Search - Chopin, Liszt, Cziffra :: Georges Cziffra Piano Recital

I VOTE YES ON CZIFFRA'S CHOPIN

DAVID BRYSON | Glossop Derbyshire England | 10/05/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Aura's liner-note writer has a bee in his bonnet about Cziffra's Chopin-playing. He finds most of it too genteel and the etudes too virtuosic and Lisztian. He has some kind of a point with the first criticism, but I refute strenuously any such view of Cziffra's playing of the etudes, which to my ears is simply thrilling. There's a suspicion in my mind that Cziffra may have been leaning over backwards in many cases to escape criticism for something known as `virtuosity for its own sake' at some cost to the spontaneity, naturalness and even innocence that more than anything else mark him out. I mean even more than his virtuosity, which in all conscience is dumbfounding. He sounds more committed on some days than others, and I'm happy to say that the Liszt performances on this disc find him absolutely on fire. I am not an enthusiast for Liszt, but it is well known that he was a player completely out of the ordinary and I wonder whether I am hearing something of the same effect from his fellow Hungarian Cziffra. I never heard Cziffra in person, but I've seen him on film and his hands were literally a blur, too fast for the camera to capture the movement. I don't think I can ever recall hearing a wrong note from him, but what stays in my mind more than the speed and accuracy is the relaxed sense of it all, never the slightest hint of losing control of the rhythm or structure, an extraordinary rightness and imagination in his pedalling, but above all the ingenuous naturalness of a true child of the gods.



What you ought to find on this disc, assuming as I do that I've got the right one, is a recital broadcast on Italian radio in 1963 consisting of Chopin's F minor fantasy, B flat minor scherzo and B flat minor sonata; and Liszt's Rhapsodie Espagnole, Liebestraum # 3, polonaise # 2, Grand Galop Chromatique and the 6th Hungarian rhapsody. In the Chopin I suggest using a fairly high volume-setting and risk getting deafened by the applause. There is just a slight feeling that Cziffra doesn't like to let it rip too much, and it makes its maximum impact if one gives it as much immediacy as one dares. The F minor fantasy is fast, the opening march taken at much the speed Michelangeli used to take and the main section distinctly faster. The scherzo is very good but not to my ears quite the equal of Horowitz or Michelangeli, and Cziffra's playing of the sonata is a big favourite of mine. First of all I bless him for leaving out the repeats which I think this sonata is much better without. I don't find this performance quite as good as the studio recording I have from him, but I still like him better than anyone else in this work. The big chords towards the end of the exposition and recapitulation in the first movement are a touchstone for me - Michelangeli's rhythm has never sounded natural to me here in any of the various accounts I have from him and in general there is a sense of stress from most players at this point. With Cziffra, well, was there supposed to be some problem? His funeral march, a movement that I normally find tedious in the extreme, is by some margin the best I ever heard. In the last movement he is like nobody else. Again he doesn't quite convey the bleakness that is so memorable in his studio reading, he tones down the (unauthentic) eruption near the end, and even he can't erase the memory of Michelangeli in this strange movement, but it's a magnificent reading all the same.



In the Liszt he is in his element. The main section of the Liebestraum is beautiful and affectionate, but the focus is on virtuosity, and the chutzpah-index is nearly off the scale. I gather that he reaches top speed in the closing Hungarian rhapsody earlier than the composer indicates, but who cares in a piece like this? The sheer sense of effortlessness is breathtaking throughout the whole second part of the recital.



The recorded quality is perfectly good although naturally not up to what we have got used to in the third millennium. I have rather a liking for the Aura liner-note writer. He is discursive to the point of vagrancy, I find him over the top in his general view of Cziffra's Chopin, but he genuinely has something to say and when it comes to liner-notes I can forgive a lot for that."