rare standing ovation.

My first exposure to the artistry of Lazar Berman was typically early 1980s Singapore – through bootleg made-in-Indonesia cassette tapes that cost two to five dollars apiece at dubious Orchard Road and Holland Village music outlets. Something must have possessed me to acquire a copy of the Deutsche Grammophon recording that featured Prokofiev’s Eighth Sonata and Rachmaninov’s Six Moments Musicaux. Enraptured by the moto perpetuo that was the former’s finale, my comeuppance arrived when the music suddenly stopped… the tape (which ran for 25 minutes on either side) had run out!

By the way, that recording has yet to be reissued on compact disc by DG. To the powers-that-be at Universal, you know what to do!

I had better luck with the much-lauded Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto with Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic, a reading I still cherish. Then there was a compilation called The Legendary Lazar Berman, which housed several Schubert-Liszt song transcriptions (including the seamless Ave Maria, a speciality of his) and The Carnival at Pest (Hungarian Rhapsody No.9). The latter (another bootleg, of course) was picked up at a shopping centre in Manila, Philippines some years before it (the shopping centre) burnt down. Strange as it may seem, the “Pirates of the South China Sea” had bestowed on me a legacy of pianophilia that persists to this day.

I also bought original recordings, of course. Mezhdunarodnaya Kniga, the mass purveyor of Soviet culture, had a Singapore outlet called the Soviet Gallery (one that switched locations from Shaw Centre, Lucky Plaza to Far East Plaza), which had a respectable collection of Melodiya LPs. Lazar Berman, together with “youngsters” Mikhail Pletnev, Grigori Sokolov, Alexander Slobodyanik (the elder) and venerable oldies Samuel Feinberg and Heinrich Neuhaus, were well represented there. A prime purchase was the double-LP album of Liszt’s 12 Transcendental Etudes on three sides and the Spanish Rhapsody and Hungarian Rhapsody No.11 on the fourth.

For me, this was the revelation that virtuosity was much, much more than nailing multitudes of notes rapidly and accurately. It was making music and sense out of less than totally inspired musical material; revealing a piece of music to be better than it actually is. It was also the art of making the seemingly impossible not only possible, but also seemingly effortless. Horowitz once remarked, “To be more than a virtuoso, one has to be a virtuoso first”. Lazar Berman, the unlikely behemoth with a goatee, was a virtuoso first and last, and with lots more to spare.

One of the few dreams from my teenage years that I still recall was one of a frantic scramble up the grand staircase of Victoria Concert Hall to catch a glimpse of the great Bearman (sic) playing Tchaikovsky’s First with the SSO. That became a reality years later when Berman appeared with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Libor Pesek at the 1994 Singapore Arts Festival. He played the rarely heard original version of Tchaikovsky’s warhorse with the arpeggiated opening chordal sequence and the “wrong note” finale – an unqualified success. Then it was déjà vu for me, a frantic scramble up the rear staircase of VCH to catch my idol as he emerged from the lift. With me were three albums, hopefully to be autographed by the maestro himself.              

Despite the disapproving glares from his concert agent, Berman took his time to scan the LPs and obliged with carefully wielded strokes from the ink marker. When I told him that the Liszt Transcendental Études album was my favourite, he smiled and replied, “It’s my favourite album too.” Berman was known to be very quiet – almost aloof – in his youth (several biographies attest to that), but he seemed very comfortable in the presence of admirers.

Perhaps he had mellowed over the years, years that probably brought a toll on his health. Berman had languished in relative obscurity in the Soviet Union but in the 1970s, he made his first appearance in the United States, bringing his barnstorming brand of pianism to a wider public. The recording contracts – most importantly on Deutsche Grammophon and Columbia Masterworks – also began. His famous recordings of Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto (with the London Symphony and Claudio Abbado), Liszt’s two Piano Concertos (Vienna Symphony and Carlo Maria Giulini), Tchaikovsky’s First and the incomparable set of Liszt’s Années de pèlerinage dated from this period. This window of opportunity soon closed in the early 80s, when he was prevented from leaving the Soviet Union. The reason? He was found by Soviet airport authorities to be carrying the book The Russians by American writer Hedrick Smith.        

The years of wilderness came to an end with the fall of the Soviet Union. Berman and his family (wife Valentina and violinist son Pavel) emigrated to Italy. He taught at Imola and lived in Florence, where he was to spend his last years. Among his students have been piano competition winners, with whom his legacy of virtuosity continues to thrive.

After 1994, Berman made two more appearances in Singapore. The first in 1997, performing in a solo recital the works of Liszt and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, and later in 1999, as a guest of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. I was fortunate to have been able to attend both concerts, which demonstrated that even in physical decline, a keen mind and superior musicianship need not be dulled by the ravages of age. As the Artistic Director of the Singapore International Piano Festival, I had contemplated bringing him back to Singapore for one more time in 2007 as one of the “Further Legends of the Piano”, but alas this was not to be.

Lazar Berman may no longer be with us but his unique pianism and humanity will not be forgotten.

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