SCHUMANN: Fantasia in C Major, Op. 17; Kreisleriana, Op. 16; Arabeske in C Major, Op. 18 – Jonathan Biss, piano – EMI Classics

by | Feb 19, 2007 | Classical CD Reviews | 0 comments

SCHUMANN: Fantasia in C Major, Op. 17; Kreisleriana, Op. 16; Arabeske in C Major, Op. 18 – Jonathan Biss, piano – EMI Classics 0946 3 65391 2, 70:25 ****:

Recorded 22-25 April 2006 at Lyndhurst Hall, Air Studios, London, these three essential pieces by Robert Schumann bring out pianist Jonathan Biss’ dexterous fingers as well as his heavy breathing. I am fond of the Schumann C Major Fantasy, from years of listening to Casadesus, Backhaus, Kempff, Horowitz, and Arrau, and I find Biss a kindred spirit here, impassioned, accurate, and sensitive to Schumann’s delicate balance between rhetorical overstatement and ardent intimacy of feeling. That the C Major Fantasy looks back to Beethoven (and beyond) and forward to Tristan has been noted many times. Its declamatory passages and sudden leaps of poetic fancy appeal to Biss – who relishes, in sometimes beefy sound, Schumann’s intricate, nostalgic figures.

The studied demonism which Biss commands finds a natural outlet in Schumann’s mercurial suite Kreisleriana, ostensibly based on a book, Kater Murr, by E.T.A. Hoffmann. Inwardness and bold, bravura strokes alternate in rapid succession. No credit given to the instrument Biss favors, but its deep, ringing tone and hefty bass enjoy bright resonance, courtesy of balance engineer Sam Okell. As in the Fantasie, Biss must execute rapid shifts in dynamics and registrations, with syncopations galore. Always in Schumann are the maerchen, the fairy-tale ballads, often in three voices. Fanciful visions and nostalgia pass side by side, often in delicate tracery, hinting at the figures we find in the Op. 13 Symphonic Etudes. Some waltz riffs prove obsessive, the excesses and riddles of a stubborn, childlike insistence that reality conform to the dreamer’s standards. It is Schumann, after all, who wrote the Sphinxes into his Carnaval. The last two sections show off Schumann’s bravura, polyphonic style – a fascinating amalgam of Bach, Liszt, and Chopin distilled in Schumann’s own, especial alchemical process.

Biss takes the opening of the familiar Arabeske quickly, if only to present Eusebius with that much more passionate yearning. The sudden, leaping impulses, the swirl of colors, add to the variegated rainbow of the ritornello, perhaps touched by thoughts of what Debussy would make of similar applications. The epilogue is quite touching, always a reminder that time is either stolen or borrowed.

— Gary Lemco

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