Customer Reviews

Chopin: 4 Ballades / Perahia

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have gotten to know Murrray Perahia better through his wonderful CD on Schuberts Impromptus. My listening to Chopin was more directed towards Rubenstein and Michelangeli. This CD is an eye-opener to the artistic diversity and capacity of Murray Perahia. The Ballads show depth, sensitivity, and drama. The CD has instantly earned its place among my favorites.

I don't agree with the reviewer below who finds these "too perfect." Some people have found Perahia's earlier recordings of Mozart and especially Beethoven poetic but at the same time lacking weight and gravitas. Well, that's certainly not the case here, because not only does Perahia produce a consistently beautiful sound, he also does full justice to the music's more passionate outbursts. This is very distinguished Chopin playing, and the miniatures (programmed after the Ballades) make me hope for complete recordings of Chopin's other piano music (Etudes, Preludes, Nocturnes, Waltzes, etc.) from this artist. The sound is demonstration-quality, except that the bass is just slightly heavy. All the same, this is an unmissable recording!

I'm not a great fan of Murray Perahia. I've never been able to quite put my finger on why, though. He seems to be sensitive to what the composer wishes and he is technically brilliant, but he (in most cases) just doesn't seem to be able to draw me in. That being said, I think this is one of his better efforts, and the sound is very good. I would rate the Ballades about equal to Earl Wild's set, but below Arrau's. Of course, nobody can touch Rubinstein on these works. I will add that the smaller works that fill out the disc are very well played. All in all a nice intro to Chopin, but you would be better off spending the ridiculously low price of about $30 and get Rubinstein's box set.

INTRODUCTION: 'One has to go back to Hofmann, recorded in 1937, to find a more searching or poetic account of the G minor Ballade than Murray Perahia's.' 'This is surely the greatest, certainly the richest, of Perhia's many exemplary recordings. Once again his performances are graced with rare and classic attributes and now, to supreme clarity, tonal elegance and musical perspective, he adds an even stronger poetic profile, a surer sense of the inflammatory rhetoric underpinning Chopin's surface equilibrium.' Reading these raving Penguin Guide and Gramophone quotes, respectively, one is destined to believe we are faced with the perfect account of the four Chopin Ballades--something that in itself would be quite spectacular to say the least as they make up the most perfect condensate of musical and pianistic refinement in the entire piano oeuvre.

REFERENCES: Demidenko (Chopin: Ballades; Third Sonata); Ohlsson (Garrick Ohlsson - The Complete Chopin Piano Works Vol. 3 - Ballades)

In addition to the above quotes, this disc was awarded a Penguin Guide Rosette, a Gramophone Award, and even an inclusion in Gramophone Magazine's 100 Greatest Recordings. Allow me to break it to you right away: the collective professional British reviewers have been wrong before, and this time they are to completely talking through their hat when it comes to the Ballades. The 'filler recital' is indeed a keeper--especially the two Waltzes (Opp 18 & 42), where Perahia's effortlessly brilliant but somewhat superficial playing feels just right for the music, but also the three bouncing Mazurkas. However, in the main attractions, the four Ballades, Perahia too seldom reaches beyond the face value of the notes.

His First Ballade may well be both 'poetic' and 'elegant'; it is though not nearly as dramatic as Demidenko's or as profound as Ohlsson's. The Second is rushed and largely robbed of its vast contrasts between its disparately nocturnal and etudeian sections. The Third is well paced and jolly enough, thus most apt of the four to the lightness of Perahia's pianism. The Fourth Ballade, whose inward elegiac beauty makes it one of the supreme piano masterpieces, most evidently exposes Perahia's shortcomings.

Even if the recorded sound cannot be faulted, so can the alleged perfection of Perahia's Ballades traversal--which I would rank firmly behind not only the above-stated references but also those of Kissin, Zimerman and Moravec. As a matter of fact, the very perfection is what lets Perahia's Ballades down, quite simply being too nice, buoyant and pleasing to penetrate the depths of these bottomless masterpieces.

TIMINGS: Ballades--8:49, 6:39, 6:54, 9:46; Waltzes (Opp 18 & 42)--5:02, 3:37; etc

I have tried hard to like this recording as much as other reviewers, but I can't quite muster the same enthusiasm. Perahia plays with amazing accuracy, sensitivity and beauty of tone. The recording is gorgeous -- full bodied yet detailed. Yet when I listen to large chucks of this recital I find myself daydreaming, even dozing. Can music be too beautifully played? I tried an experiment last night: after not making it through the Perahia disk once again, I put on some of Samson Francois' Chopin. Francois is not one of my favorite pianists, and I find his Chopin odd, quirky, sometimes even ugly. But by God I was riveted to every note, and it was worth it because ever so often he would transport me to Heaven. I don't think Perahia ever quite manages that on this recording. In the Ballades I prefer Zimerman. The Waltzes are wonderful performances, but after that the energy level drops off -- too many slow Nocturnes, Mazurkas and Etudes in a row. Since Perahia plays with so much tasteful understatement -- he never gets rowdy and bangs out the beat like Friedman in the Mazurkas -- the effect is soporific.

The Ballades are played with technical flawlessness, energy, and brilliance. However, in some passages his playing seems to lack sufficient emotion. Perhaps some would consider this restraint and dispassionateness a virtue. But I tend to favor a more Rachmaninoffian emphasis on melody lines. Chopin, after all, was a Romantic composer. On the whole, though, highly recommended.

Unfortunately for an age looking for the next breakout interpretor, Murray Perahia is one of the safest, blandest, more faceless of performers. Yet at a young age, as part of the CBS/Sony engine that also brought us such cautious musicians as Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Emanuel Ax, Yo-Yo Ma, Mariah Carey and Zubin Mehta, Perahia rose quickly to the top of the classical music pantheon. Yet I've never heard him play a lick that made me hear something in a fresh manner, or make me want to explore the score more to figure out from where he got his ideas, because he has none.

I went to a Perahia concert once with a conservatory-trained pianist who stated that Perahia played only the notes, akin to an actor reading the lines of a play flawlessly and the critics calling that a brilliant performance. I think that's largely accurate--in a blindfold test how many people who've given this disc four or five stars could tell him from Jenö Jandó, the Naxos house pianist. (Actually I think I could: Jandó is better.) These are note-spinnings of the pieces, with sedate ballades that are beautifully-recorded (if a bit glassy, but I think most modern producers add too much artificial reverb to the piano). Tension and shaping of notes are absent. There are no contrasts. Some people say this is "letting the music speak for itself." If music spoke for itself we wouldn't need interpretors. We need someone to convey dolce where Chopin wrote dolce, agitato where he wrote agitato, etc., and if the performer doesn't do this (and MP doesn't) then Chopin is being cheated. And let's not kid ourselves that Chopin's music should be played small and gentle. He was a frail man but he wrote some dynamic piano music as well as the "poetic" stuff, and he's being cheated here with tepid performances that lack drama, tension, texture or line. Good manners and a nice recorded sound are all Perahia has going for him, not a signature sound, and that's not enough.

Right after I finished this, I listened to Schubert's Impromptus by Edwin Fischer, who as a pianist is everything MP is not. Yet Fischer was no master technician and he hardly pounded the piano into the ground when he played it. He "let the music speak," too...he just knew what interesting things it had to say. To me Perahia just sees music as a series of notes to press, in his light and gentle way, rarely rising above mezzo-forte. Those who equate poetry and restraint with slowness and lack of dynamics, texture and contrast should try listening to someone such as Cortot, who hardly broke hammers but got the job done.

Sofronitsky, Richter, Rachmaninoff, Friedman, Horowitz, Arrau, Gieseking, Rubinstein, Cherkassky, Cortot, Lupu, Lugansky, Demidenko, Ohlsson, Moravec, Ugorski, Wendy Chen (particularly good at giving the ballades coherency and flow, though her producer then destroyed the lineage by placing them in reverse order on the CD!!), Wirssaladze, (early) Pogorelich, (early) Kissin, heck, even Pollini and Zimerman and Michelangeli (whom I generally admire greatly, but whose conception of Chopin I find bizarre in the extreme) and Yundi Li are preferable to this. This field is hyper-competitive, and Perahia is in the shadow of giants. And even average-sized people. Too bad so many listeners are apparently afraid to step outside their comfort zone.

I bought this as a gamble - Perahia's recordings of Schubert are near the top of my list of piano favorites. This seems like Chopin with a "light touch", which I really appreciate. Perahia makes the ones that I have heard, like, 10 bazillion times (eg the grand valse brillante) sound fresh, nuanced and interesting. His playing is so clear and smooth that it made me realize just how much there is to this music, and how much others have merely pounded away at it.

Can there be very many recordings so highly praised which evidence such a lack of spontaneity? Every note in every measure is there. Unfortunately, there's not much Chopin left. Chopin left his listeners totally rapt in a different universe. When one of his Polish pupils, a giant, played the Scherzo Op 39, a listener criticized the performance to Chopin as too powerful. Chopin replied that if he had the strength of his pupil, he would shatter the piano. Schumann called Chopin's music 'guns buried in roses'. Perahia gives us the roses, but they're scentless.

As I said in my previous review about Kissin playing at Carnegie Hall I love that CD but I would put at second place this CD from Murray Perahia. It's really amazing! The first Ballade touched my deeply. Expecially the biginning it's of tremendous power and sweetness. The second also it's very intimistic and meditative and the third will touch you in dept right to your soul. The fourth is excellent as well.
I highly raccomend this CD to everyone who loves Chopin and I would suggest to buy this CD together with the Kissin one that it's another unmissible masterpiece.
A greeting to all my friends around the world
Luca