Shura Cherkassky (piano)
The Ambassador Auditorium Recitals 1981–1989
Contents listed after the review
rec. 1981-89, The Ambassador Auditorium, Pasadena, USA
First Hands Records FHR99 [5 CDs: 317]

First Hand Records has been devoted to Shura Cherkassky for a number of years and one of its first releases was a twofer of his complete HMV recordings. That was followed a few years later by a 1971 recital (review) and now here’s an even more extensive collection of four recitals given at the Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena in the 1980s transferred from open reel tapes (CDs 1–4) and DAT (CD 5). This is the first time they’ve appeared.

The first concert was given on 29 April 1981 and is a rare example of a Cherkassky single-composer recital. The recording of this Chopin concert is fine and close, though I was slightly disturbed by the occasionally rather metallic-sounding piano. He sculpts the Ballade in G minor with old school felicity, bestows gracious rubato in the Nocturne in E flat major, and is alternately refined and dramatic in the Andante spianato and Grande Polonaise Brillante in E flat major. Albeit the theatrics are accompanied by a fair number of dropped notes as there are again in a firmly chiselled reading of the Scherzo in B flat minor.

Cherkassky returned to Pasadena in January the following year for a programme that wears a more familiar look. It was a programme he gave often that year – a Lully Suite, Mendelssohn’s Scherzo a Capriccio in F sharp minor, Tchaikovsky’s Grand Sonata in G major, Chopin’s Polonaise Fantaisie, Hofmann’s Kaleidoskop and an encore of Chopin’s Waltz, Op.42. This was the programme he gave in April 1982 at Davies Symphony Hall, in San Francisco, which was released 25 years ago on Ivory Classics. At Pasadena, he included Liszt’s Reminiscences of Don Juan, Chopin’s Fourth Ballade, and an extra encore in the shape of his own Pathetic Prelude, composed sixty years before, in 1922. It’s fascinating to hear the pianist respond with very different emphases in the Sarabande of the Lully Suite which is much slower than in the San Francisco performance, but he brings tremendous colouristic subtlety to the entire suite. The Mendelssohn is vivid and witty and his Chopin assured. The Liszt is especially fine and he is fearless in spite of its manifold technical difficulties. I agree with those who find the Tchaikovsky Sonata boring and it’s not Cherkassky’s fault he can’t bring it to life. What he does bring to life is his teacher Hofmann’s little genre piece, a familiar encore which also appears in the next recital.

On 18 November 1987 he returned for another programme which opened with Franck’s Prélude, Chorale and Fugue, played with clarity and directness – too much so, really, as it’s extremely fast and lacks real weight. He played Schumann’s Carnaval throughout his career and there’s an example from London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall from 1970 which is a good four minutes quicker than this 1987 recording. Which is not to decry this more expansive reading, as it’s a more considered and less impetuous view of the work, yet in some ways more subject to exaggeration – for example in the Valse noble and Eusebius. Rachmaninov’s Variations on a Theme of Corelli is an exceptionally tricky piece to play on an already heavyweight programme and yet the near 80-year-old Cherkassky meets its challenges with flair. Once again, he delivers a droll Hofmann Kaleidoskop, the same Chopin Nocturne he’d played at the first recital but includes the Barcarolle in F sharp major and, even better, a panache-packed, witty but clarity-conscious Listz-Gounod Waltz from the opera Faust, one of the highlights of the whole set – a perfect example of Cherkassky’s art. The most effective of his three encores that night is Tchaikovsky’s October from The Seasons, a lovely envoi.

The last recital comes from 2 November 1989. His purely pianistic Handel ‘Harmonious Blacksmith’ seems interested more in the harmonic implications of the music than anything else, and his rubato is an object lesson in phrasing – even though it’s not how I particularly like to hear the piece. Only the finale of Schumann’s Fantasy in C major survives from this recital, though it was played in its entirety (technical issues meant that it was not released in full) and there’s another uninteresting Tchaikovsky piece, his Original theme and variations. Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C sharp minor is dispatched with alluring bravura, if also with a few dropped notes. Cherkassky was now in his 80s and no longer the technician of old.

What remained, however, was his phrasal weaving, sense of colour, cultivation of sonority and use of rubato and much else that went into his personalised projection of everything he played. Not everything here convinces, but enough remains to show what an irresistible purveyor of pleasure he was, even in repertoire to which, for example, one might be unsympathetic. Jonathan Summers’ booklet notes set the scene perfectly, the presentation is handsome and accomplished, and the metallic piano sound in the first recital isn’t present in the succeeding ones. Cherkassky’s admirers will want this set and will know that no two performances by him are ever quite the same.

Jonathan Woolf

Previous review: Stephen Greenbank (November 2024)

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Contents

Recorded 29 April 1981
CD1 [74:09]
Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849)
Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23 (1835)
Nocturne No. 2 in E flat major, Op. 9, No. 2 (1832)
Nocturne No. 15 in F minor, Op. 55, No. 1 (1844)
Andante spianato and Grande Polonaise Brillante in E flat major, Op. 22 (1835)
Interval
Fantaisie in F minor, Op. 49 (1841)
Impromptu No. 2 in F sharp major, Op. 36 (1839)
Fantaisie-impromptu in C sharp minor, Op. 66 (1834)
Scherzo No. 2 in B flat minor, Op. 31 (1837)
Encores:
Nocturne No. 3 in B major, Op. 9, No. 3 (1832)
Waltz No. 5 in A flat major, Op. 42, ‘Grande valse’ (1840)

Recorded 13 January 1982
CD2 [71:06]
Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632–1687)
Suite of Pieces
Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847)
Scherzo a Capriccio in F sharp minor, Op. 5 (1835)
Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893)
Grand Sonata in G major, Op. 37 (1878)
Interval
Frédéric Chopin
Polonaise No. 7 in A flat major, Op. 61, ‘Polonaise-fantaisie’ (1846)
Ballade No. 4 in F minor, Op. 52 (1843)

CD3 [72:19]
Józef (Josef) Hofmann (1876–1957)
Charakterskizzen, Op. 40 (1908)
No. 4. Kaleidoskop
Franz Liszt (1811–1886)
Reminiscences of Don Juan, S418 (1841)
Encores:
Shura Cherkassky (1909–1995)
Pathetic Prelude (1922)
Frédéric Chopin
Waltz No. 5 in A flat major, Op. 42, ‘Grande valse’ (1840)

Recorded November 18, 1987
César Franck (1822–1890)
Prélude, Chorale and Fugue, M. 21 (1884)
Robert Schumann (1810–1856)
Carnival, Op. 9 (1834–35)
Interval

CD4 [53:26]
Sergey Rachmaninov (1873–1943)
Variations on a Theme of Corelli, Op. 42 (1931)
Józef (Josef) Hofmann
Charakterskizzen, Op. 40 (1908)
No. 4. Kaleidoskop
Frédéric Chopin
Nocturne No. 15 in F minor, Op. 55, No. 1 (1844)
Barcarolle in F sharp major, Op. 60 (1846)
Franz Liszt
Waltz from the opera Faust by Gounod, S407/R166 (1861)
Encores:
Isaac Albéniz (1860–1909)
España, Op. 165 (1890)
II. Tango (arr. 1921 Leopold Godowsky (1870–1938))
Sergei Rachmaninov
Polka de WR
(arr. of Lachtäubchen, Scherzpolka, Op. 303 by Franz Behr, 1837–1898)
Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky
The Seasons, Op. 37a (1876)
No. 10. October: Autumn Song

Recorded 2 November 1989
CD5 [46:05]
George Frideric Handel (1685–1759)
Keyboard Suite No. 5 in E Major, HWV 430 (1720): IV. Air and Variations, ‘The Harmonious Blacksmith’
Robert Schumann
Fantasy in C major, Op. 17 (1838)
III. Langsam getragen. Durchweg leise zu halten
Interval
Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky
Pieces, Op. 19 (1873)
VI. Original theme and variations
Sergey Rachmaninov
7 Salon Pieces, Op. 10 (1894)
III. Barcarolle in G minor
Franz Liszt
Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C sharp minor, S244/R106 (1847)
Encores:
Isaac Albéniz
España, Op. 165 (1890)
II. Tango (arr. 1921 Leopold Godowsky (1870–1938))
Frédéric Chopin
Tarentelle in A flat major, Op. 43 (1841)