BRAHMS: Piano Sonata No. 2 in F-sharp Minor, Op. 2; Piano Sonata No. 3 in F Minor, Op. 5; 4 Intermezzi from Six Klavierstuecke, Op. 118 – Helene Grimaud
Regis RRC 1327, 78:55 [Distr. by Qualiton] ****:
Helene Grimaud (b. 1969) has long revealed a penchant for the Romantics away from her native France, and this Brahms collection (1992) attests to an emotional ardor quite in keeping with the two sides of the composer these pieces embody. The Brahms F-sharp Minor Sonata, Op. 2 by the nineteen-year-old Brahms finds Robert Schumann in virtually every bar, a sense of percussively demonic or dreamy fantasy. The B Minor Andante con espessione takes its cue from an old German lied, upon which Brahms builds three variants. By degrees, some strained and convulsive, the music progresses to the relative major mode in D. A hunt motif characterizes the aggressive B Minor Scherzo, whose 6/8 tune becomes a variation of itself for the second part, no less derived from the Andante. Such through-composition marks much of Schumann, and this sonata Brahms dedicated to Clara Schumann. Grimaud imposes a clarion sonority on the trio section, then a series of weird broken chords returns us to the now inflamed statement of the scherzo in new material. The spirit of Beethoven enters the Sostenuto opening of the Finale, Brahms exploring the rigors of sonata-form with some plastic invention, much of which hearkens in spirit–not form–to a Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody which Grimaud delivers with singular authority.
Brahms was barely twenty when he composed the big F Minor Sonata in 1853, with its obvious debts to Beethoven. Grimaud performs the epic work youthfully, and so we must wait for further developments to rate her work with the classic renditions by Kempff, Rubinstein, Katchen, and Curzon. But her ardor reveals a keen sense of dramatic progression, the underlying rhythmic motto of the first movement clear and developmentally volatile. The A-flat Major Andante already invokes melodic fragments and sequences that adumbrate his later “bachelor music,” while paying homage to Schumann. Grimaud performs with alternately tender and passionate affection, though none whom I have heard has approached the elegant mystery Jorge Bolet achieved in recital in Atlanta. The F Minor Scherzo–played with minimal pedal–casts a savage shadow on the music, especially after the F-A-E (free but lonely) motto the composer inscribed into the Andante. The Beethoven Fifth infiltrates the Intermezzo movement, growling, threatening, and then passing like a summer storm. Grimaud invests the Finale’s main theme with lyric sentiment, contrasted by the martial riffs and brilliant runs that move to a thrilling peroration at the last pages.
Grimaud possesses a natural ease and poise for the late Brahms Intermezzi of 1893, which she renders in an overtly romantic style. The fire of the opening A Minor and the nostalgic melancholy of the A Major offset one another in poetic contrast. The latter’s contrapuntal trio section plays as dreamy rainy-day music, perhaps never so epitomized as in Op. 117, No. 2. The nervous quirky energy of the F Minor Grimaud captures feverishly, its kaleidoscopic falling figures pointing to smeared harmonies in Debussy. Last, the relatively massive E-flat Minor Intermezzo, Op. 118, No. 6, whose protean emotions range from introspective to hurled thunderbolts. Grimaud’s touch alternates from brittle and detached to aggressively percussive, the passions threatening revolt until the composer’s natural reticence reins all wild impulses into the abbreviated sonata-form.
–Gary Lemco