Customer Reviews

Tchaikovsky: 18 Pieces

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

 

 

Tchaikovsky's solo piano music is seldom played in concert and infrequently recorded. As a previous reviewer wrote, Pletnev is very comfortable in this idiom - sometimes too much so. He has a fantastic technique and can at times be glib - in the way he brings out the left-hand melody in the Valse Bluette, for example. There is more to be grateful for than to complain about here, though - both in the music and the performing. Ballet fans will want to hear this disc, by the way, because 3 of these pieces - the Valse Bluette, L'Espiegle and Un Poco di Chopin - were orchestrated after Tchaikovsky's death and became part of the score of the revised "Swan Lake" mounted in St. Petersburg in 1895. Pletnev (and Deutsche Gramophon) are to be thanked for reviving this lively, often beautiful and unjustly neglected music.

Mikhail Pletnev understands his birthright Russian music as well as any keyboard artist before the public today. Though his repertoire is vast and includes most of the major works for piano alone, piano in duet (as in his miraculous collaboration with Martha Argerich), and in concerto with orchestra, here he entertains us in a lovely performance of the not well known Morceaux (18) for piano, Op. 72 from Tchaikovsky's later years. They are light and airy and demanding of fine technique and Pletnev plays them in a conversational mood.

Pletnev seems to feel equally at home in the dust and thunder mode as in the quietly elegiac zones and even finds the humor in some of these tasty little show-off works. Each piece is molded autonomously and yet he makes the series of 18 somehow fit together as though they were conceived as a unit.

As an added nod to the audience Pletnev offers Chopin's Nocturne No. 20 in C sharp minor is a smoothly elegant fashion that makes us wish a second CD of all of the Nocturnes was included! A fine recital by a fine pianist. Grady Harp, July 06

Mikhail Pletnev recorded a set of Tchaikowsky piano pieces for Melodiya (SUCD 10--00048) twnety years ago. This new album is more mature (both the music and the performer). This extraordinary pianist has the broadest repertoire I know: Sonatas by C.P.E. Bach, unknown fugues by Grieg, Haydn Sonatas and Concerti, Mozart Concerti, Schumann masterpieces, wonderful performances of Chopin and my own favorites; Scarlatti Sonatas and Scriabin Preludes (even better than Horowitz). What a gift to those who love this piano music. Now, if I can only get him to play my own music!

Jon H. Appleton

Arthur R. Virgin Professor of Music

Dartmouth College

http://eamusic.dartmouth.edu/~appleton/

I found a recording of a few of these pieces and I was so taken with them that I tried to get the sheet music of the whole set. My sheet music supplier finally tracked it down in Japan and being a poor pianist I have spent a long time trying to learn one of them. (Meditation.) To my surprise, I found this Pletnev disc of the whole set

in my local record store. I was surprised how beautiful and exciting these pieces are. Many, but not all are well beyond my pianistic skills. The last piece of the set, a wild Russian dance is incredible. Pletnev plays them all beautifully. This disc is now one of my favourite Piano discs, even though a few months ago they were unknown to me.

This is a very welcome addition to my collection of out-of-the-way 19th century piano music. The 18 pieces here date from the last year of the composer's life. `Musical pancakes' was his own humorous description of music he said he was only doing for the money, although he also declared that he was finding the work easier and more congenial as he went along. Not only are the pieces new to me, this disc marks the debut of Mikhail Pletnev in my cd-library, so I had high expectations.

The expectations have been partly fulfilled. Pletnev finds Tchaikovsky easy, and there is no doubt of his technical grasp. The idiom comes naturally to him, and many things he does here are really very pretty, like the echo-effect in the 13th number. In general though I have to call his playing assured rather than really distinguished or distinctive. I would have welcomed rather more refinement in his touch here and there. The tone of some big chords is slightly coarse, for instance. Right-hand runs in the scherzo or the `characteristic dance' could have done with a bit more `bite' to them, in the trills throughout it doesn't do to recall how Gould or Michelangeli handle that sort of thing, and the final avalanche of notes in the polonaise is really rather suggestive of emptying a sack of coal. Whether the recording has something to do with this I'm not certain, but I suspect not to any great extent - it sounds very faithful in general.

The novelty and intrinsic interest of the pieces more than make up for any of that. They are Tchaikovsky-without-tears, and very pleasantly varied. Two of them avowedly suggest Schumann and Chopin, and the `elegiac song' is reminiscent of something I know well by Liszt. By and large, I think that if I had heard these pieces played without attribution to their composer I would have had to guess who that might have been but would not have been surprised when I found out. They don't seem to me quite as good as some really delightful numbers by Smetana that I recently acquired on a 2-disc Brilliant Classics set performed by Antonin Kubalek and Peter Schmalfuss, but any problem that might have given me is solved by owning both.

The liner-note is mainly small-talk, but at least it tells us something about the pieces, and the recording is perfectly acceptable. This was a live recital quite recently in Zurich, and the enthusiasm of the applause suggests that the audience had fewer reservations about what they just heard than I have, so perhaps you too will be less qualified in your appreciation. As an encore Pletnev gives a Chopin nocturne, and my thoughts about that are along much the same lines as my thoughts about his Tchaikovsky. One can afford to be very critical these days, and this is a recital I'm thoroughly pleased now to own.

One of the many wonders about classical music is the fact that it continues to flourish in spite of much more aggressive promotion from the pop side - sure,classical music is also advertised but nothing compared to space that media uses for pop stars. Being lover of classical music is almost like being a member of some cult - you keep focused on what you like and ignore the rest. Unfortunately sometimes its simply impossible to keep the track of what's new on the market,because there is such embarrassment of riches out there that often one does not know where to start. With my nomadic life and constant traveling, most of the time I feel like being out of space because there are constantly new albums released and I have no clue about them.

This is where "Gramophone" comes in the picture.

This wonderful magazine covers monthly what is new in classical music,criticizes and recommends new albums,often selecting the-best-of-the-month recordings and thanks to "Gramophone" I had discovered many recordings I would definitely not know otherwise. They selected "Méditation" from this album as recommended piece and boy did I like it,I thought it was the one of the prettiest piano pieces ever,so naturally it ended up in my shopping basket the moment I saw it. The liner notes were of the great interest,since they point at the strange fact that composer himself never thought much about his piano oeuvre : "I'm producing them for money" Tchaikovsky wrote,comparing them to "musical pancakes" but thankfully pianist Mikhail Pletnev takes these piano pieces with utmost care and love,defending them against composers own doubts. Yes,it is cute and perhaps sentimental music that belongs to some intimate salon but it has a undeniable beauty and artist's approach is of such virtuoso that it uplifts everything. Just listen the finale of "Polacca De Concert",Pletnev is simply dazzling!

On the other hand,I really enjoyed quieter,more reflective pieces like "Dialogue" or before mentioned "Méditation" so perhaps I actually like "salon music" whatever that might be.

Tchaikovsky's 18 pieces op.72 were written (or at least compiled) in the last year of his life. The 18 miniatures are all freestanding works with little or no thematic or stylistic connection, or can at least be listened to separately without missing anything. Still, listening to them in sequence still makes for a variegated and enjoyable experience. None of them can really be called masterpieces; they are rather high-quality salon pieces that melodically and harmonically draw on Chopin and Schumann as much as Tchaikovsky's own style. Some of them are technically rather challenging, but that is of course no obstacle to Pletnev.

Pletnev often chooses rather slow tempi, though there is nothing leisurely about the approaches. In fact, if I have one major complaint about his performances, it is that he often seems to overemphasize the music or tries to convince the listener that the music has deeper layers that simply aren't there. This means, for instance, that there are certain tempo fluctuations within single pieces and a certain emphasis on details that the music cannot really sustain without becoming manieristic and (occasionally) almost bizarre-sounding. In other words, a more straightforward approach would have been welcome in certain places.

Still, this is often captivating, poetic playing, and it is usually quite engaging. The recording is a live one (there is some extraneous sounds from the audience in between), and it is relatively dark and deep, though not murky. We also get an encore in the form of Chopin's c sharp minor Nocturne, a fine, poetic performance. To sum up, I am hard pressed to call this release an "essential release"; the music is rewarding and will provide plenty of enjoyment, but it will probably not leave much of a lasting impression. Caveats apart, Pletnev's accounts are mostly convincing as well, and I have no real qualms about recommending them.

Most people agree that the CD is a welcome improvement over the long playing record. For one thing, we usually do not start hearing snaps, crackles, and pops after a third or fourth playing. There is at least one downside, however. Modern day CDs can hold 80 minutes or even a tad longer of music. The long play record, for the most part, could handle about 25 to 30 minutes or so per side. Much beyond this and the prospects of center groove distortion became real. These time constraints limited slow play! Both the artists and the engineers were well aware of these constraints and they learned how to phrase the music and bring out its emotional depths without dawdling and lollygagging. This resulted in great performances that did not seem like all day suckers. The CD gives the modern classical solo artist or conductor 25 to 30 minutes more time than a LP and, sadly too often, it becomes dawdle time.

In Michael Ponti's Tchaikovsky Complete Piano Music, the 18 Op72 pieces were recorded in 52.5 minutes. The notes to these performances actually point out the shortness of these pieces and "only two (Nos. 7 and 10) run as long as 5 minutes or more."

Too bad Mr. Pletnev did not read these notes. If he were on the PGA tour, he would have been a hole or two behind the next group and the officials would have put him on the clock for slow play. His performance is almost a dozen minutes slower than Ponti's and it drags. What surprised me was that this was a live performance and apparently the audience buzz and electricity had a calming, not invigorating, effect on Mr. Pletnev.

He did seem to wake up on Op72/18 the last of the 18 pieces and found some vigor returning to his fingers. Maybe Mr. Pletnev realized that after hole 18 (Op72, # 18) comes "Miller Time" and the 19th hole.