Cembal d’amour CD 138, 67:38 [Distrib. by Qualiton] ****:
Culled from both Pye recordings (Faure, Ravel) and live concert and radio broadcasts, this fine recital offers the Rumanian virtuoso Mindru Katz (1925-1978) in French repertory, an opportunity to hear his exquisite, colorist sense applied to music that defies the heavy foot. This is not to say Katz indulges in any “smearing” of the musical line to produce vapid, impressionistic fogs and cloud-banks. The Faure Nocturne, for instance, proceeds in huge periods, gradually accruing texture and weight, the individual lines taut and flexible. Attentive to Faure’s idiosyncratic harmony, Katz eases into the modulations with subtle shifts of key pressure and pedal, a sensuous experience, certainly.
Then, we enter the world of Claude Debussy’s Preludes, Book I, taken from a Jerusalem broadcast, 1972. Not over-pedaled in the manner of Gieseking, the Delphic Dancers proceed in stark clarity of tone, the small, left-hand phrases rounded against the liquid parlando of the right hand. Gradations of legato, of recitative, of staccato, of jeu perle, saturate these expressive works, each an etude as well as a tone picture. Debussy’s Sails (Voiles) unfurl in the wind cool and crisp, the drama concentrated among the interstices of harmony, rhythm, and glissandi. When Katz plays eerie, it can be chilling, as in Des pas sur la neige, No. 7, which Katz makes sound like Webern.
The first of the wind pieces, The Wind on the Plain, marvelously contains the dynamic within a restricted range, still projecting fury and willfulness in its few, angry leaps. The Sounds and Perfumes in the Evening Air could be rated “X” for its knowing nods from Baudelaire and chiseled, scented arms. Incense still remains the dangerous gas known to man. The Hills of Anacapri Katz plays as a deft, Iberian scherzo, a music-hall, virtuoso etude from Chabrier akin to Minstrels and the second book’s Pickwick. No. 8, What the West Wind Saw pays homage to Liszt, especially the tigers from the Transcendental Etudes, like Wild Jagd. Nothing “effeminate” here, for those who prefer their Debussy “languid.” The scales themselves are one step away from Moussorgsky’s Baba Yaga. What a contrast, then, to the plainchant of La fille aux cheveux de lin, which Katz plays andantino and with a cross of legato and non-legato phrasing, the rhythm both strict and free. The guitar effects of La serenade interrompue rock against the Spanish night and several importunings from colored stretti, Debussy’s whispering to Ravel. The great tone poem La cathedrale engloutie rises from Wagnerian waves and shimmers in pearl droplets as the bass harmonies mount to a love-scene between Tristan and Isolde of Y’s, a consummation devoutly to be wished. The two dance hall pieces, La danse de Puck and the mock-militant Minstrels, ring with clarion, crackling wit and acerbic accents, fleet, even bold colors that point at what Katz might achieve in Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit.
But now we can legitimately speak of the Katz experience in Ravel, beginning with the study in leggierissimo, the Oriental princess from Mother Goose, a scintillating cascade of flutters and pentatonic intimations. A gorgeous aura of serene sensuality falls upon the scene, with the illusion of three-hand harmony. To make Debussy Classical and Ravel Romantic–that is the Katz alchemy. The Sonatine, on the other hand, enjoys a thoroughly Mozartean approach, crystal clear, articulate, intelligent, rich with inner bells. The cool, icy droplets repress a host of colorful passions into an antique mode, of which the Menuet provides gracious, music-box gallantry. Suave and light, the courtly figures soon evolve into a compressed romance that drips with suggestion. The Anime allows Katz his true forte as an architect in toccata form, the arbiter of demonic restraints and emotional tugs of war. Startling, liquid sound!
I prefer to play the Katz Prelude No. 7 from Book II (rec. Tel Aviv, 1973), Debussy’s ghostly terrace in the moonlight, as a delicious encore to the entire disc, a haunted, provocative specter of Katz himself, the uncanny, digital master consigned to early mortality; for those whom the gods love, they kill. This disc warrants special merit, so kudos to pianist-producer-editor Mordecai Shehori for the perfect homage to his distinguished teacher and musical mentor, Mindru Katz.
–Gary Lemco
