Grieg: Piano Sonata, 7 Fugues, Lyric Pieces (Mikhail Pletnev)

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Grieg: Piano Sonata, 7 Fugues, Lyric Pieces (Mikhail Pletnev)

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Grieg: Piano Sonata, 7 Fugues, Lyric Pieces / Pletnev
Deutsche Grammophon | 03 Jan. 2000
Lossless: EAC | ape (img+cue) | log| 196 MB
Lossy: EASY CD-DA Extractor | mp3 | 256 kbps | 136 MB

There are fewer Lyric Pieces here than on Gilel's classic DG recording, which has held sway for more than a quarter of a century. But Pletnev finds room for the E minor Sonata, the Carnival Scene, and seven early Fugues. He brings great delicacy, control of keyboard colour and freshness to Grieg's youthful Sonata, which can be recommended alongside Andsnes (Virgin). The Fugues are student exercises from Grieg's Leipsig years, but Pletnev succeeds in making them sound like music. This CD is likely to be the next quarter of a century what Gilels was to the last.
Penguin Guide 2008

Pletnev provides scrupulous and sensitive advocacy for Grieg, including his previously unrecorded Fugues, in exceptional DG sound.
It is heartening when artists of international stature take Grieg under their wing, their musical faith undiminished by the hostile and patronising attitudes of those who equate Grieg with little more than easily palatable or domestic virtues. Thankfully Debussy's dismissal of Grieg as 'a pink fondant stuffed with snow' has changed over the years from bane to joke.
Mikhail Pletnev's recital ranges from the early, unwieldy but engaging E minor Sonata to the Fugues and a shrewd selection from Grieg's confessional diary, his Lyric Pieces. Composed in Leipzig in 1861-62, recently discovered and here receiving a world-premiere recording, the Fugues find Grieg most oddly attired, and doffing his mortarboard, so to speak, to the groves of Academe. But whether brisk, contemplative or quirky (No 6), all seven are played with impeccable clarity and musicianship. Hardly a pianist to wear his heart on his sleeve, Pletnev none the less combines his legendary cool head and crystalline technique with frequent flashes of poetry and affection.
He is generous and comprehensive in Vanished Days, music at once radiant, dark, introspective and joyful, finds an undertow of melancholy in the Brooklet's chatter (dismissed in the inadequate insert-note as 'a peacefully idyllic, leggero study'), is audaciously improvisatory in Melody and almost palpably warms to the central oasis of calm in March of the Trolls. His Grandmother's Minuet, too, wittily suggests a slightly tipsy as well as spry old lady. You may occasionally miss that 'world of intimate feeling' so unforgettably conjured by Pletnev's compatriot, Emil Gilels (DG, 2/97), but all these performances are of special calibre, at once scrupulous and sensitive. DG's sound is no less exceptional.
– Bryce Morrison, Gramophone [5/2000]

Although his best music is contained within small forms, Edvard Grieg was no slouch when it came to delivering substantial larger-scaled works such as the Piano Concerto and the Violin Sonatas. His early E minor Piano Sonata, however, has more padding than sustained invention, save for the bristling, concentrated finale. Mikhail Pletnev brings supercharged yet amazingly controlled virtuosity and architectural sweep to each movement, making the music sound more urgent and substantial than it is. A group of seven fugues, written during Grieg's student days in Leipzig, are recorded here for the first time. Each one more or less ends at the very point you'd want the music to continue. There's not much you can do with these fugues but play them straight. And that's exactly what Pletnev does, with perky tempos and dry-point articulation à la Glenn Gould.
Lastly, a selection of Grieg's Lyric Pieces reveals the Norwegian composer at his most characterful and inspired, and the pianist in perplexing fettle. Pletnev fusses over and overphrases certain pieces, like Wedding Day at Troldhaugen and To Spring, sucking their uncomplicated lyricism dry. Likewise, Grieg's winged, graceful Papillon evolves into an iron butterfly via Pletnev's clipped, overtly worked out voicings. The pianist fares better with the more reflective selections. I'm especially taken with Bellringing (Op. 54 No. 6), where Pletnev's ravishing dynamic gradations cast a spooky aura around the music's stark, quasi-bitonal textures that reach out to Arvo Pärt's meditative style a century later. Deutsche Grammophon captures Pletnev's uneven yet undeniably individual artistry in sonics that are clear and impactive.
–Jed Distler (classicstoday.com)

Grieg is a curious case, a minor master who is probably best known for his piano concerto and Peer Gynt music, and is loved by amateur pianists who generally have copies of some of his Lyric Pieces and enjoy playing them. His string quartet and sonatas are heard from time to time, likewise some of the songs, and a rediscovered early symphony created a stir a decade ago. Three recordings are available and Grieg has generally been well served by the recording industry.
There is a notable CD devoted solely to Grieg's Lyric Pieces by no less a pianist than Emil Gilels [DG 449 721-2GOR] but this present, wisely devised, programme is a better introduction to his solo piano music in my view. There are no masterpieces, but several gems. The seven Fugues were student exercises from 1861, never published in his lifetime but neither were they repudiated or destroyed. They are clearly Bach derived and include an elaborate double fugue. Pletnev makes an excellent case for them and this, their first recording, is amply justified. These fugues also serve to remind of Pletnev's fresh approach to older music - his 1994 double-CD of thirty Scarlatti sonatas [EMI Virgin Classics VCD5 45123 2] is one of my favourite piano recordings, far more interesting (to me) than a more recent one by Perahia which gained a Gramophone award.
The four movement Sonata Op 7 of a few years later is rather a heavy affair which I have played without great enthusiasm, save for its peculiar so-called Minuet which, as the liner notes say, justifies its name 'only by dint of the time-signature'. That was included in a piano anthology which I have known since childhood. But under Pletnev's hands it is all clarified and lightened, and brought to vivid life - certainly well worth hearing and having recorded.
The cunning of this programme derives from the appreciation that the Lyric Pieces, Grieg's most important contribution to the piano literature, are best heard in fairly small groups; Pletnev gives us a dozen, which is enough. There are ten volumes, 66 pieces in all, in the tradition of romantic piano pieces by Schumann and Mendelssohn. They have titles suggesting extra-musical influences and some, such as To Spring and Butterfly are quite popular. The snag is that the majority are in a strict ternary form, which makes great demands upon the pianist's sensibilities if the predictable repeats are not to pall.
I was taught to savour Grieg's unique harmony, and to think back to it as if new-minted. Bellringing is positively avant-garde with its accumulation of parallel fifths (nearly twenty years before Debussy's Cathedrale engloutie). One of my own favourites, from the delightful Op. 57 book, is Vanished Days, described aptly by Joachim Dorfmuller as having outer sections 'melancholically dramatic and harmonically daring', framing an elegant springar. His essay puts the music in clear perspective, DG's studio recording is excellent.
Mikhail Pletnev demonstrates again and again that transcendent pianism is not just a matter of speed and prestidigitation; equally important is the voicing of chords and precise management of minute inflections of melodic shapes and overall rubato. In these performances one welcomes the repeats and I look forward to sharing my enjoyment of this marvellous CD.
– Peter Grahame Woolf (musicweb-international.com)