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Brahms' Variations Op.21 and Piano Pieces Opp.118 and 119
NI 5521Adrian Jack compares three new Brahms piano discs:
Mark Anderson won third prize at Leeds in 1993, and he's the strongest pianist here. It's a pity Nimbus put the microphone so far from the performer that clarity and impact are affected, for Anderson offers two early but thoroughly characteristic variation sets, and gives excellent performances of Brahms's last two collections of piano pieces. He's particularly responsive to every shade of expression in the second of Op.118, and balances the slightly schmaltzy middle section in the last of Op.119 sensitively. (FOUR STARS PERFORMANCE)
Nothing could be further from an executive-style pianism, topped and tailed for competition victory, and his occasional vulnerability rarely blunts the overall beauty and engagement of his playing. He creates a magical oasis of calm in Op.118 No.2 and finds so much more than mere energy in the robust opening measures of the "Ballade" (Op.118 No.3). The breathless triplet flight of No.4 is ideally paced and so is its later eruption into a fine fury. His temperament is ideally suited to the elusive mix of romanticism and pre-impressionism of Op.119 No.1. The underlying strength beneath Brahms's surface skittishness in No.4 and the exultance of the final "Rhapsody" are no less stylishly caught. He also makes as good a case as is possible for Brahms's early gaucherie and gipsy abandon in his Variations on a Hungarian song, but it is Opp.118 and 119 that count the most. All this is a far cry from, say, Julius Katchen's glamorous, swash-buckling and enviably assured Brahms (Decca, 2/91), but Anderson's more modest attributes create their own distinctive and poetic ambience, one that easily transcends Nimbus's unflattering sound. Quite without cunning or artifice, his eloquence defines music once described as "like the golden lustre of parks in autumn, and the austere black and white of winter walks. Bryce Morrison, Gramophone
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