GRIEG: Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 16; SCHUBERT: Wanderer Fantasy in C Major, Op. 15 – Oleg Maisenberg, piano/ Adam Fischer cond. SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden and Freiburg – SWR 19140CD (52:29) [Distr. by Naxos] ***
Russian-Austrian pianist Oleg Maisenberg (b. 1945) has enjoyed a long and fruitful career, particularly enriched by his associations in chamber music, among which his collaborations with violinist Gidon Kremer and the late cellist Boris Pergamenschikow extend back to their student days in Russia. SWR revives two sessions from the Maisenberg solo recorded legacy, the Grieg Concerto in A Minor from a studio collaboration of May 8, 2004 in Vienna, and the Schubert “Wanderer” Fantasy in C from a live recording of March 6, 1990.
In the case of the performance of Grieg’s masterful Piano Concerto of 1868, Maisenberg appears more concerned with individual, lyrically coloristic elements than with sustaining the dramatic continuity of the first movement, Allegro molto moderato. Conductor Fischer advances the explosive, rebellious impulses in Grieg, while Maisenberg’s dreamy flourishes pull the momentum back. Maisenberg imposes a salon sensibility on Grieg’s filigree – obvious in its debts to the Schumann Concerto – that soon feels restrictive. Maisenberg does not lack for technical bravura, but his dramatic decisions consistently refuse to break the knot to soar into expressive heights. The cadenza has resonant power but channeled into predictable means of expression. Fischer returns with an air of mystery, expressively tense, but the last volleys of the movement have become formulaic. The amazing Adagio – attaca, modeled, as my mentor Carmine Arena would often quip, on those Japanese prints in which limitless space surrounds the objects depicted within, finds Maisenberg lyrically compelling; but at the attaca, the voluptuous urgency to greet the full statement of the main theme has vanished. The last movement exploits the Norwegian metrics of the halling, a folk dance noted for its vivacity. Maisenberg turns up the digital brilliance of his realization, but the berries would seem to go, first, to the orchestra’s trumpet section and then the flute solo, for emotional volatility. That Maisenberg plays persuasively in the slow middle section proves undeniable, especially the higher registers, though the sense of inner musing may be laid on a bit thick for some tastes. Fischer returns with his active sense of dramatic momentum, only to find that Maisenberg’s reading of marcato proves too literal to meet Fischer’s nervous energies. If I must return to older, “classic” readings of this spectacular piano concerto, the readings by Lipatti, Solomon, and Michelangeli will continue to demand my attention.
Maisenberg has a 1983 performance of Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy that predates this live reading, but I have not heard it. Composed in 1822, the virtuoso piece had Schubert’s exclaiming that “the devil may play it” because he could not. Gary Graffman made a signature performance of the work for CBS (MS 6735) that became his personal benchmark, explosive, risky, and singularly engaging. The four-section work in one movement serves the archetypal structure in Romantic expression, a model for other Schubert works as well as for Liszt and early Schoenberg. The opening, declamatory flurry, Allegro con fuoco, ma non troppo in Maisenberg lacks any kind of fire; as in Grieg, his concerns focus on piano lyricism. The variations on the lied “Der Wanderer” seem perfunctory and the transitions almost careless. True, the restatement in legato of the theme has the arioso flavor of an exalted lyric, but any real tension has dissipated, if ever it existed. Maisenberg plays rallentando to the Presto section fluently, but the punch evades him. The sound, too, at Sparkassensaal Lörrach fails to resonate with any authority. The transition to massive, otherwise mesmerizing, fugue and its rich elaborations comes off as competent, which by now has little power to compel renewed attention. Still, it does garner the audience recognition and polite applause
–Gary Lemco
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