Customer Reviews

Alfred Schnittke: Piano Sonata (Premier Recording) / Igor Stravinsky: Piano Sonata / Serenade - Boris Berman

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Nice pairing, that makes sense more by dint of the pianist's interpretation than because of any true stylistic affinity between both composers. Sure, you might think that Schnittke, the champion of post-modern "polystylicisticim" (as the liner notes put it) and collage technique, adept at quoting imitations of baroque music just to let it skid into a contemporary derivation, would sit well with Stravinsky's "back to Bach" neo-classicism so evident (despite the liner notes' claim) in the 1924 Sonata and 1925 Serenade. But in fact Schnittke's Piano Sonata (written in 1987 for Vladimir Feltsman, who had just emigrated to the US) doesn't sound like your expected Schnittke. There are very few quotes from earlier music (mainly in the first movement; I'm not sure it is an actual quote, but it is a jarringly tonal choral; the second movement, "allegretto", also starts with a lilting theme in ternary rhythm that seems straight out of a Prokofiev Sonata). It is certainly "polystylistic" in that you can't pigeon-hole its language into any existing "School". Schnittke, like his fellow Russians Ustvolskaya and Gubaidulina, invents his own style(s) as he moves along. The Sonata goes through a variety of moods, starting meditatively and almost religiously (reminiscent of Scelsi almost, it is obsessive repetition of single pitches), with sparse textures, and moves on to grimmer and thornier moods and more powerful utterances, violent even.

This was a premiere recording and is the only version in my collection, so I can't assess the interpretive merits of Berman, but I'd be inclined to trust the previous reviewer, who from his other reviews of the piano music of Schnittke has evidently access to the score and seems quite knowledgeable. Still, the Sonata at the hands of Berman is an impressive work. Other recordings have been published since this premiere recording in 1990: Alfred Schnittke: Complete Piano Sonatas [Hybrid SACD], Alfred Schnittke: Piano Sonatas Nos. 1-3, Shostakovich: Piano Concerto No1, Op. 35 / Schnittke: Piano Sonata No. 1; Suite (Sonata) in the Old Style, for violin & piano (or harpsichord), Schnittke: Complete Piano Music, Vol. 1 are those that a search on "Schnittke Sonata" yield on this website. Most get lukewarm to negative reviews from the same reviewer. Berman has also subsequently recorded the rest of Schnittke's piano output: Schnittke: Piano Musik (but see again the lukewarm review).

I do have the scores to Stravinsky's three gems, have done much comparative listening (on over ten versions for each) and I can give I think an informed opinion on Berman's interpretation. Sonics are a little too reverberant for Stravinsky's dry and wry sense of humor, but Berman contributes excellent versions. His powerful approach to the Serenade's introductory Hymn, far removed from the dryer or more delicate staccato favored by many, is one that likens it to the middle movements of the Piano Concerto and Capriccio, and in the second half of that same movement (which Berman, like Maria Yudina on Maria Yudina Plays Schubert Impromptus, Op.90, and Stravinsky's Sonata (1924) and Serenade (1925), takes at an unprescribed faster tempo) it recaptures something of the exultation Stravinsky brought to it. But Berman is also capable of great delicacy, and I haven't heard many versions that better captured the Cadenza Finala's wistful charm, at a tempo close to Stravinsky's metronome (Marcelle Meyer took it much faster, Les Introuvables de Marcelle Meyer, Vol. 1: 19th & 20th Century Composers), thanks to Berman's delicate and dreamy touch. He also has, in the middle Romanza, a fine staccato left-hand, which becomes suitably muscular and conveys great ebullience in the Rondoletto.

The Sonata's first movement is original in conception, taken at a moderate tempo (close in fact to Stravinsky's metronome instructions) that would liken it to Charles Rosen (in Sony's mammoth 22-CD tribute to the composer, Igor Stravinsky: The Recorded Legacy), but with none of the latter's insouciant elegance. On the contrary, Berman develops a mood that is brooding and grim, reminiscent of Maria Yudina (she at a much faster tempo and with a much more percussive touch), and his left-hand staccato rattles obsessively. Again the Yudina precedent comes to mind in the very slow tempo Berman adopts in the middle movement, disregarding its "adagietto" character indication (and leaving completely aside the poetic watery ripples conjured by Marcelle Meyer at a more flowing tempo), but conveying a dreamy atmosphere, full of pent-up menace in the obsessive left-hand ostinato figure of its middle section. That said, I find that the interpretive tradition that seems to have taken hold since Charles Rosen's recording from 1960, and which amounts to a contest of how slow you can play it, is not a welcome one: it substitutes a restrained and stately elegance for the imaginative poetry of Marcelle Meyer. Again in the finale Berman, with an urgent tempo and muscular pounding, comes closest to anybody else I've heard to the grim fierceness of Maria Yudina.

No holds are barred in Stravinsky's Piano-Rag Music, Berman doesn't flinch before the piece's fierce and jagging pounding - the closest Stravinsky ever got to Charles Ives, and that sure was close, although he had most probably then never heard of Ives - reminding us how modern and uncompromising it remains still today. And now I understand where George Antheil derived all his early piano music from!

So possibly this disc needs to be filed under Stravinsky rather than under Schnittke.

Boris Berman plays with Schnittke music. This was until now the only recording available of Sonata No 1 for piano. Watch for Svetlana Ponomareva new release of the same piece. Where Berman is cold, intellectual and barely follows the tempi making this music so much ado about nothing, Ponomareva brings a spiritual depth and shows why this piece is a XX Century classic in the range of the Liszt Sonata in B minor.