Michael Tumelty
Two or three years ago I was very struck by a new recording, a copy of which I had been sent for review purposes. It was on Manfred Eicher's esteemed ECM New Series label, and it featured some of the piano music of Claude Debussy, played by Russian pianist Alexei Lubimov. What was so striking, however, was not the performance itself, but the instrument, or rather, instruments, on which Lubimov played both books of Debussy's Preludes. The pianist had been searching for an instrument which would offer an alternative to the gleaming, sleek and brilliant modern Steinway, with its Rolls-Royce livery, its high-powered projection and polished-steel sound-world. Lubimov wanted to find an instrument whose sound, he felt, would be more intimate, closer to the sound imagined by the composer at the time of writing the music, and more revealing of Debussy's staggeringly-original timbres, textures, colours, shading and nuances.
He found two such instruments. One was a 1913 Steinway that he "stumbled upon" in the Polish embassy in Brussels, and, in another "stumble", the other piano was a Bechstein from 1925. Lubimov confessed himself "truly seduced" by these pianos which, he felt, "breathed fresh life into the music". The concept grew into a project, and on the two-CD set, as well as the two books of Preludes, Lubimov, joined by his fellow pianist Alexei Zuev, also plays Debussy's Three Nocturnes in an 1895 transcription made by Ravel, and Debussy's own transcription for two pianos of his gorgeous and epochal 1894/5 composition: Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune. I was enchanted and enraptured by the sound-worlds of the two pianos of the period, particularly by the intimacy of the music. There was no feeling of this music being "projected" at me, as you get in even the most intimate of recital rooms; it actually felt as though I was in the room, standing right next to the piano and pianist, hearing Debussy crafting these magical miniatures with their infinitely-varied and subtle hues. Lubimov himself described the different worlds of sound from the two pianos rather well: he referred to the 1913 Steinway as "divinely soft in pianissimo, resonant and marvellously suitable for unexpected colours", while the 1925 Bechstein was "clear, sharply-etched, translucent and light, even in complex textures".
It's a wonderful sound, but the point of bringing it into the context of a column is this: Lubimov is not alone in his quest. Just a year ago Andras Schiff brought out a new double recording of Beethoven's Diabelli Variations, also on ECM, for which Schiff has recorded all of Beethoven's Piano Sonatas. He too used two different instruments in his back-to-back recordings of the Diabelli Variations. One is recorded on a period instrument, a Hammerflugel fortepiano from 1820, exactly the period when Beethoven was writing the piece, and, incidentally, probably the best of its type that I have heard: the sound is absolutely extraordinary, free of the rattle and clatter so often heard from this type of instrument. (I understand Schiff was so taken with it he bought the instrument.) And the other instrument he uses, in the first recording of the Diabelli, is a Bechstein grand piano from 1921, the very instrument preferred by two great pianists of the past, Wilhelm Backhaus and Edwin Fischer, and with a beautiful sound quality far removed from the brilliance of the modern Steinway. Schiff refers to the tone and sound-world of the Bechstein as "an almost forgotten sound-ideal". And there is yet more. The fantastic French period band, Les Siecles Live, in its stunning 2010 recording of Saint Saens' Organ Symphony, made in Saint-Sulpice, couples the big symphony with a performance of Saint-Saens' Fourth Piano Concerto, a little-known concerto, played by Jean-Francois Heisser on an 1874 Erard grand piano, which is light years in its sound-quality from the modern Steinway grand piano: not better, just wholly different in its character and sound.
So in fact, what we have now has become a trend: nothing as shallow or ephemeral as a fashion, but a genuine movement towards a wider realisation that, even just a century ago, orchestral instruments and pianos were very different creatures from the ones we sit and listen to in our concert halls at the weekends. And it's a rapidly-spreading trend. Andreas Staier, in the latest volume of his recording of Schumann's piano music on Harmonia Mundi, uses an Erard piano of 1837, while the sensational new recording of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana by the Belgian period band, Anima Eterna Brugge, with Jos van Immerseel and the Collegium Vocal Gent on the Zig-Zag Territoires label, uses two period pianos to remarkable effect. It's all wonderful new territory for listeners: not an alternative, but an additional, exhilarating perspective on the music.
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