BBC Legends BBCL 4212-2, 79:34 (Distrib. Koch) ****:
Another of the extraordinary talents to merge from Odessa, Russia, Shura Cherkassky (1911?-1995) possessed the most diverse repertory of any of the Romantic pianists. This collation of two recitals–the majority culled from BBC Studios 21 April 1963–bears witness to Cherkassky’s colossal capacity for color and variety in his keyboard palette. He opens with a totally fluent account of the piquant Air from the fifth Handel Suite, the fast runs offering a defined pearly play.
Handel provides the B-flat tune for the Brahms litany of pianistic effects which culminate in a mighty fugue. The left hand is already a phenomenon apart in Variation 3, where most other pianists are content to let the top line rule. Thunderous bass chords in Variation 4 attest to the power of Cherkassky’s fortissimi. Tendresses for Variations 5-6, the latter of which carries a Hungarian plainchant. Bold staccati for Variation 7, leading to the resonant chorale No. 8. Variation 12 gives us our first taste of the music-box sonority Cherkassky could muster in a heartbeat, the left hand supplying a delicate counterpoint around the Handel original. We hear it again thrice, at the gavotte Variation 19, Variation 21 as droplets of pure rainwater, and at the Alla musette designation of Variation 22, a realization rivaled only by Moiseiwitsch and Solomon. Variation 15 is big in bravura, an etude for the Second Concerto. Wonderful legato at Variation 18. A heavy marcato begins the upward avalanche towards the four-part fugue. By Variation 23 the Brahms has become a torrent of sound, briskly punctuated, the last bars even more accented. Pregnant pauses between the phrases of the fugue, Bach having regained his organ sonority and plastic tone colors.
Berg’s one-movement, post-impressionist Sonata, Op. 1 has featured on many Cherkassky programs, and his Nimbus recording is still a standard. Touches of Tristan, hints of Reger, Debussy, Scriabin, and late Brahms blend in Berg’s color crucible. A nervous sense of probing improvisation infiltrates the performance. The composer Nikos Skalkottas (1904-1949) first came to my attention via the Four Greek Dances recorded by Dimitri Mitropoulos. His little variations are pointillistic fragments whose spiritual father is likely Webern. The softness of the affect that ends the Skalkottas finds a pungent foil in the D Minor Toccata by Prokofiev, all bustling energies running up and down the keyboard.
While Chopin remained Cherkassky’s favorite composer, he rarely played any piece in a consistent manner, and that includes the B Minor Sonata (15 December 1964), which he inscribed for Nimbus. The gestures both intimate and large, the music under Cherkassky throbs and meanders in its own dreamy sensibilities, poetry tinged with obsession. The mercurial Scherzo swells in passion, then it dissipates into the mist. As per expectation, the central Largo proves diaphanous and measured, then it reaches, after a series of poignant trills, the series of repetitive scales by which Chopin hypnotizes us all. A bit of staid reticence opens the Finale: Presto non tanto, but soon Cherkassky’s thrust gains momentum along with a debonair playfulness. The rush to the coda proves as tempestuous as anything in Rubinstein, yet the whole has been directed by the idiosyncratic of keyboard spirits.
— Gary Lemco
