Search - Shura Cherkassky :: Piano Recital

WAYWARD GENIUS

DAVID BRYSON | Glossop Derbyshire England | 10/05/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Assuming this disc is what I think it is (I saw only one Cherkassky recital on the admirable Aura label and it may even have disappeared from their latest catalogue since I bought my copy), it's one I recommend warmly to lovers of real individuality in a performing artist. For reference, it consists of a 1963 recital in Lugano at which Cherkassky gave Mendelssohn's Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, Schumann's Sonata in F#, Berg's Sonata, Debussy's Ile Joyeuse, three numbers from Petroushka and Poulenc's Toccata.



I once heard Cherkassky play when I was a boy in Scotland, and I have never forgotten the occasion. He was so small he could hardly reach the pedals, which may partly explain the special clarity of his touch, with the legato coming from the fingers. I also remember outstanding virtuosity and a slightly devil-may-care untidiness now and again. Since then I have only obtained one other record by him. This is of the Schumann and Grieg concertos, a field in which the competition can be called not inconsiderable, and I say without any qualification that his are the best I have ever heard. So I snapped up this record as soon as I saw it to check my recollections, especially to see how Cherkassky might complement the accounts I'm used to of the Schumann Sonata by Pollini, the Berg Sonata by Gould, l'Ile Joyeuse by Gieseking and the Mendelssohn number by Serkin. What I found was roughly what I expected. L'Ile Joyeuse is a bit roughshod and cavalier. Gieseking was the `marker' for Debussy playing when I was young, I doubt if he really stands comparison with the likes of Richter and Michelangeli, but he shows Cherkassky up mercilessly. The Mendelssohn is not a patch on Serkin either, but the matter is not so clear-cut. The Stravinsky and Poulenc are simply tremendous crowd-pleasers, obviously bringing the audience to their feet and incidentally showing that the little maestro could use the pedals to some effect when he needed to. The Berg is fascinating from him, much faster than Gould and with the special cool lucidity of touch that marks Cherkassky out and is so wonderful in his Schumann and Grieg concertos. The liner-note writer has a lot to say about the Schumann sonata, and if you can put up with a good deal of wittering garrulity from him it is actually very interesting. Cherkassky was a pupil of Hoffman no less, and represents a tradition now more or less lost. The opening is quiet, which is not what the score seems to say and not how Pollini plays it, but it does appear that Schumann was after some special effects on the piano of his time and the case is at least arguable that Schumann's dynamic markings need some interpretation on a modern 8-foot grand. In sheer finger-dexterity Cherkassky was probably somewhere near the equal even of Pollini, his reading does not have the patrician quality of Pollini's but it has outstanding panache and gusto, so for me the honours are fairly even. They both pass with flying colours the main test in this piece, which is to keep a sense of coherency in Schumann's quirky mood-changes and episodic structure. The Mendelssohn work dates from shortly before the Midsummer Night's Dream overture, and I'm as certain as I can be that the 15-year-old phenomenon had just been reading the play. I recently heard broadcast a gorgeous performance by Bolet, exquisite but Chopin not Mendelssohn and completely lacking what I think the essential feel of the piece. I own two performances of it by Serkin, one on the disc that accompanies the outstanding biography of him published last year, and the absolute knockout with which he finished off a recital in 1957, also in Lugano and also on the Aura label. Anyone who wants to know what sense of timing and command of rhythm really mean ought to know it. The timing of the last slow notes before the rondo is miraculous, and I don't have superlatives for the rondo itself. In general it is Serkin's overall idea that Cherkassky and others go along with rather than Bolet's. I heard another performance recently from one of the younger players that is much like Cherkassky's and maybe a bit better because he equalled Serkin in the whirling right-hand virtuosity. What he and Cherkassky both do is to let the tension relax, losing the sense of a riot that Serkin achieves. The liner-note writer on Serkin's disc as good as says there are only two performances in the field, Serkin's and Hoffman's which alas I don't know, and I see that there's one by Cziffra as well which I'm more than curious to hear. He's right up to a point in saying that the criterion is, simply and crudely, speed, but there's an extra dimension of subtlety and grip in the handling of the rhythm by Serkin that puts the final seal on his rendition.



There seems to be a feeling that Cherkassky is not, in the last analysis, quite top-drawer, whether because he played schmalz of a type not politically correct these days or because he was not the last word in reliability. I do not share this view. Purely as a virtuoso, he was second to few if any and there is a sublime serious side to him as well. What he is not is any kind of clone or the product of any assembly-line and I for one prize that more than anything else."