Search - Beethoven, Schumann, Bach :: Cziffra: Oeuvres de Beethoven, Schumann & Bach

DON'T JUST BELIEVE WHAT YOU'RE TOLD

DAVID BRYSON | Glossop Derbyshire England | 03/01/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Even by Cziffra himself who apparently said he couldn't play Beethoven, as he manifestly can on the evidence of this Waldstein. Another couple of things not to believe are to be found on the back of the disc-case - the first movement of the Waldstein is not played played `Andante cantabile con espressione' but `Allegro con brio' as marked by Beethoven; and Chopin's A flat polonaise does not take 16 minutes 26 seconds but roughly one-third of that time. Most importantly, the image of Cziffra that I was given during his lifetime, and which I still see repeated, as being some wild and wilful virtuoso contemptuous of composers' instructions is the most unmitigated rubbish I have ever read in my life. A more natural, less affected and less wilful player there can hardly ever have been.He was in danger of being type-cast as a Liszt specialist, something he found frustrating although it can hardly have surprised him. The final item on this 1963 live recital from Switzerland is a valse-impromptu in A flat, played with all the easy bravura command that one associates with Cziffra's Liszt. The first item is a big prelude and fugue by Bach in an arrangement by Busoni, and this is still the kind of thing that one might expect from the Cziffra of the usual depiction. Big-scale, effortless lion-of-the-keyboard playing of course, but with Cziffra it does to look out for some of his special characteristics. Try, if I may suggest, observing his pedalling, an aspect of his technique in which he seems to me unsurpassed and maybe unequalled. It is marvellously ingenious and imaginative, and so it remains throughout the entire recital. There are two Chopin polonaises, the E flat minor and the big A flat, this performance of the latter being now the fourth I have from him. They are both first-class, but it is very noticeable that Cziffra has far less tendency to exaggeration than Horowitz. One of the oddest things about this transcendental technician was that he was sometimes unshowy to the point of being downright demure. These polonaises are far from demure, rather they represent some sort of median-point in his Chopin style. To what extent he was influenced by the criticism he received for alleged `virtuosity for its own sake' (a concept I have never been able to attach any meaning to) I don't know, but it may be that he could have given his Chopin here some of the treatment he reserves for Liszt if he had not been so castigated, in the liner note with this record as well as on the set where he plays them, for excessive virtuosity in the Chopin studies. I seem to be in a minority but I'm still unapologetic in finding those performances superlative, and the only criticism I have of Cziffra's polonaises here is that they are not more like them.The rest of the recital consists of the Waldstein and Schumann's Carnaval. I would describe this Carnaval as excellent from start to finish, more along the lines of Rachmaninov's account than of the two I have from Michelangeli. I really got this disc to hear Cziffra in the German masters, and what I find about both his Beethoven and his Schumann is that his heart is in the works and, maybe even more importantly, he has got his head around them. Cziffra doesn't bring to Schumann the wonderful lyric warmth that Horowitz does, but his rubato is far more natural and spontaneous than Michelangeli's, marvellous though that titan is in his own very special ways. This Carnaval deserves a place among the best not just for the predictable excitement of the final three-legged march, but for the special sense of innocence that I associate with Cziffra. The grip on the tempo is absolute, the flexibility in the rhythm so essential in Schumann is unforced and Cziffra seems at home with the idiom in a way I could never ascribe to Michelangeli. The Waldstein is good without being my idea of outstanding. In general this performance is along the lines of the way Serkin used to do it, but without the tremendous heroic `punch' of Serkin. If that seems an odd comparison to you, try to hear Serkin in the opus 25 Chopin etudes and see who he reminds you of. The speeds are my idea of right, but typically Cziffra does not try anything controversial, unless you count omitting the first movement repeat. An odd touch of demureness comes at the second subject of the first movement where he hardly makes any swell at all in the tone, never mind observing the sforzando on the top note that everyone except Serkin seems afraid of. Nor does he risk unbroken pedal effects in the theme of the finale, but he does something very interesting with the glissandos at the end (I don't know what the liner-note writer is even talking about here). These are supposed to be `impossible' on a modern instrument, something nobody told Serkin who is simply out of this world, nor even Lupu who at least plays glissando. See what you make of Cziffra's solution. It's like nobody else's. The recording is perfectly adequate, the player is the most likeable super-virtuoso of them all."