Search - Martha Argerich, Itzhak Perlman :: Beethoven: Kreutzer Sonata; Franck: Sonata

A disappointing performance for two stellar performers

R. Hicks | San Francisco, CA United States | 10/15/2008

(2 out of 5 stars)

"Neither performer is really up to their personal par on either piece, with perlman easing his way through both sonatas (although he does put forth a bit more effort on the Franck) and with argerich putting in sloppy and unmemorable performances on both. Her technique sounds muddled, lacks precision, and her phrasing in parts of the Franck is downright bizarre. I have my own opinions as to how the Franck should be performed, owning most of the recordings out there and having performed it myself. In this instance, it wasn't done justice with a half-hearted, quick run through by these two greats who seem to just want to get it done and get home. For an ultra-romantice, bipolar poetic piece that violently leaps from the depths of morbid depression to the ecstatic and ebullient heights of manic joy, the Franck demands quite a bit from both performers. I have to disagree with several of the reviewers here and say that the piece requires that quite a bit of liberty be taken with tempi throughout--as I mentioned, there's a manic bipolarity at play here and a certain flexibility is required to showcase it in its true "madness". That said, argerich and perlman put on a dynamically passable performance of it, but really fail to capture the essential, edgy passion of the piece. All in all, a forgettable CD. skip it."

Fussing over details at the expense of the whole will only d

Discophage | France | 05/04/2008

(3 out of 5 stars)

"OK, sure, this is a live concert (recorded on July 30, 1998 at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center), and in such occasions there is often a measure of give and take and risk-taking that may step over the line. But I think it is also a problem with Argerich, very similar with the piano to an interpretive quirk often remarked with Anne-Sophie Mutter on the fiddle: they want to charge the music with so much expression and make it such a "personal" statement that they start fussing over details and tampering with the written score. Does Argerich find the gently rolling 9/8 rhythm written by Franck in the first movement too simple and predictable that she needs to change the first bar into a binary pointed eighth-note sixteenth-note? And is it because she's got free rein (the first four bars are for piano alone) that she takes a tempo twice as slow as Perlman's when he finally enters? Sure, it establishes a nice, dreamy mood, but also a jarring discrepancy with Perlman's entry. Then when the music gets a bit tougher (1:36, "a tempo sempre forte and largamente") and the piano is again left alone, rather than maintaining a steady pulse Argerich starts brutalizing the lines as if it was, I don't know, Schumann's Piano Sonatas or Phantasie (which she has done so well) or already the Sonata's second movement. And as the two partners approach the climax around 3:50 they accelerate significantly, rather than just building tension through dynamics. YES, Franck's music does begin very simply, and that doesn't make it less beautiful and valuable, and you don't need to toss it around to make it expressive. I'm all for probing beneath the surface, but trying to unveil details that simply aren't there will only distort the piece's essence. Perlman and Argerich then hurl into the second movement at a faster pace still than Heifetz (in his second version, live from 1972, Heifetz Collection, Vol. 46: The Final Recital, even faster than the first one, 1937, with Rubinstein, Jascha Heifetz Recital), and with much turbulence, especially from Argerich - a little too much so I think for the music's underlying classicism, but after all this is the turbulent movement and it can take it. I wouldn't say that Perlman leads here, but he bravely rides the storm as very few could. Yee-haah! At the beginning of the third movement Argerich does it again, changing the rhythmic values - and throughout tempos are so distorted and played accordion with, it must be one of the ugliest readings of that movement I have heard. I had thought Heifetz was as fast as it would get - true, by a second (again Heifetz' farewell concert in 1972 is a few seconds faster than his 1937 recording), and Heifetz at least was consistent. The passage in sixteenth-notes starting at 2:26 feels rushed rather than flowing, and the ensuing meditative section at 3:23 exudes little sense of repose: anguish rather than meditation. I guess if you want to say something favorable you might argue that the approach exudes a welcome dramatic tension and Romantic turbulence. I s'pose the finale can take that kind of urgent approach and Argerich's Beethovenian (or is it Brahmsian?) muscularity - it highlights its exuberant, even turbulent joy. But again the pianist seizes any opportunity for vulgar spotlighting, such as at 1:55 when the left-hand intones the theme: rather than lovingly caress it, she just pounds - hey, look at me y'all, I'm there, it's me! Well, yes, she's there, and in the face of that kind of presence the missed chords at the end that another commentator has remarked are NOT what matters.



And, needless to say, mine is a minority view: judging from the applause, the audience seemed very, very happy. I do prefer the approach in Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata, but that may be because I have not done the same kind of thorough comparative listening as with Franck.



Perlman left historical versions of Franck's (in 1968, Franck/Brahms: Violin Sonata/Horn Trio) and Beethoven's (1973-5) Sonatas (Beethoven: The Violin Sonatas), with Ashkenazy, and they remain the classics. This recording seems to me a showcase for the pianist rather than the fiddler - but it is a tribute to Perlman that he isn't dwarfed in the process. So this disc is really for the admirers of Argerich, and a testimony of her art - warts and all.

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