LISZT: Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat Major; Piano Concerto No. 2 in A Major; BARTOK: Piano Concerto No. 2 in G; Piano Concerto No. 3 in E; RACHMANINOV: Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 18 – Edith Farnadi, piano/Orchestre de l’Opera D’Etat de Vienne/Hermann Scherchen
Tahra West 3007-3008, (2 CDs) 68:40; 63:39 [www.tahra.com] ****:
Recordings originally issued on the Westminster label, 1951-1953, these fine collaborations feature the Hungarian virtuoso Edith Farnadi (1921-1973), almost an exact contemporary of Geza Anda, and like him, an eminent pupil of Bela Bartok, Zoltan Kodaly, and Leo Weiner at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest. The Liszt E-flat Concerto bristles with excitement, given the incisiveness and finesse of Farnadi’s attacks, and the muscular, unbuttoned character of Scherchen’s support. The famous triangle-keyboard duo that opens and develops the Allegro marziale animato section tingles with musical excitement, a gruff power rising from the depths of that motif “which none of you understands.” The orchestral tissue quite absorbs the piano response, and the whole evolves into an explosive tone-poem rife with superheated coils. Farnadi herself projects an exuberant, radiant temperament, supple and passionately full-blooded. That last page–whew!
The slinky, serpentine A Major Concerto, ostensibly patterned after the Weber Konzertstueck in F Minor, wends its way through five musical periods of almost oriental languor and sensuous suggestion. It culminates, like the Weber, with an urgent Hungarian march of striking confidence in the manner of Mazeppa. The dialogue between keyboard and tympani need not kowtow to the Richard Strauss Burleske. Farnadi often achieves a restrained or sustained violence, quite as aggressive as she can be feathery, a glistening cat. Her dialogue with the cello could be an arrangement of a liebestraum we don’t know yet but should. The powerful sweep of Farnadi’s style indicates what she could achieve in any of the Liszt Hungarian Rhapsodies. The natural lilt of the last dolce episode with flute and strings has us lulled by the piano’s harp-like character, until the Allego animato quite whisks us vigorously away into a fiery whirlpool.
The richly dense Bartok Concerto No. 2 (1931) casts a perversely attractive aura on our collective ears, its being set in G and C, sometimes simultaneously. The entirely virile collaboration between Farnadi and Scherchen proves a union of kindred, playfully mischievous spirits, rattling our tonal composure. The Vienna State brass have their work cut out for them, and they meet the textural demands head-on. The richness of sonority from keyboard, brass, and wind choirs perpetually freshens our sensibilities, the spirit of improvisation infusing every bar. Mass, density, color, and youthful vim mark this stunning reading. The Adagio proceeds in a haunted C Major, implacable and eerie, likely the source for much of Ligeti. Sarcasms, sometimes by way of Ravel, punctuate both the middle section of the slow movement and the wild finale, which rages, squeals, and exults, all at the same time. Scherchen has the VSOO brass in full tilt, swaggering, while Farnadi rocks the keyboard off its casters. Distinctive Bartok, thoroughly idiomatic, inspired ensemble.
When Bartok died 26 September 1945, he left his Third Concerto unfinished; and Tibor Serly provided the eighteen bars, so the work could premier in Philadelphia with Gyorgy Sandor and Eugene Ormandy. Anchored in the key of E and B, the piece has not the acerbic primtivism of the first two concertos, leaning towards a parlando, singing style well suited to Farnadi’s temperament. Again, Scherchen’s studied but physically aggressive accompaniment misses nary a beat, realizing music that is at once melodic and sonorously potent. Marked Adagio religioso, the second movement conforms to the “night music” we find throughout Bartok’s oeuvre. Farnadi indulges in a rather free meditation on the dreams of Magyar angels, with Scherchen’s occasionally nudging her within the written bar lines. Despite the agonized harmonies that insinuate themselves into the chromatic mix, one feels that the basic form of this movement derives from Ravel. The last movement is all exuberance and titanic, splashy display. Horns and tympani do not simply sound; they bite. Bartok’s use of polyphony has a clear transparency, a happy counterpoint close to whimsical Bach. Farnadi’s keyboard, bright-toned and mellifluous in its own idiom, moves the music forward without affectation, percussively syncopated without having become shrill. A fine achievement on all counts.
While some critics originally paid tepid tribute to the Farnadi collaboration with Scherchen in Rachmaninov’s C Minor Concerto, I find the slightly staid, opening tempo and Farnadi’s ripe chords not so far from my preferred, classic reading with Kapell and Steinberg. Perhaps a tad Germanic on conception, the music proceeds earnestly but lyrically, without maudlin sentimentality. The orchestral tissue enjoys a plastic, articulate presence, so the interplay of Farnadi with tremolando strings and acerbic woodwinds impresses us with its ineluctable climb to the climax of the first movement, quite staggering. The Adagio sostenuto seems to echo Chopin’s second movement from the F Minor Concerto, a lyrical, often diaphanous song interrupted by solemn and disturbed passions. Farnadi brings Lisztian fervor to the last movement, and her pearly play in non-legato is no milquetoast, either. Frankly, her supple facility in the octaves and broken passagework has my wishing she and Scherchen had inscribed Rachmaninov’s D Minor Concerto, too. As it is, can we hope Tahra will issue the two Tchaikovsky concertos these fine artists realized in the same period?
–Gary Lemco
