Customer Reviews

Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 1; Piano Sonata No. 3; Rhapsodies, Op. 79; Piano Pieces, Opp. 117-119

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Wow, I have the honor of breaking in the review line on this 3-CD set! Here we have Radu Lupu's entire recorded output of Brahms' piano music, all from 1971-81. CD 1 (like CD 2) was previously released as a single CD, so be sure you're not duplicating your collection. CD 3 is a previously out-of-print recording of Concerto Nr. 1 with the London PO conducted by Edo de Waart. I'll address this first. I had never heard Lupu's concerto, and, as an unremitting Lupu fan, I had high hopes. He plays the socks off the thing as I envisioned. However, de Waart and the London PO aren't quite up to Lupu's standards, and a tug-of-war at times threatens the proceeedings. It seems Lupu wants to push ahead in tutti passages, then wants to luxuriate in solo moments--perfectly Brahmsian, I think, if de Waart would only allow him. Also the strings just play with sloppy intonation and execution. One wishes for Jochum's Berlin Phil. to come to Lupu's aid here! Having said that, I will likely keep this right up there with my Gilels version, if only to hear again and again Mr. Lupu's poetry and passion.

As for the other 2 discs (CD1: Sonata Nr.3, Theme and Var. in d minor; CD2: 2 Rhapsodies Op.79, 3 Intermezzos Op.117, 6 Piano Pieces Op.118, 4 Piano Pieces Op.119), I rate his playing to be the best I've heard of these works. If you think he's got the more wistful, roaming Brahms down, you may be surprised to hear his Op. 5 Sonata, where his architecture rivals Richter. I think Lupu just GETS Brahms, more so than anyone else. I feel the same way about Brendel and Schubert.

This 3-CD set makes a wonderful intro to Brahms piano music; if you only wish to own one, this would be a terrific choice!

* * * * 1/2 stars (because of the concerto)

Released by DECCA in 2005 as a celebratory bow for the 60th anniversary of (its exclusive artist) Radu Lupu, this Brahms CD box set comprises recordings made by the great Romanian pianist during the decade 1971 - 1981 Emerging in his mid-twenties on the international concert platform with three first prizes in his bag, won in prestigious international piano competitions (Van Cliburn - 1966, Enescu - 1967, Leeds - 1969), Lupu rapidly established himself as one of the top performing artists of our time with a definitive affinity for the classical-romantic repertoire. His refined craftsmanship seems especially suited for music of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann and Brahms. Yet Lupu hates self promotion and publicity, being widely regarded as a genuine anti-star, his arrival as one of the most acclaimed and sought-after pianists of the last decades has covered him by flattering engagements with most impressive concert stages and orchestras around the world.

Regarding the Intermezzos op.117 and Piano pieces op.118 & 119 recorded here, I will quote Jeremy Hayes who put it so inspired in the liner notes of the accompanying booklet: "This music perfectly suits Lupu's meditative style of playing; he has his own singular concept of these works and performs them with total conviction. His playing profoundly conveys the intimacy and inwardness of much of this music, as well as its sense of resignation and deep emotion imbued with richness of experience and fantasy." I think these assertions can be extended over all 3 CDs under consideration here, for Lupu stands indeed as a musician with interpretive qualities shaped especially for the musical mellowness the Brahms's output requires. It is as if Brahms himself would have selected Lupu - out of a plethora of very good pianists - to convey the profoundly ruminative and contrasting moods of his overwhelming Sonata No.3 in F minor or the mighty Rhapsodies op.79. Radu Lupu's pianism has frequently been characterized as full of delicacy, exhibiting a pure romantic insight and a compelling sense of narration, kindling uneven poetic colours and masterful contrasts out of his keyboard. Listen, in this respect, to his rendition of the monumental Piano Concerto No.1 in D minor and experience Lupu's unique artistry in all its facets. His crystal-clear conception and minutely weighted finger-work - stemming from an unfailing curiosity for the depths of the score - conferred to Lupu an immediately recognizable touch, praised by Daniel Barenboim as "unmatched aural imagination and ability to create orchestral sonorities and textures". How wonderful is it employed in the reflective Adagio or in the stormily passionate final Rondo.

This CD box set - as its two companion volumes of DECCA Lupu's Edition, devoted to Schubert and Beethoven respectively - is a must for all who love Brahms piano music and are interested in fine accounts of it. Radu Lupu's is among the very few authentic and valuable ones on the market now. Therefore, it deserves - with no hesitation, in my opinion - five stars!

Nowadays, Radu Lupu has become one the maxim exponents in which concerns Brahms' piano music. His singular genius, indomitable commitment and honest conviction may be felt, recognized and admired.

His eloquent pianism and peerless phrasing involves and bewitches whole audiences. Solvent musicality and serene lyricism without affections or theatrical mannerisms deserve him the best epithets I can find. He is one the ten greatest pianists of the actual universe.

This CD confirms it. He achieves to extract the lyric vein, the sumptuous refinement and sober elegance. Just Katchen Kempff, Michelangeli, Richter, Badura- Skoda, Fischer, Gilels and Gould have been able to perform with such sheer panache the most beloved and lavished musical son of Hamburg.

So keep in mind this crucial detail at the moment to decide yourself. This is a wise choice. Don't hesitate and go for it.

I have been fortunate enough to be present twice when Radu Lupu made audiences sit on the edge of their seats and you could hear a pin drop, except none did. The first time, he played the first seven Preludes from Book I by Debussy, and on Des pas sur la neige he suspended time, playing the last phrases so distantly and softly that they seemed to be echoes of another pianist somewhere else. The second time I heard him play Brahms' Op. 118 klavierstucke with such poetry that the fifth movement elicited applause that interrupted the proceedings (seemed to greatly annoy him), and he lingered over the last pedaled notes of the last movement so slowly and regretfully that you felt he really didn't want the piece to end. The penultimate chord hung in the air, and I mean *hung.* You could have gone out for pizza and come back and that chord still would have been there. Yet the music was not distorted. It was magical, and the audience kept calling him back for an encore, which he failed to provide. (I get the impression Mr. Lupu does not perform for audiences, nor care what moves them. He plays for himself, takes one bow, and walks off stage. See ya.)

Unfortunately, none of that time-stopping magic--that feeling I was hearing the ghost of Artur Schnabel only with a more colorful palette--manifests itself in these recordings. The late Brahms piano works, among my favorite oeuvres in classical music, here get rather plodding treatments. The sonics are off--to hear something truer to Lupu's concert sound, listen to his recorded set of Schubert Impromptus, though even that's not quite right. The phrasing is slow and cumbersome. The drama is missing, the music wanders off and sometimes becomes shapeless, or at least misshapen. Op. 118 should start off with a "kick" for example, and some of those beautiful autumnal colors that hint to us what is to come. Instead we have a rather straightforward reading that sounds like an earnest student playing the piece in a master class. The years of accumulated wisdom and sadness do not show here, nor in the following movement that, if played a certain way, can make me cry, dammit. Here I don't feel a thing, and I want to.

Likewise the other movements here don't build as much as they stay static, at one emotional level. I don't get enough of a story. He doesn't make for me, in other words, a coherent picture of each piece from beginning to end. It's more as though he's reading the notes than living the story of the music. Likewise in the Third Sonata, where, like Richter, he plays the right notes but doesn't get a shape out of it all for me. For this I find Anatol Ugorski's recording absolutely revelatory, bursting with color and fire and yet with perfect control. Too bad it's OOP.

For the triple-digit solo piano works, I am amazed to say that one of the best all-around Op. 118s I've ever heard is Stephen Kovacevich. Amazed because Kovacevich so often plays without a lot of color--I find much of his Beethoven cycle rather pedestrian and without imagination. So it's with true surprise that I report his klavierstucke readings contain plenty of emotion that never loses sight of the structures. For much of the other late works, Elisabeth Leonskaja does the job in beautiful sound, but her Op. 118 suffers from distended phrasing that saps much of the tension. Some people think Kempff is great in these works, but I don't hear it. Pogo is fascinating in the ones he's recorded, finding a darker Brahms rather than a wistful one. For a very MOR approach that's still quite good, without might be called any quirks or eccentricities, Julius Katchen is a fine way to go, but they'd really need a little more input from the interpreter before they'd make it to my desert island, with so many other great recordings available.

Dinorah Varsi does the two Rhapsodies, as well as Brahms' Op. 76, proud. Gould is the sound of one hand clapping--all the notes of Brahms with no input I can discern from the performer. Interesting for a clinical look, it's almost like consulting an urtext of a score, but it's not what I'm looking for every day. Glad I own it, though.

Richter disappoints a bit with the sonatas (he seems okay until you've heard Ugorski or Katchen), but his three excepts from Opp. 118 and 119 performed in Leipzig in 1963 have some fascinating, unorthodox and outsized ideas. It's amazing how he can get from thunderous chords to churchly pianissimos without ever appearing to shift gears--why couldn't he do this in the Decca CD of the sonatas? Ernst Levy left us a tantalizing sample in an incomplete set (recorded live, but the recording equipment went awry and some of it was lost), and what we have is a flaccid and technically-challenged reading of Op. 118's first movement (with his titanic Liszt and Beethoven performances he must have had the chops, but was perhaps underrehearsed), a very sentimental second movement, and an underpowered third movement.

The piano concerto here has been bettered, well, all over. Gilels, Kovacevich (again!), Freire, Curzon, Backhaus, and even Ashkenazy all immediately come to mind for incisiveness, raw emotion (remember how revolutionary this work was in its day; I don't get a sense of that here), and spontaneous fire that this performance needs. I can't see any reason for keeping this in my collection, and the short running time makes the third disc skimpy. I know Lupu can do better than most of what's here because I've heard him do it in concert. Maybe he needs the feedback of an audience, even though he seems to ignore us!