A TRIBUTE to MOZART – Vladimir Feltsman, piano: Fantasias, Rondos, Allegros, Piano Concerto K. 467, Adagio and Andante (complete content listing below) – Nimbus NI 6448 (2 CDs = 2 hrs 4 mins) (6/15/24) [www.wyastone.co.uk] ****:
Recording producer and engineer Adrian Farmer has assembled solo Mozart performances by pianist Vladimir Feltsman (b. 1952), 2022-23, and a concerto performance from Moscow’s Grand Hall, July 1996, with an ensemble Feltsman dubbed the “Moscow Chamber Symphony,” which he leads from the keyboard in the manner established by the likes of Edwin Fischer, Bruno Walter, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Geza Anda, and Leonard Bernstein.
Aside from the famous 1785 Concerto No. 21 in C, the remainder of the program consists of occasional and assorted pieces Mozart conceived as parts of incomplete sonatas, or as quick sources of income to serve him on his various tours and on recital dates. Several of the more mature works, like the C Minor Fantasy, K. 475, the Adagio in B Minor, K. 540, and the Rondo in A Minor, K. 511, have attained epic status among scholars and performers for their profundity and influence on future compositions by other composers.
Feltsman first addresses the *Fantasia in C Minor, K. 396, published in 1802 – the discs (and liner notes) reverse the presentation of the two C Minor fantasies – completed by Maximilian Stadler (1748-1833), Mozart’s friend, a Viennese pianist and musicologist. From 1796 he helped settle the estate of Mozart, relieving the widow Constanze of various burdens, musical and financial. Mozart had completed only 28 measures of music, even indicating at measure 23 a violin obbligato. Stadler allots Feltsman a decorative and expressive work in the C.P.E. Bach “emotional” style, freely modulating to C major and G minor. The latter shift proves a forecast of sturm und drang, that Haydn had already adopted from the Bach sons. If in fact Stadler did most of the development of this fragment, the effect is worthy of the master.
The Allegro in G Minor, K. 312 (c. 1790) is among the several pieces completed by the aforementioned Maximilian Stadler (1748-1833), the Viennese pianist and musical arranger. This Allegro movement projects moments of alternate lyricism and aggression, including some lush scoring in chromatic arpeggios and broken scale patterns, in the manner of C.P.E. Bach. At dramatic moments, the figurations anticipate passages in Beethoven, especially the Waldstein Sonata. The succeeding Allegro in B-flat Major, K. 400 (1781) was also left incomplete and rounded out by Stadler. More brightly virtuosic than the G minor, the piece delights in brilliant runs, echo effects, and exalted dashes in higher registers. Feltsman often injects a music-box sonority into the proceedings, so we do not lack for a sense of improvised colors.
It was the late Clara Haskil who first introduced me to the delights of Mozart’s 1798 set of Nine Variations on a Theme by Duport, K. 573, a piece that no less intrigued my teacher at SUNY Binghamton, Jean Casadesus. Jean-Pierre Duport (1741-1818), principal cellist for the court orchestra of Friedrich the Great , King of Prussia, offers Mozart a tune that will take advantage of altering keyboard textures, that exploits scales, repeated notes, arpeggios, and double notes, all the while undergoing metric adjustments that culminate in the transition from triple to duple time. The slow variation exaggerates the coloratura diva tradition, bathing in an extended, floridly hesitant line in drooping sighs. The last two minutes feature Feltman’s ringing staccato punctuations and florid cadenza technique, a bright scalar trill, and the music-box clarity that brings the compositional tour de force to a satisfying coda.
The 1782 Fantasia in C Minor, K. 397, also posthumous, conveys a pre-Romantic sensibility, constructed from brief episodes, sometimes quite chromatic and rife with repeated notes and sudden interruptions. Spasmodic cadenzas appear, followed by broken chords and dark runs. The top melodic line emerges in Feltsman’s music-box style, a melancholy parlando. Suddenly, friendly sunlight emerges in the major mode and moving to a dominant chord and an optimistic coda that remains one option of two, the other more solemn, according to taste.
Disc 1 concludes with two contrasting rondos: the Rondo in D, K. 485 (1786) and the Rondo in A Minor, K. 511 (1787), alternately cheerful and melancholy works. The D Major Rondo proceeds in sonata form, the theme borrowed from J.C. Bach. The tune either scampers or meditates in major and minor modes, often over an Alberti bass figure, suddenly rushing forward in dramatic fashion. The cadenza style typifies the concertos written around the same time, contemporaneous with The Marriage of Figaro. The A Minor Rondo stands as the one Mozart solo piece bequeathed us by Artur Rubinstein. Marked Andante, the piece invites pianists to address the deliberately slow tempo individualistically, as the main melody appears five times in economically free variation. The style of the piece bridges the galant atmosphere of the French taste and the burgeoning Romanticism in Hummel and young Chopin, especially in matters of rubato. Feltsman presents this expressive opus as an evolving, florid thought-process, working out its relatively spare number of materials as an elastic improvisation.
Disc 2 opens with the 1788 Adagio in B Minor, which many auditors came first to know via Vladimir Horowitz. The use of a diminished dominant chord systematically invests the work with an unsettling narrative progress. The intensely subjective character of its chromatic line points to the influence of the empfindsamkeit school of C.P.E. Bach, but this ascription may rob Mozart of his personal enigma in this piece. That the final bars modulate to B major does not relieve the poignant angst this moody work generates, the harmonies of which, out of context, would suggest the later phase of Liszt.
Feltsman next extends his Mozart tour with the mighty1781 *Fantasia in C Minor, published posthumously, set in six sections in contrasting, chromatic colors and temperaments, from solemn contemplation to storming passion. Feltsman allots some attractive pearly play to the proceedings, especially in arpeggiated chords and scalar passages. The tender main melody – appearing some ten times – makes a poignant, musical-box entrance and maintains a lyrical dignity throughout. The piece assumes a labyrinthine, quasi-operatic shape, a momentarily tumultuous character, moving through contrasting moods and changes of texture in a steady, even inexorable, progression of specific “scenes” of delicate or sensuous tracery. Do those late, four-note “fate” chords inspire the Beethoven opera that exploit the rhythmic motif in such historical fashion?
The last of the solo pieces, the 1791 Andante in F Major for mechanical organ, K. 616, remains a curio by any standard, given its lack of dynamics in the original score. The fact that the ethos of the work lies in a fashionable contrivance does not diminish the lyrical quality of the theme and variations that provide its structure. The sonority Feltsman produces on the modern piano assumes an anachronistic, Baroque character, built on chime effects and studied, scalar passages in echo. Written for Count Joseph Deym, a collector of musical clocks and mechanical instruments, this delicately sculptured rondo transcends the medium and insinuates its careful balances into our collective imagination.
For the final work, the 1785 Piano Concerto No. 21 in C, K. 467 recorded in 1995, Feltsman asked his good friend Victor Kissine to compose the solo cadenzas for the outer movements, since Mozart himself left none. In his informative liner notes, Feltsman mentions the degree of humor Mozart invests into the score, with its mis-directions in key and false cadenza passages, its bouncing between major and minor harmonies, and what Feltsman calls “the vernacular of the day.” Those who know Mozart’s Third Horn Concerto appreciate his effective, self-borrowing of a first movement melody. The opening movement, Allegro maestoso, enjoys a martial good humor and fleet execution, lithely optimistic throughout. Kissine’s first movement cadenza several times alludes to Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G minor.
The famously poignant Andante in F major, with it is muted, throbbing string triplets and intervallic leap, haunts us from the outset, moving through the modes of F and even to the parallel harmony of A-flat major. Kudos to the Moscow woodwinds for their clear, articulate contribution. The final rondo movement, Allegro vivace assai, bubbles with agile mirth, instrumental give and take, Krivine’s terse cadenza, making a quick allusion to the middle movement even as it frolics, leads to a finely wrought last page.
—Gary Lemco
A TRIBUTE to MOZART =
*Fantasia in C Minor, K. 396;
Allegro in G Minor, K. 312;
Allegro in B-flat Major, K. 400;
Nine Variations on a Theme by Duport, K. 573;
Fantasia in D Minor, K. 397;
Rondo in d Major, K. 485;
Rondo in A Minor, K. 511;
Adagio in B Minor, K. 540;
*Fantasia in C Minor, K. 475;
Andante in F Major for Mechanical Organ, K. 616;
Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major, K. 467
Orchestra dir. Vladimir Feltsman/
