Victor Merzhanov, piano = Works of BEETHOVEN, CHOPIN, SCRIABIN, SCHUBERT – Vista Vera

by | Aug 28, 2007 | Classical Reissue Reviews | 0 comments

Victor Merzhanov, piano = BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonata No. 14 in C# Minor, Op. 27, No. 2 “Moonlight”; CHOPIN: Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-flat Minor, Op. 35; Mazurka in A Minor, Op. 17, No. 4; SCRIABIN: Piano Sonata No. 5, Op. 53; Etude in D# Minor, Op. 8, No. 12; SCHUBERT: Moment Musical in F Minor, Op. 94, No. 3

Vista Vera VVCD 96008,  67:13 (Distrib. Albany) ****:

Victor Merzhanov (b. 1919) is a graduate of the Moscow Conservatory, where his main teacher was Samuil Feinberg. In 1946, he and Sviatoslav Richter shared the first prize at the All-Union music competition in Moscow. In 1949 he won a prize at the Chopin Competition in Warsaw. He founded the Rachmaninov Society of Russia and the Rachmaninov International Piano Competition in Moscow.

Enough credentials; this recital from the Moscow Conservatory derives from tapes made 25 November 1994. The Adagio sostenuto of the Moonlight Sonata clearly announces Merzhanov’s major gifts, a rich palette, a broad pace, delicately balanced voicings that prove even more fertile in the latter two movements. The Presto agitato cuts loose with bravura fervor, the running figures voiced as a kind of duet over an unrelenting pulse. Merzhanov possesses a naturally sweet, singing line, and his articulation is a model of clarity. Like his idol, Rachmaninov, he consciously builds periods towards a key point, so a sense of architecture infiltrates every phrase.

The Chopin Funeral March Sonata provides us a bit more personality, more plastic, more deeply intoned. The meditative phrases achieve a high pitch, feverish, and auditors may easily recall the Horowitz approach. Merzhanov takes the first movement repeat, and the thunder roars again. The secondary motif he takes more slowly this time, the song phrased in the manner of one of Chopin’s Ballades. The evolution of the sonata-form grinds with anguish, poems, and cannons. Merzhanov’s thoughts on the Scherzo are huge, repeated in the trio, taken first as an etude in octaves, then metamorphosing into a tender impromptu. The pulse has slowed to a crawl, but a variegated, pregnant one, rife with trills. The opening to the Funeral March could be Moussorgsky, Merzhanov applying shattering accents at the cadences. The middle section is all nostalgia and tears, tasteful as it is rife with pathos. The martial, marcato da capo manages to synthesize both affects, grave eulogy and find remembrance. No pause as we dash into the wind which flies over open graves, Presto. Aftera fateful decay, the applause bursts forth.

It was Scriabin’s Fifth Sonata that broke his emotional tie with Rachmaninov, who claimed that hearing it was “like being beaten with sticks.”  Under Merzhanov, this piece is Blake’s “Tyger.” It purrs, curls, crouches, and pounces. As a demonstation of Merzhanov’s fluid, electric technique, the Fifth Sonata stands as a kind of template for virtuoso, surrealistic poetry and fire. The D-sharp Minor Etude is a love affair, Tristan, compressed into a Horowitzian firestorm, and the audience goes wild. The Schubert Moment Musical, sans Godowski’s acrobatics, proves a delightful, humane tonic after the steamroom of Scriabin’s ecstasies. Finally, Chopin’s tragic Mazurka in A Minor, whose somber beauties were first revealed to me by Ivan Moravec.  As delicate as it is poignant, the rendition by Merzhanov attends to those modally sensuous turns by which Chopin mesmerizes us all.  This guy Merzhanov can play the piano!

— Gary Lemco
 

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