(++++) PIANISM OF DISTINCTION

Bartók: Piano Concertos Nos. 1-3. Tzimon Barto, piano; Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin conducted by Christoph Eschenbach. Capriccio. $21.99 (2 CDs).

Idil Biret Solo Edition, Volume 12: Mussorgsky—Pictures at an Exhibition; Glazunov—Piano Sonata No. 2; Balakirev: Islamey. Idil Biret, piano. IBA. $19.99.

Idil Biret Solo Edition, Volume 13: Schubert—Piano Sonata in A, D. 664; Piano Sonata in F minor, D. 625; Impromptu in G-flat, D. 899; Wanderer Fantasy, D. 760. Idil Biret, piano. IBA. $19.99.

     The vast communicative power of the piano gives composers a virtually infinite palette of expressive capabilities, allowing them to produce moods and musical stories of pretty much every type – and it gives performers an uncountable number of ways to, in their turn, interpret what composers were trying to put across to listeners by employing piano writing and techniques of all sorts. Many pianists seem to take complex and difficult music for their instrument as a sort of personal challenge to be surmounted – and when they add understanding of the music to their existing technical skill, the results can be exhilarating. That is the case with Tzimon Barto’s interpretations of the three Bartók piano concertos, as thorny a trio of piano-and-orchestra works as will be found anywhere in the repertoire. The assertiveness and intensity of these concertos, especially the first two, are of such a high degree as to be off-putting to many pianists and many audiences: the music is not easily “listenable” or accessible in a traditional sense. Barto’s vaguely European-sounding name may make it seem as if his ethnic heritage helps him connect with Bartók’s music, but this is scarcely the case: Barto was born in Florida and named Johnny Barto Smith Jr. until a teacher at Juilliard, Adele Marcus, rechristened him. There may, however, be something in Barto’s wide-ranging interests to help explain his affinity for the Bartók concertos: Bartók was a late bloomer musically and as interested in folk music as in anything traditionally classical, while Barto is a multilingual novelist and poet as well as a concert pianist – and was discovered by Christoph Eschenbach (born Christoph Ringmann) in 1988, when Barto was 25 (and had already been learning and making music for 20 years). Whatever the interesting intersections of personal and performing life may be, the fact is that Barto’s handling of the three Bartók piano concertos, with Eschenbach conducting the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, is outstanding throughout. The Stravinskian elements in the first concerto come through as clearly as do the work’s obsessive patterns and the extreme difficulty of the music not only for the soloist but also for the orchestra. At the distance of nearly a century (the concerto dates to 1926), the concerto seems very much to be music of its time, an era that produced musique concrète, Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 2, and much more along similar mechanistic lines. Barto manages to convey the intensity of the music without thundering along to too great an extent, and he and Eschenbach even find some rhythmic melodiousness in the piece here and there. In the second concerto (1930), matters are somewhat  easier for the orchestra if not for the pianist, and the work is structurally interesting – no strings in the first movement, for example. Here too Barto and Eschenbach look for and occasionally find expressiveness, primarily in the second movement but even in the outer ones – although the finale has exclamatory intensity that catches the ear immediately and never lets go. And then, on a separate Capriccio CD – for reasons of timing but seeming as if the separation could be content-related – there is the third concerto (1945), in which non-Romantic but nevertheless lyrical and expressive material comes to the fore, with Barto and Eschenbach skillfully bringing out the music’s frequent feelings of serenity and the ways in which it reflects not Stravinsky but Ravel. There is darkness here, for sure, but it is not insistent darkness, seeming more like the natural progress of day into night than anything imposed through human-made drama or technology. Less virtuosic than the first two concertos, the third is easier on an audience’s ears but no less imbued with Bartók’s rhythmic and harmonic structural concerns. It fits remarkably well with the first two concertos as performed here, even as it stands apart from them. Barto and Eschenbach have thoroughly mastered this music and have produced a recording that repays repeated listening very well indeed.

     The pianism is quite different but equally fine, the music more familiar but equally engaging, in the two latest releases in the long-running Idil Biret Solo Edition series from IBA. This sequence showcases recent performances by the Turkish pianist: Volume 13 dates to 2016, Volume 12 to 2017 except for a 1993 performance of Balakirev’s Islamey. One thing that is clear is that Biret (born 1941) is as exceptional an artist in the 21^st century as she was in the 20^th (the Idil Biret Archive Edition offers earlier performances). Biret has thoroughly mastered works of all sorts and consistently puts her considerable pianistic prowess at the service of thoughtful, carefully considered performances that, more often than not, bring out the emotional kernels as well as the technical intricacies of the music. The 12^th volume of the Idil Biret Solo Edition focuses on music of Russia, for which Biret had a longstanding affinity. The highlight here is the Glazunov sonata (1901), an E minor work that gives Biret a perfect opportunity to place her technique at the service of music of dark complexity and very intense pianistic demands. The passionate lushness of the first movement comes through particularly well here, while the almost impossibly difficult second movement seems not to give Biret any pause at all. The overall effect of the music is one of expressive intensity, its complexity subsumed within its communicative feelings. Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition is somewhat less successful, all in all. Played elegantly and with precision, it periodically lapses into a kind of formulaic presentation that misses some of the work’s underlying emotions: the chicks in their shells are not especially lively, Baba Yaga is by no means scary as she swoops about in her mortar, and the concluding Great Gate at Kiev is statuesque but lacks some of the grandeur it possesses in other performances. The whole performance is a bit downplayed – a reasonable alternative to the over-the-top readings this music sometimes receives, but perhaps a tad too reasonable. As for Islamey, here Biret is in very fine form, delivering the work’s rhythms and colors to good effect throughout and producing a sense of both the exotic and the celebratory.

     Volume 13 of the Idil Biret Solo Edition features music that is very different indeed, and here Biret is fully in an expressive idiom to which she seems to gravitate unerringly. The two Schubert sonatas flow with beauty and endless thematic creativity throughout, with Biret choosing the tempo for every movement and every section of a movement carefully and with an eye (and an ear) for how each part of each sonata fits into the whole. The sonata D. 664 (1819) is sweetly lyrical and upbeat throughout, but the lack of some later sonatas’ profundity is irrelevant in Biret’s performance, where all is sunny and pleasant except when brief periods of poignancy appear and serve mainly to highlight the generally optimistic feelings everywhere else. The sonata D. 625 (1818) was left incomplete (leaving music unfinished was a Schubert habit throughout his life) and contrasts strongly with D. 664. The F minor sonata, as befits its home key, is intense, often turbulent, and varies in pianistic demands between very lean sections and much fuller ones. Biret explores the sonata’s many moods effectively and manages to treat it as a fully thought-through work – except for one unfortunate decision that mars her otherwise fine performance. There is an Adagio in D-flat, D. 505, that is widely accepted as this sonata’s second movement – but Biret does not play it, giving the sonata instead as a three-movement work without a slow movement. That serves the music poorly, and there was plenty of room on this CD to include D. 505 by simply omitting the Impromptu in G-flat, D. 899, which is given here after the two sonatas and is pleasant enough but wholly unnecessary in this context. The good news, though, is that after this short piece, Biret is heard in the Wanderer Fantasy, and her performance is so good that it thoroughly redeems the less-than-thoughtful decision regarding D. 625. The fantasy, D. 760 (1822), is very technically demanding, perhaps more so than any other piano work by Schubert – but as in so many other instances, Biret has no apparent difficulty with its technical complexities, putting them at the service of a very expressive and emotionally convincing interpretation. The work combines elements of sonata and theme-and-variations forms, and it is to Biret’s credit that she explores both of those elements thoroughly while still seeing the piece as a whole, within which the competing structural designs complement each other in the service of high emotive appeal. This performance clearly shows how thoroughly Biret continues to plumb the depths of music she has performed for decades, bringing to the fore her considerable understanding of the composers’ intentions and using her own high level of technique at the service of the music, in the most convincing way possible.