Portuguese pianist Pedro Burmester (n. 1963) makes a sensational debut in my book with these recent (9-12 February 2005) surveys of two of the great staples of Romanticism, the Schumann C Major Fantasy and the Liszt B Minor Sonata. Each piece is highly sectionalized, even within individual movements, or in Liszt’s case, tempo adjustments within the framework of a single movement subdivided into four major elements. Engineer and surround mixer Hugues Deschaux captures the reverberant sonority of Burmester’s instrument with startling detail, although not without that occasional upper register ping which plagues many piano recordings.
Burmester himself seems entirely rapt in the Schumann ethos, which demands “the style of a legend” in the opening third of his quasi-sonata built on motifs from Beethoven and Schein. The rhetorical grandeur and sweeping filigree emerge in colossal gestures, passionate, intimate, sensual. The closing notes of the first section point to what Burmester might accomplish with Gaspard de la Nuit. The second movement is all syncopations, massive block chords, and obsessive glitter. In the surround mediu, the trills emerge from on high, frenzied outer space. The clangor of Burmester’s approach may prove too insistent for some tastes, especially those groomed on Casadesus, Perlemuter, and Kempff. The last movement, with its literary rubric from Schlegel, might be Schumann’s answer to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata here transformed into a ballad. Burmester takes the music down a notch, allowing us a glimpse of the innigkeit of which he and the composer are capable. The repeated A-flat sounds deeply into the abyss, where we hear a fateful march, “the mingled measures of the fountain and the caves.”
From the low G that announces the Liszt Sonata, we plummet into a world akin to Dante, a real throwback to this music’s appearance in movies starring Karloff and Lugosi. A tremendous trill by Burmester has us riding with the Furies’ Nemesis herself. Beautifully clear articulation of Liszt’s lines, despite the punishing tempo Burmester sets for himself. The opening motif is now in high relief, clearly the grund-gestalt for the entire framework of the Sonata. The cantabile (cantando) section could easily come from Liszt’s own Berceuse or his small sonnets after Petrarch, diaphanous and liquid pearls. Titanic sweep in the arpeggios, shades of Michelangeli and Nojima. The recitativos are huge, so even the parlando episodes cannot assuage their Byronic despair. Burmester realizes the Fallen Angel whom even Frankenstein’s creature exalted above all others. The Andante sustenuto is Abbe Liszt: penitent, searching for salvation. The Stretta, fugato section returns to the demonic ecstasies, which Burmester manages to combine with the water sounds in Liszt, like his Jeux d’eau a la Villa d’Este. A Prestissimo to blow us all to Apocalypse juxtaposed with a vision of Paradiso. This Burmester is a Latin temperament to reckon with, a natural exponent of the Romantics whose ethos he masterfully embraces with both his hands.
— Gary Lemco
