This disc is a treasure
trove for several reasons. The first is Vladimir Ashkenazy’s
playing, which is light-years removed from his usually solid,
sometimes poetic but middle-of-the-road approach. The poetic and
bittersweet touches Ashkenazy brings to Rachmaninoff are all
there, but heightened with an immediacy and freshness. Add to
that plenty of steeliness in the fingers with lightning-bolt-like
electricity and quickness coursing through them, and you get the
first disc in a very long time that comes anywhere close to his
first recording of the Chopin etudes.
Then
there is the music. Most of the pieces are transcriptions
Rachmaninoff penned between 1923 and 1941 for his own use at the
keyboard. They are bon-bons for the audience – light, up-beat and
a lot of fun to hear – a side of Rachmaninoff not heard as often
in his own compositions – but not for the faint-of-heart,
pianistically speaking. Rachmaninoff said of them, “I wrote them
easily and happily,” and that joy permeates all but one of these
inventive works.
(right: Vladimir Ashkenazy)
The exception is
Rachmaninoff’s transcription of his mentor Tchaikovsky’s
Lullaby. Put on paper in 1941, shortly after the Germans had
invaded Russia, it was the last music Rachmaninoff wrote, and the
composer’s wistfulness and heartache for his homeland is keenly
felt. (Rachmaninoff recorded the Lullaby in 1942, in what
would prove to be his final recording sessions. Technically, the
recording is fabulous, with a continual singing line and
incredibly wide range of tone color. Interpretively, its
emotional directness makes the performance all the more
wrenching. Altogether, it is perhaps four minutes of the finest
pianism ever recorded, as well as a haunting musical last will and
testament.)
Rachmaninoff was a
masterly transcriber, adept at keeping the basic flavor of the
music while spicing it up with his own harmonic and contrapuntal
touches. The suite he assembled from three movements of the Bach
E-major violin partita sparkles and shines with a baroque flame,
but the chromatic glass through which that flame radiates is
definitely not Bach. Yet nothing really feels out of place;
everything is tastefully done, even as Rachmaninoff’s chromatic
web-spinning grows denser and more intricate.
Ashkenazy’s
strongest competition in playing these works is from the composer
himself, who recorded several of these arrangements for RCA.
While Rachmaninoff’s version of Tchaikovsky’s Lullaby is
perhaps the last word on that piece, Ashkenazy stacks up pretty
well in the other works they both play. Ruth Laredo recorded
these transcriptions for her complete Rachmaninoff set in the
1970s but is no competition here. The only other Rachmaninoff
transcription disc that comes close to this one – and it is no
relation in the works that are played – is Earl Wild’s recording
of his own transcriptions of Rachmaninoff songs (once on Dell’Arte
– could an Ivory reissue be pending?). Wild’s transcriptions are
showier than Rachmaninoff’s but no less faithful to their source,
and one of them, Dreams from the Op 38 set, is as
mesmerizing as Daisies (above) or Lilacs in the
composer’s arrangements.
The
original pieces that complete the disc are rarities that fill a
gap for Rachophiles and are a pleasure to hear in themselves.
Written for the hone and not the concert stage or recital hall,
these four- and six-hand works become an Ashkenazy family affair,
with son Vovka pairing with dad for the Op 11 Morceaux and wife
Dódy joining in for the Waltz and Romance for piano six-hands.
The opening of the Romance will sound extremely familiar, as
Rachmaninoff reused it in the Second Piano Concerto for the
opening of the second movement. The Italian Polka must have been
a great party piece, with a quirky trumpet part weaving like a
vodka-filled guest among the piano parts.
This whole disc is truly a
celebration – Rachmaninoff after he finished a recital program,
when he would finally smile from the piano bench and play to the
galleries. What a joy to be a part of that audience once again,
even if by proxy, with Ashkenazy beaming as he relaxes and plays,
it would seem, just for us.
