Latest / The Piano Maven with Jed Distler / Brahms' Ballades Op. 10 on Disc

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Brahms' Ballades Op. 10 on Disc · The Piano Maven with Jed Distler

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This is Jed Dissler and welcome to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast guide to piano
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dialogue and discussion and for us to learn from one another.
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On this episode, I'm going to be discussing the four ballads, Opus 10 by Johannes Brahms.
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First I'm going to talk about the music a little bit and then about recordings devoted
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to the full cycle of four pieces.
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Of course there are pianists who have recorded these pieces on an individual basis, but I'm
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going to be talking only about pianists who've recorded the four Opus 10 ballads as a cycle,
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as a group.
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In October 1853, Robert Schumann wrote an article that praised the talents of a 20-year-old
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composer he had only just met named Johannes Brahms.
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However, Brahms' developing friendship with his new mentor would take on a tragic and
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foreshortened turn when in early 1854 Schumann's increasing mental illness led to his being
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institutionalized.
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And it was during this difficult time that Brahms composed his four ballads, Opus 10.
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Ballad number one was described as Brahms as, after the Scottish ballad Edward, which
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is to be found in Bishop Percy's Reliques, R-E-L-I-Q-U-E-S.
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Do I pronounce that correctly?
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Reliques or Relique-oos?
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Anyway, Reliques, it's called Bishop Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.
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Schumann wrote to his wife Clara from the asylum at Endenich in 1855.
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He wrote about this first ballad's strange newness.
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And the second ballad's gentle opening on Dante's section foreshadows, I think, the
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serenity that you find in many of Brahms' late chamber works and solo piano pieces.
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And again, Schumann was really enchanted by this second ballad.
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He wrote, how different, how diversified, how suggestive to the imagination.
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Magical tones are in it.
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The bass F sharp at the end seems to lead into the third, meaning the third piece.
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And the third ballad takes wing from stabbing, syncopated left-hand chords that propel the
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right hand's main theme.
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And the cantabile chorale-like middle section in the piano's high register provides a momentary
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but welcome respite from the demonic surroundings of the first and last sections.
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While the fourth ballad is the least overtly dramatic of the group, its meditative qualities
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reveal themselves through subtle contrapuntal elaboration, as well as a feeling of leisurely
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improvisation.
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I like the quote from Glenn Gould about the fourth ballad in an interview he gave to David
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DuBall.
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Glenn Gould wrote that, what endears it to me is that it is one of those relatively few
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works where Brahms lets his imagination, a sort of stream of consciousness process really,
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prevail over his sense of design of architecture.
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So let's get to talking about some recorded cycles of the four ballads, opus 10 by Brahms.
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In APR's seven-disc reissue of the great Dutch pianist, Egon Petri's complete recordings
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for the Columbia and Electrola labels, they included a previously unpublished recording
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of the ballads from 1945 made for Columbia.
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Egon Petri also recorded the ballads in the 1950s for the small-budget Allegro label.
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Generally, I find his playing direct and to the point, if a little matter of fact and
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maybe a little plain Jane.
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By contrast, there's more nuance and more of a feeling of repose in lyrical sections
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and a sense of where the lines are always moving.
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In the 1953 recordings by Wilhelm Kempf for DECA, I actually like these better than his
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later stereo remakes for Deutsche Grammophon.
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Although I do love the tonal richness and natural singing quality of Kempf's live 1972
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performance that was issued on the BBC Legends label.
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I imprinted on the Julius Ketchum recordings of the ballads released in 1966 and re-hearing
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them a half century later, I find that the rhythmic vivacity of number three and the
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central episode in number two still excite me to hear them.
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But I now find the first and fourth pieces kind of glib and facile.
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I think that Ketchum's basic tempo for number one is too brisk really for what the music
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is really about.
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And number four, I find lacks tenderness and introspection.
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I actually prefer a recording of the ballads by another American pianist that was issued
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not too long after Ketchum's originally was.
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And this is the recording by Earl Wilde for the Vanguard label.
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He's just as big a player as Ketchum, but he brings much more awareness of voice leading
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and poetic shadings to the music.
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And I think he's alive to each piece's character.
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So for those who think that Earl Wilde was no more than a flashy virtuoso, you're going
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to find a really serious and thoughtful musician at work here.
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In his book, Conversations with Aarau, Joseph Horowitz described Claudio Aarau's recording
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of the Brahms ballads as akin to a great leader singer projecting in a concert venue, whereas
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Wilhelm Kempf was akin to someone singing by the hearth, not exactly a folk singer,
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but someone with an untrained yet instinctively beautiful voice.
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Actually, I find the Aarau recordings to be more impulsive and volatile and rhetorical
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as if not so far removed from the bigness and the sheer ambition of those three Brahms
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piano sonatas, especially number three, the sonata I'm talking about.
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Aarau is fiery instead of warm, I think.
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And if you want warmth, however, without sacrificing structural backbone, I remain a big fan of
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the studio recording by Emmanuel Axe on Sony Classical.
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His version, I think, is every much as grounded and expressively proportioned as that wonderful
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Arthur Rubinstein version from around 1970.
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They are stylistically similar, Emmanuel Axe and Arthur Rubinstein.
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However, there was this extremely limited edition from 2005 capturing Emmanuel Axe live
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at the Lucerne Piano Festival playing the ballads.
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And I was actually at that concert and here, Emmanuel Axe just lets go much more and he
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adopts an uncommonly brisk yet never hectic pace for the fourth ballad.
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Edil Buret, the Turkish pianist, plays the fourth ballad even faster than Emmanuel Axe
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with a real feeling of one beat to the bar.
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Her interpretations of the first three pieces have a boldness and edginess that keeps your
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ears glued to whatever listening device you may be using.
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This is really fresh and spontaneous piano playing, in my opinion, and I was really happy
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to hear Edil Buret's Brahms ballads again.
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They've really got spunk, if you like spunk.
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And now we're going to get to two pianists who recorded the ballads for Deutsche Grammophon,
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but who also are represented in the catalog by very different live performances that they
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gave of these works.
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I've always thought Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli's recordings for Deutsche Grammophon, the studio
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recordings released in 1981, to be really meticulous and refined even though they're
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a little contrived at times.
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But there's a much more flexible and fluid live performance with Michelangeli from Lugano,
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recorded May 11th, 1973.
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And it was issued on the Aura label on CD.
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I don't know where you can source this recording now.
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I remember I first heard it when it came out in a double LP set on the label that later
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came to be known as Music and Arts.
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And this double LP also had from Lugano the Brahms Paganini variations, which are wonderful,
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and the Bach, Bussone, Chaconne.
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And I think there was a 1968 performance of Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit, but I had this
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double LP and I really loved it.
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And the other Deutsche Grammophon Brahms ballad cycle comes from Emil Gielel's.
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His interpretations fuse seriousness and smoothness, and the textural evenness and clear voicing
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suggest something of a modern building, more than a rustic cabin.
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And the music seems to almost speak for itself without interpretive intervention.
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And I think these recordings have held up pretty well in the five decades since they
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were recorded in 1975.
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But there are several live versions of the ballads with Gielel's that, to my mind, are
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more emotionally three-dimensional, less detached.
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I'm thinking about the BBC recording issued on the ICA label that preserves a performance
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in Staffordshire from March 22, 1979.
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Also the Salzburg Festival performance with Gielel's from August 9, 1976 that was issued
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by Orfeo.
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Those are good alternatives to the Deutsche Grammophon versions.
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Now we should talk about Glenn Gould's 1982 recording of the ballads.
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This disc came out after his death and generally it got mixed reviews.
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I have always liked it, although there are idiosyncrasies of articulation that you would
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expect from Glenn Gould.
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But there are some remarkable details.
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For instance, in the first ballad, the Edward Ballad, in the central section where Glenn
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Gould is playing three against two, a lot of pianists are very literal where you have
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the ba-ba-ba-bum, ba-ba-bum, ba-ba-ba-bum, bum-bum-bum.
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Gould slightly elongates the first beat of the triplet, bum-bum-bum-bum, da-da-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum.
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He doesn't do it consistently, but his slight inflections of the rhythm generate a lot of
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tension and really build to a fantastic climax.
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And that's a performance that I find really remarkable.
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The others I like just as well, but it's that detail in the first ballad that always struck
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me.
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I'm going to jump ahead a few decades to the late and much admired pianist Lars Vogt.
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And he actually left two studio recordings of the Brahms Ballads.
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The first one came out in 2001 on EMI, which is now Warner Classics.
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And it originally was coupled with the Piano Sonata No. 3 of Brahms.
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And these are good performances in and of themselves.
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But his remake of the ballads for the Omdien label, which was coupled with the Brahms First
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Concerto, was released in 2019.
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And I think that the remake of the ballads improves on the EMI version in every way.
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For instance, his slightly faster and more fluid tempo for No. 2 in the remake leaves
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much more of a unified impression.
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And by taking No. 3 ever so slightly slower, he's able to articulate the little notes with
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more point and precision.
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The dum-da-da-dum, dum-da-da-dum, dum-da-da-da-dum.
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They're lighter and cleaner, I think, or at least articulated in a clearer way in the
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remake.
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But the main difference is in the fourth ballad.
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The EMI performance is measured and sometimes emphatic to the point of heaviness, even being
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pretentious, I think, sometimes.
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But the remake is much quicker, it's much more supple, it's far more texturally transparent.
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So there was a real interpretive evolution that I hear.
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And I would recommend Laurie Voigt's Omdien remake of the ballads as a strong contender.
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And more recently on the Beast label, we have recordings from Jonathan Plowright and Alexandre
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Cantoraux.
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And I actually reviewed the Cantoraux disc for Gramophone, and I just looked up my review,
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and it's pretty specific in detail, so I'm going to quote it here if you don't mind.
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I wrote that throughout this Brahms recital, talking about the ballads, Alexandre Cantoraux
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throws down an epic gauntlet, casting his sights on dynamic and dramatic extremes.
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The pianist broods over the first ballad's andante and builds the central triplet section
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with such overwhelming ferocity that the music runs away from him.
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However, he is one of the few pianists to successfully articulate the staccatos as a
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true sotto voce upon the main theme's reiteration.
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When you hear these in the Glinguld recording, by the way, they just sound kind of pokey
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and exaggerated.
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So if you do a comparison, that would be kind of interesting for you.
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Let me get back to what I wrote about Cantoraux in Gramophone.
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Okay, here it is.
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I wrote that the ballad number two's distinctions between legato and detached phrases gain
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considerable intensity through Cantoraux's liberal yet clearly thought out rubato.
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Cantoraux adopts a slower tempo for number three's central F-sharp major episode, substituting
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desolation for delicacy.
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I find the pianist's orthodox gambit plausible, although others may not.
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Number four's phrases seem to float independently of each other in an improvisatory state of
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mind, oblivious to bar lines.
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Imagine a similarly free-floating yet less hectic parallel to the partial recording of
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this piece featuring Brahms' associate, Ilana Eibenschutz, and you'll understand what I
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mean.
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Okay, so that's my quote from my Gramophone review with Alexandre Cantoraux, and his interpretations,
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I think, are quite absorbing.
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I think that Jonathan Plowright's approach is relatively more conventional and contained
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and less iconoclastic compared to his label mate, but it's absolutely wonderful, solid
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and stylish playing, and I would recommend him alongside Emmanuel Axe and Arthur Rubinstein
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for this very straightforward yet warm and really beautiful thought out and heartfelt
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interpretation.
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So it's kind of hard for me to pick one out-and-out favorite among all of these recordings of
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the Brahms' ballads, but there is one particular edition that unfortunately is out of print
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that is one that I return to time and again.
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It features the Hungarian pianist Dészl Ronci.
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It was released on the Harmonia Mundi label several times.
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I have it on a 1994 reissue in Harmonia Mundi's mid-price Musique d'abord series, and it has
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this catalog number, HMA 1903082.
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It was recorded in Budapest in 1991, actually.
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These performances seem to fuse the best of what I like in many of these editions.
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He gets a true Brahmsian sonority that's built from the bottom up with strong attention to
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bass lines.
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There's a full list of texture that is also very transparent at the same time, and Dészl
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Ronci gives you solid but never rigidly held tempos that have a symphonic kind of cast
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about them.
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The fourth piece exemplifies what I always mean by controlled freedom, which is a cliché
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that I use to death.
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I say controlled freedom way too often.
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But I always sense from these performances that Dészl Ronci has the big picture in mind.
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Despite the attention to small details of articulation and balance, this is the kind
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of large-scale perspective that Egon Petrie often conveyed in Beethoven and in his recordings
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of the Brahms-Hendel variations and the Alkan Symphony and the Bach chromatic fantasy in
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fugue, but less so in his recordings of the Balades, curiously enough.
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In any event, if you can find this Brahms disc with Dészl Ronci playing the Balades
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op. 10, it's well worth hunting down, and it also contains one of the most focused and
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centered performances I know of, the scherzo in E-flat minor, op. 4, and it has selections
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from Brahms' various Klavierstuck from op. 116, 118, and 119.
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Oh, and by the way, remember my recent podcast episode about the Joyce Hatto scandal?
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Well, Dészl Ronci's Brahms Balades were used for the Joyce Hatto release, but they only
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stole Balades numbers 1, 2, and 3.
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They didn't use his fourth Balade, and the Joyce Hatto fourth Balade still remains to
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be identified.
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So I hope all of this discussion will be useful for you to sort out the different options
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that we have for the Brahms Balades op. 10 on record.
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I probably would recommend as my first choices either Emmanuel Axe, Jonathan Plowright, or
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the Lars Vodke remake on Ondine, but do try to find the Dészl Ronci version and keep
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Earl Wilde in mind as well.
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Now, if I was to do a Between the Keys episode where I picked four performances that I had
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liked for each one of the Balades without repeating a pianist, perhaps I would pick
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Glingould for number 1, Arturo Benedetti live in Lugano for number 2, Lars Vodke on Ondine
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for number 3, and Alexandra Contorot for number 4.
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This is Jed Dissler, and you have been listening to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast
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guide to piano recordings.
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Thank you so much for joining me, and I look forward to being with you for the next episode.
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Take good care.