Search - Melvyn Tan :: Piano Sonatas

Chalk and Cheese

Leslie Richford | Selsingen, Lower Saxony | 02/09/2005

(2 out of 5 stars)

"Caught up in the period-instrument, historical-performance euphoria of the 80s and early 90s, I actually bought two fortepiano versions of Schubert?s posthumously published last great piano sonata, D. 960, one of them, recorded by Melvyn Tan for EMI in 1988, coupled with D. 959, the other, a much older recording by Jörg Demus for Deutsche Harmonia Mundi [ASIN: B00002587O], rereleased together with D.894. Despite the use of historical instruments (Melvyn Tan uses a modern copy of an 1814 instrument by Nanette Streicher of the kind that Beethoven is known to have played; Jörg Demus plays an unnamed instrument from the Museum of Musical History in Stockholm, Sweden), the two recordings are as different as chalk and cheese and, listened to one after the other, make out a cogent argument for NOT assuming that a historical instrument guarantees anything like an ?original? sound. For one thing, Melvyn Tan?s tempi are much faster than those of Demus, and he completes the sonata in about four minutes less than Demus needs, the Andante sostenuto alone being two minutes shorter. But it is not so much the tempi but the way of playing the fortepiano that really struck me. In the notes to the Demus edition, there is a quote from Schubert himself which I should like to offer in my own translation from the German: ?I played an excerpt from my new two-hand piano sonata, which I did not perform unhappily, as a number of those listening assured me that, under my hands, the keys became singing voices ? which, if it be true, makes me glad, because I cannot abide that accursed hacking indulged in even by excellent pianists, something that gives pleasure neither to the ear nor to the mind.? Comparing Demus with Tan, I could not avoid the conclusion that Demus was playing with lyrical expression, while Tan was ?indulging in that accursed hacking? (or chopping). The newer Tan recording is, of course, clearer (the Demus has the hissing of old tapes to contend with), but the way Tan attacks the keys and chops up Schubert?s lyrical and melodic ideas is, to my ears at any rate, ?something that gives pleasure neither to the ear nor to the mind.? ? It goes without saying that this applies equally to the other sonata on the disc. I am quite looking forward to hearing this delicate music on a modern instrument, at least if it is played as sensitively as Jörg Demus did all those years ago."