Search - Max Reger :: Reger: Bach Variations; Piano Concerto No.1 [Germany]

INSPIRATION vs PERSPIRATION

DAVID BRYSON | Glossop Derbyshire England | 07/30/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Reger's centenary came around in the same year as Rachmaninov's did. When every other major virtuoso was spotlighting Rachmaninov in recitals in 1973 Serkin, who had been a personal friend of Rachmaninov, decided to spotlight Reger instead. He had tried to do this early in his American career, regaling his audiences with this or that turgid masterpiece until the New York critics sent him the message that Chaucer's recitation had been sent during the Canterbury pilgrimage `For Goddes sake, enow!'



Serkin can almost convince me that Reger was within striking distance of being a great composer. He was the living disproof of Bach's claim, the least credible that a great composer ever made, `If you had worked as hard as I have you would be as good a composer as I am.' Much of what hard work could do in the total absence of melodic talent Reger probably achieved. However lack of melodic talent does not mean lack of any talent, and Reger's best work has real depth and quality in its own way. Some of the greatest music by Bach and even by Brahms is totally devoid of lyricism, stupendous though their lyric endowment was, so it is not a precondition for fine music. This recording of the concerto dates from 1959 when Serkin was at the height of his powers, and the performance of the Bach variations, from 1984 when he was 81, shows the striking change that his way of playing underwent in his last couple of decades. He had grown out of sympathy with his own earlier style. In his later manner we no longer hear the sudden thrusts of that mighty left hand or the characteristic way he had of snatching at strong beats. He had slowed down in general, and the special electricity that his playing once generated is much less evident. What he had not lost was his technique, and there is a new mellifluousness in the touch. Moreover, something that he did not forsake was the enormous dynamic range that had always made him particularly difficult to record. The engineers' answer to this was nearly always to restrict the extremes, and so it remains in this account of the variations, as I can testify from having heard Serkin play them in London in 1973. The volume he produced at the start of the fugue was minuscule, although I'm sure it could have been heard right to the back of the Festival Hall. The volume at the end of the fugue was stupefying, and in general I recommend listening to this performance with a fairly high volume-setting to get something of the effect as it was in real life. It will help capture, for one thing, the sustained left hand octave at the end of the second variation, where the diminuendo that is inherent in a piano seems not to happen.



What is strikingly different between the two performances on this disc is that the concerto has a virtuoso `feel' to it while the variations do not. This is not some difference in technical grip, it's in the approach to the music. We are all familiar with routine stuff from liner-notes to the effect `Maestro X brings great technical accomplishment to this music without ever descending to mere virtuoso display'. I myself am far less disdainful of virtuoso display than some talk as if they are, Reger's piano writing, though often enormously difficult, is not like Liszt's, and Serkin of all the great virtuosi would be the least likely to debauch any music he played for reasons of ostentation. Nevertheless there is a colossal virtuoso despatch to his playing in the concerto of a kind that he seems to be consciously avoiding in the variations. I'm far from suggesting that any inwardness is missing from the concerto still less any power, when required, from the variations. It is simply that the variations are played by a man who has four score years of life's experience behind him. He is not the man he was when he recorded the concerto and he has a different message for us.



There is a very French liner-note by Andre Tuboeuf, translated into very French English and probably best read with Gallic hand-gestures. The recording of the variations is very good, and it can take being played at a highish volume, which is what I recommend. The recording in the concerto is not so good, with a fair amount of tape-hum here and there, notably at the start of the slow movement, but it is not bad by any means. I can't really envisage any record being issued under such a title as `Reger's greatest hits'. However I did notice that the variations were partly recorded on my own birthday. As a birthday present from the piano player who has inspired and edified me throughout my life more than any other this is a welcome surprise indeed. By way of making some small return to Serkin's shade I shall say what I find in all sincerity to be true, namely that this is music that rewards sympathetic listening, played with a deep understanding that I suspect is probably unequalled."