TCHAIKOVSKY: The Seasons, Op. 37-bis; Grand Sonata in G Major, Op. 37 – Vassily Primakov, piano – Bridge 9283, 75:19 [Distrib. by Albany] ****:
Vassily Primakov (b. 1979), a pupil of Jerome Lowenthal and the Juilliard School, has already established himself in the music of Chopin and now turns to his compatriot Tchaikovsky’s most ambitious keyboard work, the Sonata in G Major (1878) – completed almost contemporaneously with the Fourth Symphony. Besides the apparent, martial bombast of the first movement, it takes much of its theme and structure from the F-sharp Minor Sonata, Op. 11 of Schumann–and both their debts to Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata–including Schumann’s innate lyricism. Some find allusions to the plainchant Dies Irae, although it generates little of the severe gloom we find in Rachmaninov. The arpeggios point rather at the younger Russian’s C Minor Piano Concerto and to scale patterns in Liszt‘s Dante Sonata. The dotted rhythmic patterns hint at yet more Schumann, from the C Major Fantasy.
Primakov applies the same intimacy to the E Minor Andante as he would to Chopin; and indeed, at points it rings with something like the other’s Funeral March Sonata. The skittish march-gallops, however, revert to Schumann novelettes and character pieces. Brilliant, diaphanous tone emerges (6 & 8 September 2008) from Primakov’s Steinway D, courtesy of engineer Adam Abeshouse and technician Edward Count. The Moderato con animazione section totally belongs to The Months; certainly it plays as a maerchen or song without words. A series of big chords leads to the repeated main theme, syncopated but also distilled to another realm of experience. The Scherzo might have been ripped from Chopin’s Op. 39, though its quicksilver virtuosity says much of Tchaikovsky’s keyboard technique, as it does of Primakov. The Finale bursts on the scene with the same vigor as that of the last movement of the G Major Concerto, Op. 44. The constant motion and scherzando character of the second theme might warrant Schubert as its model. The romantic melody that swells forth hints at Schumann, but it might have a touch of late Brahms, too. But the Tchaikovsky rhetoric for traveling block chords proves too much for any “German” tradition, and he resorts to the scherzando that we know as far back as the Little Russian Symphony.
The suite known as The Months (1876) has achieved enough note to ensure its composer’s repute as an idiomatic creator of evocative landscapes and character pieces, a la Schumann. In simple song-form, they convey an atmosphere of balletic innocence. Primakov treats them all with due respect, from the chromatic aspirations of By the Fireside (January) to the plaintive, Chopinesque waltz that embodies Christmas Tide (December). In between, we hear a quizzical Lark (March) that might be Schumann’s own Prophet Bird. The Snowdrops of April give us a pulsating, delicate waltz, its tiny eddies and flurries piquant with hope. White Nights (May) sounds like Grieg in its dewy nocturne. Infinite tendresse for the G Minor Barcarolle, June’s bittersweet song. Its animated middle section makes us think its model is Chopin’s Etude in E, Op. 10, No. 3.
The carillon Primakov evokes for July’s Reaper’s Song makes us wonder what his Ravel might be like. August’s Harvest Song is another Chopin etude, this one an exercise in cross-rhythms. September’s Hunt takes a page from Schumann’s Waldszenen, horns and oboes in abundance, the fox on the run. Mendelssohn’s duets for solo piano provide a model for Tchaikovsky’s October, though the Chopin capacity for an almost liturgical melos is Tchaikovsky’s, too. Anyone who visualizes a troika or winter-sled scene (say in The Magnifcent Ambersons) will delight in the full-blooded, Primakov account of November, much in the Rachmaninov mode of unbridled tender enthusiasm coupled with seamless, technical security.
–Gary Lemco
