COMPOSERS: Liszt/Schumann/Brahms
LABELS: DG Galleria
WORKS: Piano Sonata in B minor; Hungarian Rhapsody
PERFORMER: Martha Argerich (piano)
CATALOGUE NO: 437 252-2 ADD (1971/60)
A stunning reissue, though Argerich sometimes allows her unsurpassed technical brilliance to get the better of her imagination. The Liszt Sonata, recorded in 1971, is not the best thing on the disc, because Argerich exaggerates its contrasts and diminishes the work’s seriousness by sensationalism. Her ease and brilliance in the magnificent Schumann Sonata are, arguably, equally self-defeating; the outer movements just race by with too much facility. Yet the slow second movement is exquisitely spun, and similarly, in the softer passages of Brahms’s B minor Rhapsody, recorded back in 1960, Argerich achieves subtleties of shading one hardly thought possible. The recordings are brilliant, if a little thin. Adrian Jack
Liszt/Schumann/Brahms
A stunning reissue, though Argerich sometimes allows her unsurpassed technical brilliance to get the better of her imagination. The Liszt Sonata, recorded in 1971, is not the best thing on the disc, because Argerich exaggerates its contrasts and diminishes the work’s seriousness by sensationalism. Her ease and brilliance in the magnificent Schumann Sonata are, arguably, equally self-defeating; the outer movements just race by with too much facility.
Our rating
4
Published: January 20, 2012 at 2:37 pm