Customer Reviews

Leos Janácek: A Recollection

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Firkusny studied with Janacek...almost all reviewers agree that his interpretation is truest to Janacek's intent. Yet in head-to-head listenings, it's the Schiff performance that I prefer.

I find the Firkusny performance to be clinical and dry as compared to Schiff, who is more lyrical and poetic. Firkusny may be playing it how Janacek intended, but musicians are artists and are free to interpret a piece any way they like. For this piece, I choose Schiff's interpretation.

It's late November and you're walking out in the woods. There's a crisp coolness underfoot and in the air. And you've just lost a dear friend to time and circumstance....

That is the type of Recollection which this music evokes for me. The excellent liner notes by Imre Kertesz and Robert Cowan refer to how each one of these evocative pieces is like a short story; each contains its own inner world: the "world in a grain of sand." There is the same mystical element present that one encounters in Arvo Part's music, but there is an impressionistic element as well, more lyrical than Debussy, and more emotional.

The magnificent two-movement Sonate (1.X.1905) is easily the highlight of the album. It was written to commemorate a protesting Czech student executed on that date by German troops. The second movement (entitled simply, "Death") still has, as the liner notes aptly say, "the power to shock." There is an existential element to this music, that "poses the eternally unanswered and unanswerable question of the human condition" (Kertesz).

In response to another reviewer who has stated that the recording's sound quality is lacking: I have listened to this recording on my car's cd player, and there it does sound rather like too much of an echo is present. But on my home stereo system, with quality speakers and subwoofer, the slight echo actually enhances the haunting quality of this music. It is, for me, that echo, that silencio between the notes, that makes this music and this performance, unforgettable.

... one's love of certain music and certain performances. I'm not an untrained listener, though I try to avoid conservatory vocabulary in these amazon reviews of mine. But I've been trying for several months to articulate what precisely seems so fine about Andras Schiff's performance of Janacek, and it all comes down to a subjective sense that he captures the special emotional resonance of Janacek's music just as I hear it in my head. I've also reviewed the performance by H. Austbo of Janacek's complete works for piano - on a mere two CDs. I like that performance a lot, but Schiff's is somehow deeper. Speaking of resonance, one previous reviewer has complained of an 'echo' in the recording; I'll have to guess, but I think that listener may be hearing what is called 'decay', the quality of realistic sound that early digital technology failed to capture and that made analog LPs acoustically superior to CDs.

I'm a huge fan of Janacek, by the way. His operas are my favorites of all 20th C operas, especially "The Cunning Little Vixen". His two string quartets rank for me along with those of Bartok and Shostakovitch as the finest of the century, and they're availble now in a superb performance by the Emerson Quartet. His assorted sinfoniettas for wind ensemble, written late in his career, are "things of beauty and a joy forever," especially because as a bassoonist I get to play them my way. Now, if I were a pianist ....

In my view, Janacek's piano music comprise some of the most marvelous music ever written for the piano. The Sonata 1.X.1905 has acquired a place in the standard repertoire, but the rest - including the magnificent In the Mist - is less often heard (though several fine recorded versions certainly exist). I do not think, for instance, that there exists a more breathtakingly beautiful, stirring and atmospheric collection of character pieces than the collection "On an overgrown path" (including the marvelous Paralipomena). But it needs an interpreter who understands the musical language and who is able to realize all the nuances and shades this music can conjure up.

Enter Andras Schiff; while he does not displace Firkusny that is mostly because their approaches are so different as to be complimentary, the performances here are fully idiomatic, detailed and stirring. "On an Overgrown Path" is variegated, flexible and unpredictable in terms of moods and mood shifts, sufficiently so to become truly haunting; the Sonate is stirringly restless and makes a unique impact, and In the Mist is graceful and poignant in an almost otherworldly manner resembling no other auditory experience. ECM's engineering is dazzling, even though the piano sound becomes almost over-resplendent at times (perhaps there is a little too much reverberance). In any case, this is a classic, and completely unmissable

I just went by, but then bought it by chance, as an addition to the eight peaces of Schiff's Beethoven sonatas serial.
Leos Janacek is very Czech, although a cultural Middle-European, Andras Schiff is very Hungarian, although a Cosmopolitan: they make a splendid partnership to show off something very Human.
Sorry for the "big words", I'll finish it fast and dry: I praise the CD very high both on content and on performance.
Trying to be fair I'll listen as next to the Firkusny CD Leos Janácek: Piano Works; Solo Piano; Concertino and Capriccio mentioned in some comments and the Skandinavian's Hakon Austbo's attempt to play all the Janaceks Janácek: Piano Works (Complete)

Perhaps it's unfair to compare Schiff to Firkusny, who actually knew Janacek and kept his music always close to his heart. I'm not intimating that Schiff does not know these pieces, but to the contrary, he brings a carefully studied and balanced performance of the pieces. However, the centerpiece of this disc, Janacek's piano sonata, is a disappointment. The first movement, "Presentiment", does not have the anger that Janacek intends. Janacek was a very programatic composer, and Schiff somewhat stifles the edgy passion of this movement. The second movement, "Death", is quite good in contrast. Schiff's Schubertian touch adds fine eloquence to this intense and despondent movement. "In the Mists" pieces are played with fine sensibility and sensitiveness, and other miniatures come off with lyricism, but be it his approach or the acoustics or the Bosendorfer piano that Schiff used... there just is no sense of passion, an element of unmediated emotion. Still, the benchmark is my well-traveled double disc Firkusny on Deutsche Gramophone, with a fine, thrillingly jagged account of the first movement of the sonata.

In this time of great tragedy in our nation, music helps ease the grief and anxiety we feel our souls. This phenomenal CD of piano music by the polish composer Leos Janacek, played by Andras Schiff, is hauntingly beautiful. The music plays to the heart.