Search - Barbara Nissman :: Beethoven by Nissman, Volume I

New Look for Three Warhorses

Ian Dando | New Zealand | 01/02/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"No, not another Moonlight Sonata, I hear you groan? Then go to track one and hear Nissman wipe off the sludge of past over-romantic and over-pedalled versions and hear this old chestnut of a first movement freshly restored.



Freshness pervades the whole recital. Her Appassionata is a fireball of turbulence, yet always underpinned with clarity of fine detail and a penetrating structural unity in the interpretation.



Her subtle pedalling in the opening of the finale from the Waldstein has the melody like a lovely shapely tree emerging with unhurried charm from a thinly veiled mist.



If you want a lively encore, hear how she has the Rondo a Capriccio (subtitled "Rage over a Lost Penny")furiously chasing its own tail with Beethovenian gruffness.



FIve stars may be a bit mean. Problem is I haven't heard half the forty or so other versions of these popular sonatas to make a reliable comparison. Suffice it to say Nissman's liveliness propels this up somewhere among the best.



Ian Dando

Music Critic, New Zealand Listener"