Latest / The Piano Maven with Jed Distler / Thanksgiving Turkeys

Transcript

Thanksgiving Turkeys · The Piano Maven with Jed Distler

0:00
This is Jed Dissler and welcome to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast guide to piano
0:13
recordings. Actually, today's guide won't be exactly friendly. I don't think so because
0:23
it's Thanksgiving and when it comes to Thanksgiving, the first word that comes to mind is
0:29
turkey. So I'm going to be talking about some genuine turkeys for Thanksgiving, if you know
0:39
what I mean. We're first going to talk about a Beethoven concerto cycle with pianist Valery
0:46
Afanasiev and the Mozartium Orchestra of Salzburg conducted by Hubert Soudon. And it was issued by
0:57
Ohms Classics. This is probably the most vile and odious Beethoven concerto cycle ever released
1:07
on CD. Afanasiev's tempos, first of all, are so damn slow and his playing is impossibly heavy
1:19
and over articulated. You just have to listen to how he articulates the fourth concerto finale's
1:27
broken phrases with such exaggerations of the syncopation. It sounds like a bunch of drunken
1:35
dancers in a conga line. I just couldn't believe it when I heard this. And then when I reviewed
1:42
the disc in this cycle that contained the third and emperor concertos, I wrote the following,
1:49
and I don't think I could describe it more succinctly than in these words. Valery Afanasiev's
1:56
cumbrous pianism. Did I really write the word cumbrous? I guess I did. His cumbrous pianism
2:05
represents the Teutonic Beethoven school at its pounding nadar as the first movement cadenza and
2:14
much of the rondo bear out. Afanasiev's rhythmic gear shifts and the emperor concertos unaccompanied
2:23
piano cellos serve no structural, rhetorical, or expressive purpose other than to merely be
2:31
different. Basically the orchestra just functions as a doormat and this conductor just allows this
2:40
pianist to do whatever the hell he wants. I think this is probably the second most
2:45
unlistening Beethoven concerto cycle in the catalog. The booby prize, of course,
2:51
goes to the period instrument performances of Arthur Schundevurd where he plays on a
2:59
period instrument and he uses a minimum number of musicians to a part. And these recordings
3:06
sound as if they were recorded in a tiny closet or maybe even a sardine can. So you see that's
3:14
not a recommendation, it's rather an anti-recommendation. Now let us behold what is
3:22
potentially the worst Schubert piano music recording in the history of planet Earth. It
3:29
features Simon Bartow playing the Schubert impromptus, the 6th Momomusico, and the G major
3:37
sonata, Deuces no. 894. The sonata just swoons all over the place or else it sputters and fits
3:47
and starts. I mean it's the most discontinuous self-serving interpretation of this piece I've
3:53
ever heard. Most of the impromptus and Momomusico are vulgarly over articulated, over stressed,
4:03
dynamically exaggerated, and highlighted in multicolored ink so that no dullard will miss
4:12
every obviously highlighted point. I mean this playing is beyond micromanagement and I'm saving
4:22
actually the worst detail for last. Have you ever had a perverse desire to hear that sublime G-flat
4:30
impromptu in the first book of impromptus stretch out to 12 minutes and 14 seconds,
4:38
which is twice as long as the longest performances tend to be? I mean this is pure musical sadism,
4:47
and you know how the great pianist Sveta Slav Richter used to liken the recording studio to
4:53
a torture chamber? Well here is Simon Bartó in the role of the Lord High Executioner,
5:01
and after listening for only 30 seconds or so I start to shout out, I confess, I confess. I mean
5:11
you just have to hear this recording to believe it, my goodness. Now we come to the most inexplicable
5:19
rendition of Mussorgsky's pictures at an exhibition on the piano of recent times. It features pianist
5:27
Katja Buniat-Tishvili. I had been duly warned about this recording by several colleagues, but
5:36
I thought, wait a minute, it can't be more willful or perverse than the pictures at an
5:43
exhibition from Ivo Pogorelič or Maria Iudina, right? Well, yes it can be more unbelievably
5:52
impossible than their recordings. Katja Buniat-Tishvili cannot get through a single movement of pictures
6:01
without defacing each movement with interpretive graffiti. I mean the promenades are fitful and
6:08
twitchy, and her slow and really flaccid tempo reduces the old castle to a pile of dust,
6:17
and her super super slow and heavy-handed bidlow movement gets even slower toward the end, which is
6:27
exactly the opposite of what Mussorgsky indicates. And of course this pianist has to play the ballet
6:34
of the unhatched chicks faster than anyone on record, and it doesn't sound so much like a ballet
6:41
as a Keystone Cop's chase sequence in a silent movie. And what is with this pianist's long long
6:50
long pauses between sections in Samuel Goldenberg and Schmoyel? It is true, granted, that this pianist
7:00
brings out clever inner voices in the marketplace at Limoges, but because she works too hard over
7:08
making interpretive points, the music just stops in its tracks and there's very little continuity.
7:16
However Buniat-Tishvili's worst transgression occurs in Cummortuis in lingua mortua, where when the
7:27
promenade theme comes in, she plays it not in B minor as written, but in B major. I mean I've
7:38
never seen any printed edition of the score. Oh you hear all the sirens in the back? I think that's the
7:46
Urtext police on their way to arrest this pianist. You hear that? You see I'm not recording in a
7:53
professional studio here. I'm recording this in my home studio. You see you get all the kitchen secrets.
8:00
But anyway back to this very bizarre misreading. I've never seen any printed edition of pictures
8:07
and exhibition that indicates anything but B minor, so I'm wondering how could such a blatant
8:16
misreading go by without having been corrected? I mean did this pianist's producer even notice
8:23
or even care? I have absolutely no clue. In a way I feel a little bad about giving a Golden
8:33
Turkey Award to this cycle of the 32 Beethoven piano sonatas that came out on a small label
8:42
that doesn't seem to have a name, but it's a really awful Beethoven cycle and I feel bad for
8:52
saying so, but you know it is out there and the pianist did sign off on it. I found this cycle for
9:00
something like ten dollars at a thrift store and it's one of the crown jewels of my collection
9:08
because when I have pianist colleagues come over to the house usually I like to play them wonderful
9:13
recordings that perhaps they didn't know about, but they always light up in anticipation when I
9:20
tell them that I'm about to play them a sample of the worst Beethoven piano sonata cycle ever
9:28
thrust onto the market. The pianist is the late Greek musician Rita Bubulidi. She actually made a
9:38
very nice disc in the mid 1950s I think for the Erato label. I think it was on a 10 inch LP and
9:46
it had music of Schumann and Brahms. It's very good and you can hear this on YouTube, but around
9:53
1980 or 1981 or something like that Rita Bubulidi came out with an LP that contained the most
10:03
lugubrious Brahms piano concerto number one on record. I mean it was so lugubrious that it
10:10
made even Simon Bartow's later mauling of this piece on the Capriccio label sound like
10:19
Leon Fleischer or Rudolf Sagan by comparison. Rita Bubulidi wanted so badly to be recognized
10:28
as a serious Beethoven interpreter and she certainly was serious about her business. I
10:34
remember hearing her play a Beethoven concert that I think was part of a complete cycle that
10:40
she gave in 1985 at New York's Greenwich House and I remember that she seemed very sincere and
10:49
very focused but she was also really struggling quite a bit. And in these recordings she does
10:56
get through the notes sometimes by the skin of her teeth but she does play the notes. But to be
11:03
honest there's hardly one sonata that is either not way under tempo or just plain effortful or
11:12
even unmusical or just simply ponderous in expression and execution. And I feel really bad
11:21
but you know she did sign off on these recordings and they really are totally uncompetitive.
11:29
You know there's this story about how when Rita Bubulidi was recruited to play Ned Rorum's third
11:36
piano concerto in New York and this is a very demanding piece and Jerome Lowenthal had premiered
11:44
this piece and he made a dazzling recording of it. Anyway Ned Rorum went to coach Rita Bubulidi
11:51
in the concerto and he heard her play and then he told her that her tempos were half the tempo
11:58
that they should be. Anyway she said something to Ned Rorum like oh but your harmonies are so
12:05
beautiful that you really do have to take the piece very slowly something like that. Ned Rorum
12:11
did not buy that and he said to her you just got to practice. So did she practice? I imagine
12:20
she did but many years later when I asked Ned Rorum about this particular performance
12:27
he told me that it had transpired pretty much as he had expected or perhaps just as he had feared.
12:36
So anyway you get an idea of what to expect from Rita Bubulidi's Beethoven Sonata cycle.
12:44
If you find a cheap copy of it grab it for at least curiosity value but if you see it selling for
12:52
selling for like more than fifty dollars ninety dollars even more than fifteen dollars I don't
13:01
know I wouldn't spend a lot of money on it. Anyway I wish you a happy and peaceful and restful
13:10
and bountiful Thanksgiving and I hope that the turkey you are having with your family meal
13:18
is much better than these Thanksgiving turkeys I've been speaking about on this episode.
13:26
This is Jed Disler and you've been listening to the Piano Maven your friendly podcast guide to
13:33
piano recordings. I'm afraid I wasn't all that friendly for this particular guide. Usually I'm
13:39
very friendly. Anyway I look forward to being with you next time.