Clifford Curzon: The BBC Piano Recitals (1959 & 1968)

Program: SCHUMANN: Kinderszenen, Op. 15; BRAHMS: Capriccio in D Minor, Op. 116, No. 1; SCHUBERT: Moment musical in F Minor, D. 780, No. 3; Impromptu in A-flat Major, D. 899, No. 4; Piano Sonata No. 21 in B-flat Major, D. 960;

Clifford Curzon (1907-1982) was to have performed with the Atlanta Symphony for the 1982-1983 season, but death stole him from us. This versatile, many-splendored artist played Schubert, Brahms, Schumann, Mozart, Dvorak, and Liszt with the best of them. The present DVD gives us two BBC Television concerts taped 2 April 1959 (Schumann, Brahms) and 30 June 1968 (Schubert), the sound superbly managed by Alan Edmonds.  

Curzon plays the Schumann suite-ode to childhood quite directly, without mannerism,
his wrists quite high above the keys. Only the slightest grimace or facial movement conveys his personal response to his own playing, which is, above all else, passionately secure.  We cannot see Curzon’s feet to discern his pedaling, but the various colors and nuances of the suite proceed by careful degrees, the shift of dynamics accomplished with subtle pressure on the keyboard, and hardly a movement of the shoulder when the speed increases, as in Hasche-Mann. The most drawn-out episode, Traumerei, enjoys the same poetry we ascribe to Horowitz. I liked his Fast zu Ernst, which projects a nervous, yearning quality. Der Dichter spricht conveys a worldly wisdom beyond words, a resignation to and a forgiveness of mankind for its sins against the very childhood spirit that prevails in this score. The Brahms Intermezzo lasts just over two minutes, but we can well appreciate its fury in a bottle, the huge stretches in both hands as Curzon staunchly lets loose its dark passions.

The announcer for the Schubert set calls Curzon “the doyen of British pianists,” even as the video gives us images of Schubert and his Schubert-evenings. The little F Minor Moment musical elicits another relatively miniature work, the A-flat Impromptu, all runs and transparent filigree with a lovely cello melody at its core. Curzon plays it as a piece, hardly sectionalized, just one, fluid, vibrant motion. For the repeat of the main melody, he leans back and basks in his own sound, likely a Schnabel legacy.

The recital ends with the B-flat Sonata, both a personal swan-song and an homage to Beethoven. Curzon gives the main theme a long line, interrupted by the disturbed trill that generates our sense of imminent loss. The forward motion becomes almost dizzying, with the repeat of the expository material and the grand counter-statement, Schubert already revealing his penchant for mediant harmonies. Utmost delicacy of tone, restraint in texture, despite the rapid harmonic-rhythm of Curzon’s concept, as unnerving below the surface as it appears naively serene above. An epoch pause prior to the recapitulation, which now spins out with more insistent pathos in response to that dissolution-ridden trill. The first movement ends plastically, resigned to the “fitful fevers” Nature casts in our path, our mortal coil.

The camera zooms in on the actual page of music that opens the haunting Andante sostenuto, already a sweet death-march as Curzon first unfolds it. The music shifts to a more aggressive, sweetly melancholy affect, the love song still plagued with somber ostinati. Calmly lyrical, exquisitely pained, the music proceeds under Curzon to an intimate confrontation with itself, eerily heartbreaking. Musicbox quicksilver begins the Scherzo, Curzon’s negotiating repeated notes, staccati, and syncopations with grim-faced aplomb, his lightning hands crossed in often blurred motion. Absolutely aristocratic playing, even in the manner in which Curzon brings his right hand away and back to the keyboard. The camera once more shows us the score of the sonata, and Curzon launches into the final Allegro – a huge, Apollinian line without sag, without ripples, only the lingering of a thousand regrets. The stormy counter-subject Curzon tears through until it dissipates of its own, elongated breadth. The sheer gradations of diminuendo Curzon can release are worth their own dissertation. The last repetition of the rondo theme sets us up for the aggrieved coda, a brilliant commentary of composer and interpreter, a true merger of kindred spirits.

As the DVD collects all the visual records of Curzon’s art, so too the bonus CD provides us commentary collected 1951-1980, as well as Curzon’s own choices of ideal music to comfort him on a desert island, should he be so marooned. Several noted figures come forth in both contexts, including his teacher Artur Schnabel, his family member Ketelby, Wanda Landowska, Elena Gerhardt, Paderewski, Kirsten Flagstad, and Wilhelm Furtwaengler.  Curzon calls the Andante from Mozart’s C Major Concerto “one of the most perfect works of art” in his experience. As teacher, mentor, and fellow musician, Schnabel shines as a beacon of spiritual purity in Curzon’s recollection: “the man who taught me how to work–and that, after all, is freedom.”

— Gary Lemco