Fuzjko = BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonata No. 17 in D Minor, Op. 31, No. 2: Allegro; CHOPIN: Nocturne No. 1 in B-flat Minor, Op. 9, No. 1; Nocturne No. 2 in E-flat Major, Op. 9, No. 2; Etude in A-flat Major, Op. 25, No. 1; Waltz in E-flat Major, Op. 18; Nouveau Etude in F Minor; LISZT: La Campanella; Fruhlingsnacht (Schumann); Paganini Etude No. 6; Liebestraum No. 3 in A-flat Major; SCARLATTI: Sonata in E Major, K. 380; DEBUSSY: Clair de Lune – Fuzjko Hemming, piano – Domo Records/Fontana ***:
The offspring of a Japanese pianist mother and a Swedish father, Fuzjko Hemming is being touted as a keyboard star re-born since her “arrival” in 1999 as the subject of an NHK documentary. Sponsored by the likes of Samson Francois, Herbert von Karajan, and Leonard Bernstein, Hemming has gained a reputation for her performances of Chopin and Liszt, who figure prominently on this, her latest disc for Los Angeles-based Domo. Whether Hemming–who will tour the US beginning in July–will fulfill her publicity or merely devolve into what David Helfgott became, a musical eccentric and passing curiosity, remains to be seen. From this disc I discern Fuzjko to be a more natural Liszt acolyte than a Chopin interpreter, since the rhythmic freedom in Liszt seems more suited to her idiosyncrasies.
Hemming touts a Romantic’s sensibility; but aside from a pearly, even over-ripe sonority, her playing tends to exaggerate the line, rife with over-pedaling. Hemming’s tempos remain consistently slow and lingering. The Liszt Liebestraum, aside from the wayward rubato, comes dangerously close to an Eddie Duchin treatment of a romantic classic–to wit, the Chopin E-flat Nocturne. Too much “milking” of the arioso line turns it into molasses; but we have previously had Pogorelich and Afanassiev distort the music they play in the service of “personality,” a tradition traceable to De Pachmann, Paderewski, and Anton Rubinstein, among others. A crystalline clarity does absolve many digital sins, and Hemming’s Scarlatti is nothing if not the soul of glittering articulation. She does bestow on La Campanella a luster we have not heard since Nojima made his inscription for Reference Recordings some twenty years ago. Hemming turns the otherwise quicksilver, sly Etude in F Minor from Chopin’s set of Trois Nouvelles Etudes into a huge canvas, a nocturne neurotic as it passionate. Her Clair de Lune approximates a Stokowski orchestral transcription; but this is only a left-hand compliment to Hemming’s broad sonority, a capability to make Debussy “sound,” a trait we admired when George Copeland performed this music thirty years ago for MGM.
My impression of Hemming’s first entry, the Allegretto last movement from Beethoven’s “Tempest” Sonata, remains the most resonant: plastic; good, “perpetual” motion without sag; an active, tangible, bass line that does not intrude but emphasizes Beethoven’s “vertical” evolution. Gyorgy Sandor once exclaimed, “On matters of taste there can be no argument.” Auditors may find Hemming’s Chopin more idiomatic than I do: for me, she communicates reverence and digital command, but her internal clock can be irregular, sometimes metronomic, else wayward. But even that aforementioned affection for Chopin seems to me prosaic, no mystery on a par with Rubinstein and Moravec; and this, despite superlative piano-sound engineering, on a par with what I know of Pro Piano label productions.
— Gary Lemco
