Vista Vera VVCD-00072, 73:11 (Distrib. Albany) ****:
Maria Yudina (1899-1970) only enjoys a limited reputation despite her rather extensive musical range, which embraced the German mainstream as well as Bartok, Medtner, Krenek, Hindemith, Berg, Webern, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and Stravinsky. In an essay written in 1969, Yudina compares Brahms with Botticelli, each resonant with cloud colors and tolerant of the diverse approaches of men to life. These inscriptions on Vista Vera derive from Russian tapes made 1952-1968, and they reveal a fierce, uncompromising spirit seated at a piano totally at her command. The piano sound can be piercing and harsh a la Soviet-era sonics, but the aggressive, searching quality of the performances is not to be denied. The tempos tend to be fast, but what a spectrum of nuances breaks forth!
The Op. 118, No. 4 in F Minor is more than “un poco agitato” in Yudina’s ferocious reading. The detached chords in the middle of Op. 118, No. 6 make the fur fly. Yet what pathos resides in Op. 117, No. 3 in C Sharp Minor, which here sounds like postwar Weill. Yudina’s tendency to sustain dissonances places her among the deconstructionists of Brahms interpretation. The undercurrent of angst and chromatic frenzy is always present, as in the counter-subject of the E Minor, Op. 119, No. 2. The middle section simply breaks your heart. Many of the arpeggiated figures make us want to hear Yudina’s Debussy. The C Major, Op. 119, No. 3 manages a touch of Vienna, but the delicacy does not quite fit; the sudden fury of the repeat is too bitter. The coda is a special magic. I keep wondering: if I played these rich, even fixated, exercises in Brahms by Yudina and claimed they were by Glenn Gould, would they pass?
The Hammerklavier recording (1952) admits the same traits of colossal intellect and technique, a fascination with dynamic contrasts. Freedom of tempo is the rule, an improvisation on the scale of Hercules. Individual, staccato tones are tossed about in a totally pointillist manner. We move directionless through lyrical moments, fugato, any number of affects chasing one another. This isn’t sonata-form; it’s a wild adventure in textures and chromatic leaps. Some of the variation effects raise middle voices over the lead voice in startling combinations; just watch Yudina’s transition back to the recapitulation. Elfin skittishness for the Scherzo, a momentum worthy of the Op. 119 Bagatelles from the same period. Her Adagio sustention is a magnificent prayer, dedicated to the composer Yudina called “the Sun who blinds me. . .and I cannot and dare not play being blind.” Still, I would be loath to call Yudina’s realization of the Adagio a “groping” rendition; searching, certainly, with Yudina’s pushing the syncopations to the limit. As in the later, massive Fugue, there is a compulsion to Yudina’s playing, not arbitrary or merely willful, but a total feeling of inner necessity. This is a keyboard iconoclast par excellence – awesome!
— Gary Lemco
