Emil Gilels = BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonata No. 7 in D Major, Op. 10, No. 3; Eroica Variations, Op. 35; SCRIABIN: Etude, Op. 2, No. 1; Etude, Op. 8, No. 2; 5 Preludes, Op. 74; RAVEL: Jeux d’eau; Alborada del gracioso; POULENC: Pastourelle – Emil Gilels, piano
BBC Legends BBCL 4250, 75:30 [Distrib. by Koch] ****:
A polished recital by veteran Russian pianist Emil Gilels (1916-1985) given at Cheltenham Town Hall 20 November 1980 provides several exemplars of his personal style, much of which communicated a Francophile’s taste and refinement. The opening Beethoven group, consisting of the D Major Sonata from Op. 10 and the Eroica Variations, suggests that Gilels could negotiate the percussive, brilliant aspects of Beethoven’s ethos with the occasional concessions to limpid, arioso expression. The D Major proves quite muscular, its broken-style passages of the opening Presto rocketing and sparkling with a sinewy dexterity whose bravura glitters in smooth, articulate filigree. Rather breathless, the musical pulse lays like a series of studies in touch, speed, and riveting textures. The huge Largo e mesto unlooses harmonic ambiguities in which Gilels’ magisterial tone revels, the almost static progressions often anticipating moments in Ravel, as in his Vallee des Cloches. Several of the detached harmonies look ahead to Alban Berg, especially as Gilels does little to sentimentalize his interpretation; but as the music moves to the upper registers, the gloss and serene fullness of the Gilels sound quite enchants us. The roulades more than once look forward to the later Waldstein Sonata.
Seamless legato for the Minuetto, the music tripping and cavorting in delicately shaded, balanced phrases, capped by an incandescent trill. The trio section enjoys a gruff, momentary Haydnesque humor. The same éclat and deft applications of piano and fortissimo mark the Rondo: Allegro, whose piquant stops and starts prove unflagging in their sonic engagement and controlled poise.
Beethoven’s Fifteen Variations and Fugue in E-flat Major, Op. 35 often provided a vehicle for the virile prowess of Claudio Arrau; here, with Gilels, a plastic sincerity permeates this invention of Beethoven, which serves alternately as a contredanse, a balletic impulse for Prometheus, and the grand finale for the Eroica Symphony. The structure often imitates the sonic world of the great chaconnes of Bach and Handel, except for its dazzling, idiosyncratic ariosi and emotionally wrought counterpoints or syncopes. Bold, resonantly assertive strokes alternate with almost Lisztian degrees of dynamic variation and pearly play, until the Fugue gathers the momentum of all that preceded it to exult, with even a touch of Homeric laughter, in its liberated strictures.
The shock of Scriabin’s world suddenly falls upon our senses, the F-sharp Minor Etude, Op. 8, No. 2, seemingly descending from another plane of agogic existence. Then, another of Scriabin’s youthful etudes, the C-sharp Minor, played as a liquid aria for soprano and subdued tenor. Gilels transitions to those last five etudes of Scriabin’s official output, the Op. 74. Even more distilled of traditional tonality, each lasting perhaps ninety seconds, they refine emotion to distinct moments in time, almost like Webern, but infinitely more erotic and dripping with eerie chimes and Baudelaire’s poems.
The chiseled, etched contours in Ravel’s Jeux d’eau and the spectacular Alborada del gracioso belie any “impressionistic” associations in Gilels’ renditions. The water piece shudders and shimmies in brilliant, music-box figurations and various gradations of tonal pressure, easily emulating Gilels’ inscription in the Great Pianists of the 20th Century series for Philips (456 793-2) that also includes his 1961 Alborada from Moscow, 1961. In the midst of the Spanish, cascades that permeate this exotically slow “etude” from Miroirs, one can detect the French reserve in the Russian’s almost equestrian triplets, repeated notes, veiled, Moorish harmonies, and scintillating runs.
The ensuing clamor by the electrified crowd calls for one encore, the breezy Pastourelle of Francis Poulenc, a bit of romance mixed with Harlequin, a bittersweet remembrance on this day from a master pianist fully in command of monumental resources.
–Gary Lemco
