Serge Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)
Piano Concerto No.3 in D minor, Op.30 (1909)
Symphony in D minor, ‘Youth Symphony’ (1891)
Valentin Silvestrov (b. 1937)
The Messenger (1996)
Anna Fedorova (piano)
Sinfonieorchester St. Gallen/Modestas Pitrenas
rec. 2022, Tonhalle Theater, St. Gallen, Switzerland
Channel Classics CCS45023 [69]
CD covers sometimes tell us a much bigger story about the recordings we are listening to than we at first think. In the case of Anna Fedorova’s new disc of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto Nr.3 the fact she is photographed against a mountainous backdrop isn’t just what the eye sees. Nor should we take as written the panoramic photograph which is spread across the inside of the booklet of Fedorova looking out towards a sinking sunset as just that.
Ukrainian artists – and I have heard many of them in concerts over the past eighteen months, often replacing Russian ones – have unquestionably found this time in their history difficult. Anna Fedorova is no exception. But Russian artists in conflict with Russian aggression have also found themselves victims of their nationality, often finding themselves ‘cancelled’; and more than a century ago Rachmaninoff himself was forced into exile during the 1917 Russian Revolution. In part, it is this shared heritage, this shared struggle, this shared horror which brings Fedorova and Rachmaninoff so close together in this recording in a way which it doesn’t in her previous Rachmaninoff concerto discs. Indeed, it may well be the coincidence of the timing the recording was made which makes this performance quite a special one; it is certainly a cut above her earlier recordings of this composer’s concertos, ones which I have not particularly warmed to.
When writing of this concerto, she alludes to its mountains and peaks, to the sensations of breathtaking freedom and power and the flight it gives one as if you had grown wings. She sees the work as a force of nature; but also one of intimacy and lyrical confession. All of this is there in the photographs if one looks. There is also, I think, something rather haunted and rather tragic about the pictures of Fedorova herself, coincidental perhaps to the time this recording was made (November 2022) but also projected through the performance itself.
This is a Rachmaninoff Third which is quite unlike most others in the discography for this concerto; in fact, when I looked at the timings my immediate reaction was to reject it out of hand. It is one of the slowest Thirds – and at just over 48 minutes she is considerably slower than most pianists. She is some 10 minutes slower than Martha Argerich, although Argerich doesn’t play the first movement’s ossia cadenza whereas the Ukrainian does. Fedorova has more in common with late performances by Jorge Bolet and Shura Cherkassky, or Evgeny Kissin’s with Seiji Ozawa, although she is considerably more brilliant than the two former pianists were in the twilight years of their careers; Kissin remains rather special in this concerto, even if I find touches in his performance of it strays from my own preferences. While Fedorova is no match for the great French pianist Monique de la Bruchollerie – who performed this concerto (albeit heavily cut) with Ernest Ansermet in Boston in December 1951 (recently issued on the Canadian label ysl) – few other female pianists are either.
Where de la Bruchollerie gives us a kind of brimstone and fire, brilliant incandescence Fedorova eschews this kind of approach entirely. She also avoids the brutal, steamroller approach of Martha Argerich – a dismal performance which is as prosaic as it is prone to technical imperfection. The Argerich, and I may be in a minority here, displays a lack of warmth and poetry that is quite astounding. (If one really wants something close to the Argerich style in this work then better options are Stephen Hough [on Hyperion] or the truly wild Cyprien Katsaris [Queen Elisabeth Music Competition, Belgium 1972 on Piano-21].)
I think some will almost certainly balk at the near twenty-minutes Fedorova takes to get through the first movement. For one thing there are no cuts whatsoever. She is not overly expansive in the second movement but is relatively so in the final movement. This feels like a very monumental performance, granitic. But does all this grandeur give us a great Romantic performance of this concerto? She certainly plays what Rachmaninoff wrote; not what he authorised as a shorter version. But timings can be very misleading in this concerto, specifically because of the cuts Rachmaninoff authorised: a cut performance by the clock may actually be rather slow (Kapell, 1948 or Watts 1969) and an uncut one very fast (Argerich, 1982 or Katsaris 1972, the fastest of any). Romanticism and grandeur can come from quite different points of view.
In the first movement, cuts to the 3rd bar after RN 10 to RN 11 and the 9th and 10th bars before RN 19 – and the decision to play either the short or long cadenza – can add (or detract) about three or so minutes to the movement. The most significant cuts are to the third movement – from RN 45 to the 4th bar before RN 47, RN 51 to the 2nd bar before RN 52 and the 2nd bar after RN 52 to RN 54. It is generally rare for the cuts to be made today although Pletnev makes cuts in both the first movement (9th and 10th bars before RN 19) and the entire 2nd bar RN 52 to RN 54 cut (as does Berezovsky, Matsuev, and Biret – and quite a few more). Indeed, usually find a pianist being conducted by Valery Gergiev and there’s going to be a cut somewhere.
I’ve mentioned the cuts for one particular reason: leave them in and they add to what is already an unwieldy concerto, but they also in part change not just its structure but also its tone. Arguably, the cuts damage the logical foundations of the score and performances of it, although there are unquestionably great versions which make the cuts work (Takahiro Sonoda, for example). The large third movement cut – of the meno mosso section – remains for me the most problematic since it is one of the most Romantic and searing themes in the whole concerto – but only if a pianist makes it sound that way. Here I struggled to think that Fedorova did that and as with many pianists it’s the imbalance between the left and right hands, and a lack of rubato, which pointed to a missed opportunity (Santiago Rodriguez, in his live performance from 1989 with the Lake Forest Symphony, just outside Chicago, is phenomenal here). Fedorova also misreads at RH 62 the triple note that Rachmaninoff marks with both a staccato and an accent (she is by no means alone in doing this). On the upside, the short third movement cadenza before the beginning of the concerto’s coda is majestic simply because Fedorova overlays it with such power – but at the tempo she takes it should be. At the opposite extreme, the slow passage – and it is slow – before the short cadenza prior to RH 58 at bar 236 is just gorgeous, both gloriously phrased and given acres of space to develop. The quarter note triplets that begin the run to close out the concerto are measured, too. Equally, they are so precise they are neatly laid out like paving stones – there is no gallop to the end like you will hear in Argerich, Katsaris – or even Horowitz. (Katsaris, however, uses the ossia version here of eighth notes so he has to sound faster.)
Her playing of the second movement is often quite beautiful – and rather powerful. It may be the closeness of the recording, but the left hand has considerable weight, especially during the central climax where her low notes are extremely emphatic. Fedorova has not always played the overarm low D-Flat but it sounds as if she does in this recording. But as beautiful as her playing is, I’m not sure it is poetic or expressive enough. What is perhaps understated here is the vocal quality of Rachmaninoff’s writing, that what we should be hearing is counterpoint. It’s perhaps not a coincidence that some of the finest performances of this concerto have been given by great Bach players: Sonoda, Gavrilov, Sohn, Sokolov.
There are not many performances of the first movement that exceed nineteen minutes – only Panos Karan and Kun-Woo Paik do – although several are in excess of eighteen minutes. Fedorova’s 19’44 is the slowest on disc – although she does not necessarily feel so. The opening bars, for example, are taken fluidly enough (around 112 bpm – between the 108 bpm of Ashkenazy’s 1963 recording, and Horowitz’s 1978 with Ormandy at 115 bpm) – but very unlike the 1939 Gieseking recording with Barbirolli where the pianist adopts a tempo of 88 bpm against Rachmaninoff’s tempo of 137 bpm. Gieseking’s first movement, uncut, is three minutes shorter than Fedorova’s but his quite bizarre tempi choices make it a choppy ride. She lingers over the slower sections – her willingness to interact with instrumental solos is certainly more obvious than in other recordings, for example. Her cadenza is quite surprising given the huge span she gives to it – but it is often lacking in dynamic contrast giving the impression of a cadenza out of balance with itself. Nevertheless, the great success of the movement is that despite its timing it simply doesn’t hang fire.
Although this is not a first-tier recommendation, I think this is a distinctive recording with a personal viewpoint that makes it stand out in a discography that is full of many less interesting performances. Technically she is superb but if her playing sometimes displays one trait it is a tendency towards in stringendo and sostenuto phrasing which suddenly comes out of nowhere; it’s a battle that is never plausibly workable in my view. On the other hand, I totally enjoyed the sheer powerhouse defiance of this performance; its ferociousness can often be quite thrilling.
Modestas Pitrenas and the Sinfonieorchester St. Gallen give Fedorova more than competent support, although they, too, are sometimes willing to indulge in over-emphatic phrasing. But in a concerto where the orchestra can sometimes set the tempo rather than the pianist there is a clear meeting of minds.
Rachmaninoff’s D minor Youth Symphony, composed in September 1891, was written at the request of Arensky, partly as a condition for Rachmaninoff dropping out of the Moscow Conservatoire. It is clearly influenced by Tchaikovsky – notably that composers Fourth Symphony – but although accomplished in its orchestration it ostensibly lacks an original voice (but maybe it had more of an influence on the later Rachmaninoff given how reminiscent the opening of the Symphony No.2 would be of the Youth Symphony’s). The performance is good, with that same expansiveness we get in the concerto and a very Tchaikovsky feel to the playing. I prefer Vladimir Ashkenazy’s more fluid account – some two minutes shorter – with a rather heavier sounding Concertgebouw which perhaps brings into focus more Rachmaninoff and less Tchaikovsky.
The final track takes Anna Fedorova back to her Ukrainian roots with a solo piano work by Valentin Silvestrov, The Messenger. Silvestrov has become more prominent in the last couple of years – for very obvious reasons – although his stature as a great composer has never been in doubt in my view. It is a meditative work, almost ghostly in character as times, although recalling both Mozart and Chopin. But it is also a piece that looks not backwards (despite its compositional style) but forward towards peace and hope in its temperament. The performance in many ways conveys that message but listening to it there is a kind of mournfulness to Fedorova’s playing that can so often come through in many solo works where just the composer and the interpreter come together with a singular purpose. Perhaps I wished the performance had been a happier one; perhaps its tone is actually the right one under the circumstances. It is deeply affecting however one hears it.
I’m not sure that Fedorova’s Rachmaninoff on this disc can be seen in relative terms to most recordings of this concerto – even if her concert performances of this concerto do not deviate enormously from this one in its tempi or architecture. It is a compelling interpretation of the Third Concerto because it has been made under rather personal circumstances. A few performances in the past have been given under difficult circumstances; Idil Biret played this concerto at her US debut in November 1963 after having just heard of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, for example. Adversity often makes for a very fine recording. I think Fedorova has given us this.
Marc Bridle
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