Primakov in Concert, Vol. I = BRAHMS: Two Chorale Preludes, Op. 122; SCHUBERT: Wanderer Fantasie, D. 760; TCHAIKOVSKY: Album pour enfants, Op. 39; RACHMANINOV: Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-flat Minor, Op. 36 – Vassily Primakov, piano – Bridge 9322, 75:53 [Distr. by Albany] ****:
That a personal, even valedictory aura permeates this recital by Vassily Primakov, assembled by producer David Starobin from live appearances 2002-2007 becomes obvious at the outset, with his performance of Busoni arrangements of two Brahms settings (2007) of “Herzlich thut mich verlangen Nach einem selgen End,” from his organ chorales, Op. 122. Although based on the same text, the responses differ in emotional content, alternately stately and dignified, even resigned, to lyrically detached. Each statement, in its own way, marks a procession that could be Calvary.
Primakov shifts gears to the explosively virtuosic in Schubert’s 1822 C Major Fantasy “Wanderer,” in a performance from 2002. For percussive articulation and brilliant voicings in shifting registrations, the reading leaves nothing wanting, and the quick segues, too, move fluently and musically. Some may find Primakov’s fleet rendition a mite fast, though Gary Graffman’s inscription for CBS some thirty years ago, too, pushed the envelope for lyrico-dramatic power and fluidity. Of course, the eponymous song from which the fantasia gains its pride of place slows down the progression to dirge-like chorale whose successive variants gain florid and graceful motion. Primakov exhibits a regal serenity in these moments, a thorough familiarity of style that maintains the interior pulse on this one-movement work whose four sections reveal a Gothic architecture. The last section, commencing with a potent fugue, makes us hungry for Primakov’s excursions into Bach and that other cornerstone of the Romantic ethos, the Brahms Handel Variations.
The Tchaikovsky Op. 39 rarely find a hearing as an integral set; and other than Primakov, perhaps Ania Dorfmann reigned in this regard. Primakov (2006) sees the set as an extension of Schumann’s Kinderszenen, salon pieces whose celebration of childhood assume characteristic personalities. A Morning Prayer opens the set, and a Church litany closes it. Petite mere (Little mother) almost takes Schumann verbatim. Two puppet pieces outdo Gounod for a funeral march for a marionette. Valse typifies Tchaikovsky’s salon facility. Kamarinskaya answers Glinka in a few bars, and the Polka does the same for Chopin. The Old French Song communicates a ravishing ingenuousness. The Neapolitan Song found its way into The Nutcracker, note-for-note, for trumpet. Douce reverie commends itself to the earlier song, None But the Lonely Heart. Le Jouer d’orgue de Barbarie invokes through a waltz an organ-grinder’s languor.
The 2004 Rachmaninov B-flat Sonata has Primakov reading through the 1931 edition by the composer himself, a poetic rather than a bravura concept. The gestures, nevertheless, remain grand and imposing, the music florid, noble, and eminently nostalgic. The piece moves through flurries of colors, less a sonata than an extended Etude-tableau in the manner of a Chopin Ballade. The first movement ends on a note exotically sensuous reminiscence. A kind of blues improvisation–in the form of a nocturne–opens the Non allegro second movement. A tempest arises, Rachmaninov fashion, in chromatic runs and broken recitativo-ariosi, the style a hybrid Chopin and Liszt, cross-fertilized by Russian languor. The last movement provides thrilling, even hurtling octaves, touched by Rachmaninov’s darkly chromatic marches and incursions of lavender smoky horizons.
— Gary Lemco
