Customer Reviews

Liszt by Nissman

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Nissman's account of the profound and many-sided B minor Sonata is all embracing - bravura where needed, high drama, poetic introspection in its slow movement and intellectual insight into its intricate web of thematic transformation. A winner. Her improvisatory approach to Rhapsody Espagnol is exactly right for the work's free fantasy. She nurtures Consolation No 3 (virtually a Chopin Nocturne) with intimately contoured melodic line. Clarity and elegance in her six Grandes Etudes de Paganini almost disguises their fierce technical demands. Nissman's clear background bravura never obscures foreground of melodic line and thematic detail. All is in perfect perspective. The consummate Liszt recital for me.

Having recently been bowled over by the newish recording of the Liszt B Minor Sonata by young Chopin Competition winner, Yundi Li, I was a little hesitant to begin listening to this CD which starts out with Barbara Nissiman's new sonata recording (she had recorded it once before more than fifteen years ago, as I recall). I needn't have been concerned. Her performance of this pinnacle of 19th-century piano writing is worthy. It is not as in-your-face as Argerich's Fleisher's or Horowitz's, nor as poetically bardic as Arrau's or Richter's. It is, in fact, rather similar to young Mr Li's in that there is virtuosity in abundance but not for its own sake, and there is poetry that does not get maudlin or solipsistic. This is not the most arresting performance I've ever heard - and there are some moments of sonic congestion - but it is certainly satisfying in a manner that doesn't call attention to itself. There are moments of great power and tenderly lyrical passages as well. Further, Nissman holds the ingenious architecture of this one-movement work in mind throughout; there is no vagueness, no meandering here. A very good performance.

Barbara Nissman is a specialist, at least as far as recordings are concerned, in the music of Prokofiev and Ginastera, and her way with them tends to be assertive. One might expect that she would be attracted to the more bumptious of Liszt's works, and indeed she does select the drearily virtuosic 'Rhapsodie Espagnole' as the second work on this recital (which, by the way, appears to have been recorded live at Duquesne University). She plays it well, but in my estimation nothing will ever save this piece of bombast that consists of rhapsodic variations on both 'La Folia' and the 'Jota Aragonesa.'

But then we come to the real jewel of this disc, the third of Liszt's 'Consolations,' in D flat major. Written at the same time Liszt was writing his biography of the recently dead Chopin, it sounds for all the world like a Chopin nocturne. Most pianists play it faster than Nissman. In my own collection the only pianist who comes close to the Nissman's melancholic and dreamy interpretation is Murray Perahia in his wonderful Aldeburgh recital disc. She takes a full minute longer than Bolet, for instance, at almost five minutes, and this is the most convincing performance I've heard. This is absolutely first-rate playing and I'm even tempted to say it is worth the price of the CD all by itself.

The disc concludes with the six 'Grandes Études de Paganini,' a mixed bag of music if ever there was one. By far the most famous, deservedly so, is the third, 'La Campanella.' Here I am a little dismayed by Nissman's rather lackadaisical approach. Usually this piece is played as a showpiece, and although Nissman's technique is never in doubt, the piece simply never catches fire as it does in the hands of pianists like Yundi Li or Minoru Nojima, as well as Richter and Bolet. Frankly, I've never been particularly fond of the other Paganini etudes, although the sixth, based on that so-familiar theme by Paganini, is very popular, as is the fifth 'La Chasse.' Nissman plays them all well; indeed 'La Campanella' is the only disappointment among them.

Scott Morrison