Testament SBT 1440, 79:56 [Distrib. by Harmonia mundi] ****:
“He is a pianist, the others not,” pronounced judge Sviatoslav Richter at the Final of the 1958 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, referring to the lanky, American pianist Van Cliburn (b. 1934) to whom Richter voted a hundred marks; the competitors, zero. This Testament release captures a magical moment in political history, 11 April 1958, when the Cold War thawed decisively by the international power of music. For the Tchaikovsky Concerto, Cliburn bestows a broad, fluid tempo, unhurried and unmannered, the tone alternately massive and music-box delicate. For Tchaikovsky’s introspective passages, Cliburn brings a warmth and sympathetic nobility close to Grieg and Schumann. The rhapsodic nature of the writing finds a natural classicism in Tchaikovsky’s repeating each phrase twice, but Cliburn does his best to vary the color content to ensure a forward thrust. The Moscow Symphony sonority is rather thin, nothing like what Karajan achieves in his Vienna Symphony rendition with Richter. [The Victor Red Seal recording made in the U.S. just after Van Cliburn’s return is better sonically but not as good as the Richter…Ed.] But the lyrical momentum does surmount the acoustical restrictions and virtuosity of the players, and our focus rarely moves away from Cliburn’s spacious palette.
At the peroration of the first movement coda, the audience breaks into spontaneous applause, only a hint of the adulation to be poured on Cliburn at the Competition’s finale and Cliburn‘s historic return to the United States. Delicacy and dragon-fly execution–terms oft applied to another Russian virtuoso, Josef Hofmann–mark the Andante semplice, whose middle section flies far into the stratosphere. Pert tacks and liquid orchestral pipings send the Allegro con fuoco on its merry way, the articulated runs clean and silky, the melodic episodes sentimental without treacle, virtuosity that enjoys its own sound, the sheer pleasure of bold strokes. The last chord gets smothered by a crowd maniacal over their “Vanushka.”
Some will find greater musicality in the Rachmaninov D Minor Concerto, whose longer version Cliburn was among the first to realize-especially its uncut cadenza–with any consistency. Cliburn makes clear, clean work of the swirling filigree that takes us to the end of the first period, when dark, brooding strings give us the second subject. Kondrashin always had a special, suave empathy for this work; and besides this rendition with Cliburn, his commercial inscription with Mogilevsky maintains a place apart in his discography. Here, with Cliburn’s particularly sensitive poetry, the orchestral tissue gains a luminosity it lacks in the Tchaikovsky. The entire pulse and rhythmic line becomes centered, focused on what Rachmaninov called “the point,” the pre-determined end. Liquid pearls in the flute and in Cliburn’s second, brief “cadenza” take us to those muted horn riffs, string tremolos, and gruff arpeggios in the keyboard with which the epic first movement concludes. More ethereal meditation for the Intermezzo movement–which brings back motifs from the opening movement–whose multi-layered keyboard figures and waltz-filigree by Cliburn already hint at his virtuosic etudes-tableaux. A limpid nostalgia emerges from the horn, the low winds and strings, a last gasp at a passing epoch of romance. The big octaves from Cliburn usher in the Alla breve Finale, and the Lisztean repeated notes and glittering octaves dominate. Kondrashin’s forces, too, have imbibed the electricity, and the palpable undercurrent of serene bravura has become utterly contagious, manifest in the fine mesh of the dance-march’s fabric, the plaintive duets of piano and flute, piano and French horn. Listen to those broken chords, accompanied by snare and col legno strings! Their clarion non legato ascend to the extended coda over the syncopated figures in strings and tympani, a real rush of musical adrenaline for which the Russians and history have never ceased celebrating.
For an encore, Cliburn indulges in one of the few moments of musical impishness we have on record, the set-piece Kabalevsky Rondo, five and one-half minutes of percussive, dervish, block chords and displaced octaves, pointillistic, detached notes with grumbling bass harmonies, melodic runs and ariosi, and demonized scale patterns. Playing with a demented abandon, Cliburn turns the piece into a thrilling toccata, highly sectionalized and a bit schizoid. Great fun.
–Gary Lemco
