Search - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Claude Debussy, Frederic Chopin :: Emil Gilels Legacy, Vol. 6

Within a year of Emil Gilels's debut in Paris in 1954 (most of which is captured for posterity on Emil Gilels Legacy, Vol. 6), the pianist recorded the major items on the program in the studio for EMI. Comparison of those recordings (of sonatas by Mozart and Chopin and three preludes and fugues of Shostakovich), reissued a few years ago on Testament, with these live, unedited performances suggests that Gilels sounded much less interesting in the studio than he did in the concert hall. In his studio recording of Chopin's "Funeral March" Sonata, for example, Gilels, despite his singing tone and big style, seems afraid to let himself go, and the interpretation sounds inhibited. There is nothing sober or restrained about the way he played the piece in Paris. The interpretation is willful, imperious, and careless of risk. Doremi's versions of the Mozart sonata and the Shostakovich preludes and fugues make those on the Testament disc seem pickled in formaldehyde. The encores on this disc include an electrifying performance of the Busoni edition of Liszt's La Campanella. --Stephen Wigler