CharmNewton wrote: ↑Sun Aug 01, 2021 5:39 pm
I couldn't remember hearing any of Ms. Biret's recordings, but it turns out I have three of her Naxos CDs (two of which are music of Brahms and the other containing the three sonatas of Pierre Boulez--I must have been feeling adventurous on that trip to Rose Records
).
I have that Biret Boulez Naxos cd as well, the only recording of hers I have.What possessed me I no longer recall. Can you imagine ending a recital with that 2nd Sonata ?! Pollini did in 2007.From the NYT:
By Allan Kozinn
May 1, 2007
The degree to which structure and symmetry matter to the pianist Maurizio Pollini is evident in the two programs he assembled for his Carnegie Hall recitals this season. The first, on Sunday afternoon, balanced two standard repertory composers, Chopin and Debussy, against a modernist, Pierre Boulez. The second, scheduled for May 12, is built similarly, with Beethoven and Schumann from the standard canon, and Karlheinz Stockhausen as the contemporary voice. The composers on the first program all worked in Paris, although one (Chopin) was an immigrant. On the second, the composers are all German, although one (Beethoven) moved to Vienna.
Not surprisingly, Mr. Pollini’s program on Sunday offered internal structural niceties as well: most striking, a sense of expansion in dynamics, textures and harmonic complication. He played the opening Chopin group as a gradual crescendo that began with a whispered rendering of the C sharp minor Prelude (Op. 45) and grew more assertive through the Ballade No. 2 and two Nocturnes (Op. 27, Nos. 1 and 2). By the time he finished the C sharp minor Scherzo (Op. 39) and headed into the A flat Polonaise (Op. 43), he was at full power, producing his richest and sometimes steeliest sound.
Perhaps more to the point, Mr. Pollini’s path from the prelude to the polonaise also took the listener from simple, direct readings in which a melody line rang out over accompaniment figures to a rich-hued pianism in which textures were thick but transparent, and in which the tyranny of the bar line was swept aside in favor of a rubato driven by the passions.
Six works from Debussy’s Études, Book 2, let Mr. Pollini push the harmonic clock forward to lay the groundwork for the Boulez Sonata No. 2. If Mr. Pollini’s readings of Debussy were sometimes drier and more analytical, the sheer power and virtuosity he brought to these studies generally matched that of his Chopin playing.
And then there was the Boulez, a four-movement monster of a work that is said to be modeled on Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” Sonata but moves so far afield that likenesses are hard to find without poring over the score in search of them. Links to Debussy are clearer: Mr. Boulez’s lines hop around the keyboard with a vigorous pointillism that recalls that of the Debussy études.
In Mr. Pollini’s muscular reading, the work had much of the drama of Chopin as well. And the suddenly gentle writing of the final bars brought the recital back to the delicacy of the opening Chopin prelude.
You might think that a program ending with the intensity of the Boulez Sonata would need to go no further, but Mr. Pollini played half an hour of encores. Particularly striking were a grandly phrased account of Debussy’s “Cathédrale Engloutie” and a graceful reading of Chopin’s “Raindrop” Prelude.
