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Site review by Polly Nomial December 3, 2006
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Performance: |
I must, sadly, warn listeners to avoid purchasing this disc despite the temptations of the relative rarities of the Concert-Allegro with Introduction Op.134 and the Introduction and Allegro appassionato Op.92 - there is a photo in the booklet of Christian Zacharias conducting in which he looks decidedly uncomfortable and this is reflected in the playing.
In all pieces there are serious flaws to the interpretation but these are probably most clearly identifiable in Op.92; after a well played introduction there is a burst of allegro which could be claimed to be appassionato but the tempo quickly starts to flag rather than relaxing to provide contrast. This is very tired playing and becomes very frustrating to listen to when one knows that there are discs like Perahia's most recent recording under Abbado with the BPO (sadly RBCD only). Perahia's performance manages to remove nearly 2 minutes of playing time (from a piece that lasts about quarter of an hour); Another aspect that renders this disc uncompetitive is the playing and acoustic of the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne; even though the Philharmonie is not without its critics and the Berliners using a far bigger orchestra, there is far more detail coming through under Abbado's baton. Zacharias clearly does not have the measure of this music and surely someone at MDG should have actually listened to this before sanctioning this release.
Op.134 does not fare much better; again the introduction is well played but things do not maintain any sense of forward momentum in the allegro. The concerto, which opens the disc, shows promising signs at first; a nice brisk and light touch with none of the ponderousness or overbearing power that some pianists like Kissin have bought to the work. However, after only 1'30'', Zacharias has already let his guard down and the work almost stutters to a halt. Zacharias is very good in the "accompanying" parts but given his own space abuses the privilege with very mannered playing indeed. Even a masterpiece like this shows signs of strain when stretched to this degree. In common with the other works, the Intermezzo is played in a seemingly tender, simple and unaffected way and emerges as by far the best playing from both orchestra and pianist on the disc. The finale starts reasonably but it does not take long for Zacharias' mannerisms to ruin any enjoyment that might have been possible and the tempo gradually winds down - if the closing pages of this concerto sound laboured (as they do) instead of dancing away with joy, something is seriously wrong. I had been looking forward to this because of the use of a chamber orchestra rather than a full symphony orchestra - I am still waiting for a successful version on SACD.
After all this, the sound quality, I hope is not important to anybody. I don't want to rate it because it will make the summary rating look better than it deserves to be. In any case, it is not that special in either the SACD or DVD-A incarnation.
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Copyright © 2006 John Broggio and SA-CD.net
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Review by andrewb February 9, 2007 (4 of 4 found this review helpful)
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Performance: Sonics (S/MC): / |
After listening to this disc several times in the last couple of months I have to conclude that none of the works on the disc are performed to a sufficiently high standard as to be recommendable.
The performance of each work is a curate's egg, take the opus 134, the Introduction is excellent, light and transparent with momentum flowing gently forwards but then the allegro just seems to stop - as though the players and conductor have lost their way and are not sure how to proceed, confidence just seems to exude away. Solo lines in the concerto and elsewhere are often frail and uncertain in their ending. One has to suspect that this recording was made too early and that everyone concerned needed more preparation to become more at ease with the musics requirements and its interpretation and thus play with confidence.
The major advantage of the disc is in the use of a chamber orchestra, which I believe enhances much of Schumann's music. This performance has considerable transparency in this respect and is most enjoyable for that reason, unfortunately this transparency leaves fewer places for inadequate performance to hide and this is mercilessly shown here.
The performance is not helped by a very poor multi-channel recording, it is much too reverberant and gives a very narrow image between the front speakers. This reverberance annoyingly clouds some of the transparency achieved by using a small orchestra. One can improve matters by substantially reducing the rear channel output but the result is still not good by todays SACD recording standards. In the end I gave up on the multi-channel and just listened in stereo.
The stereo sound is OK but not outstanding.
Hopefully the newly started Opening Doors project from the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and Dausgaard on BIS will give us a better Schumann Piano Concerto with chamber orchestra (at least I am hoping that they are recording this concerto), the first release of symphonies 2 and 4 was a good start, especially the original version of number 4.
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