Mordecai Shehori: The Celebrated New York Concerts, Vol. 2 = BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonata No. 32 in C Minor; RACHMANINOV: Six Moment Musicaux; KABALEVSKY: Sonata No. 3 in F Major; LISZT: “Dante” Sonata – Mordecai Shehori, piano – Cembal d’amour

by | Jul 31, 2008 | Classical Reissue Reviews | 0 comments

Mordecai Shehori: The Celebrated New York Concerts, Vol. 2 = BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonata No. 32 in C Minor, Op. 111; RACHMANINOV: Six Moment Musicaux, Op. 16; KABALEVSKY: Sonata No. 3 in F Major, Op. 46; LISZT: “Dante” Sonata – Mordecai Shehori, piano

Cembal d’amour CD 128, 78:55  [Distr. by Qualiton] ****:


A pupil of Mindru Katz, Claude Frank, and Beveridge Webster, Israeli-born virtuoso Mordecai Shehori (b. 1946) has gleaned a considerable repute as a romantic exponent of his chosen repertory, which extends from the pre-Classical through the “neo” schools of Romanticism and the Soviet Russian idiom. Culling materials from three Merkin Concert Hall appearances, 1984-1987, Shehori has organized–via his own Cembal d’amour 
label–a noteworthy recital of consistent, colorful power. Certainly, Shehori has his own ideas about the music he performs, and even those who may disagree about stylistic or dynamic matters will grant him the forceful pertinence and authority of his decisions.

Shehori takes a forceful look at Beethoven’s final sonata, the gripping Op. 111 (15 May 1984).  The opening Maestoso section, with its febrile annunciations and ringing trills, seems tailor-made for Shehori’s attacks, his keen attention to the harmonic motion of the piece, which often shatters the motifs even as they accumulate, setting the basis for much of what Webern would attempt later in music. While not fussy to conceal his definite percussive power, Shehori often achieves in the elaborate variants that make up the second-movement Arietta a music-box sonority of exquisite loveliness, akin to Beethoven’s desire for both simplicity and songfulness. The clarity of articulation belies the massive Gordon Knot Shehori has to unravel in the maze of affects Beethoven weaves, often juxtaposing huge block chords against diaphanous or wind-swept energies.

It is always a pleasure to hear Rachmaninov’s Op. 16 homage to Schubert, his own Moments musicaux, taken (15 May 1984) as a whole. The E Minor, for instance, was often a Moiseiwtisch staple as an encore or plastic etude in the midst of larger fare. A huge palette emerges in the course of the six pieces, many of which evoke Russian bells and passing, liturgical allusions. The element of nostalgia infiltrates each bar, but so does a grandiose, temperamental audacity of spirit. The constant use of running bass figures over which a light, haunted melody trickles or sings from the upper registers, marks much of this virtuoso style. The C Major finale to the set, heavily punctuated in the bass line and tipping its hat to Chopin as to Schubert, easily sums up much that has preceded it. Shehori negotiates the registration shifts with considerable aplomb, if not downright aggressive, lion’s paws. The electrical sweep between performer and audience becomes quite palpable–of only auditors could cough on the beat–and the surge of the last page raises everyone’s pulse decidedly.

Buoyant, brittle, and impulsively witty, the Kabelevsky Third Sonata (20 May 1987) pays homage to Shehori’s tutelage with the inimitable Vladimir Horowitz. The gently rocking episodes in the Allegro con moto find monumental foils in the unleashed, pounding chords and repeated notes that blister the soul, much as do similar energies in compatriots Prokofiev and Shostakovich.  A lyrical sarcasm intimates its way through the serpentine melodic line in the first movement, which ends in a kind of stretto and diaphanous runs that dissolve before our very ears. The Andante cantabile allows Shehori his breathed parlando and plangent harmonized voices, the writing–except for the modern dissonances and modal syntax– occasionally suggestive of Schumann. The movement ends in a tender lullaby, maybe the musical equivalent of the end of the Russian lyric film, Ballad of a Soldier.  The last movement proves a fiendish etude for glistening and percussive attacks, the motor elements easily evoking Prokofiev in full “orchestral” regalia. The powerhouse double octaves and sudden slides attest to Shehori’s wrists and digital acumen. Colorful and inventive, the music compels us by the sheer kaleidoscopic of color effects the pianist must conjure from his palette. The New York audience, quite wowed, hails Shehori even before the last notes sails away.

Finally, Liszt’s “literary” homage to The Divine Dante, a one-movement sonata-fantasia that traverses Hell and Heaven. Shehori enters these narrow gates with his own demons, the barrage of chords and stretti never far from the composer’s own set of Mephisto studies. The first apocalypse passes in a rush, and so does our first ascent to Purgatorio.

The opening motto–often set as a tritone–returns, but now yields to its alter ego, a series of lightly enunciated scales that yearn for Liszt’s favorite F-sharp Major as a designation for Elysium. That Shehori can maintain a sense of architecture amidst the flames and exaltations testifies to the influence of teachers Katz, Stefan Ashkenase, and Frank, the last of whom studied with Schnabel.  Another infernal ritornello and related throes from The Pit, even more furioso, then marvelous legato over tremolandi figures that usher in those now-mystified scales that culminate in bright arpeggios of spiritual glory. A Wagnerian heroism caps off the triumphs. religious and digital, that mark a performance of exceptional, poetic power. Quite a compilation of rides, some of them nothing less than profound.

— Gary Lemco

 

Related Reviews
Logo Pure Pleasure
Logo Crystal Records Sidebar 300 ms
Logo Jazz Detective Deep Digs Animated 01