Anderszewski

Since his first release for Virgin Classics, Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations in 2000, Polish pianist Piotr Anderszewski’s has produced a catalogue which ranges from Bach and Mozart, through more Beethoven to Chopin, Szymanowski and Webern, and which includes several prizewinning recordings.

This is a glorious disc. Simply glorious. Anderszewski and Bach have long been congenial bedfellows and the Pole’s playing here is compelling on many different levels. To start with, there’s the sense of sharing the sheer physical thrill of Bach’s keyboard-writing. This is particularly evident in faster movements such as the fierce and brilliant fugal Gigue that concludes the Third Suite, or, in the E minor Fifth Suite, the extended fugal Prelude and the outer sections of its Passepied I. Common to all is a sense of being fleet but never breathless, with time enough for textures to tell.

The highly personal and often chimerical piano music of Robert Schumann requires a confident interpreter who can enter the music with full awareness of the composer's quirks, yet not become so involved with their strangeness that he gets lost. For this Virgin release, the brilliant Piotr Anderszewski has chosen two works that show the extremes of Schumann's divided personality: the youthful and playful Humoresque, Op. 20, and the late, madness-tinged Morning Songs, Op. 133. In between them is the sober set of Studies for the Pedal Piano, Op. 56, which, in its serious counterpoint and controlled expressions, stands apart from Schumann's wild mood swings and emotionally turbulent music. Because these three works are seldom performed and are open to fresh possibilities, Anderszewski has free reign to explore the whimsy and sorrow of the Humoresque, the intellectuality of the Studies, and the brooding of the Morning Songs, and the range of his comprehension and expression is wide indeed.

Another example of superb programming, Piotr Anderszewski's Chopin recital on Virgin is brilliantly conceived and masterfully executed. Concentrating on the compoer's late works, Anderszewski's program starts with two sets of Mazurkas played with supple sensitivity and sympathetic poetry, builds through the last two Ballades played with dramatic intensity and terrific technique, climaxes in the last two Polonaises played with heroic grandeur and tremendous virtuosity, and closes with the tender and intimate Mazurka in F minor as an encore. Anderszewski's technique is imperious, his tone is sensual, his performances are emotional, and his interpretations are magisterial. Individually, each performance is strong and vital. Taken all together, the whole disc is more than the sum of its parts. Virgin's sound is warm but a bit close and sometimes a little too immediate.

The release of any recording by the pianist Piotr Anderszewski constitutes something of a special occasion. As the Scottish newspaper The Herald wrote: “In music as in life, Anderszewski is a man who takes his decision-making seriously. His recitals are intense and wonderful: he is a profound communicator, a meticulous craftsman, a deeply original interpreter. He infuses every gesture with tremendous care; no phrase is thrown away, no nuance without meaning. The process of putting together such acutely considered performances is painstaking and lengthy … which goes some way to explaining why his repertoire includes just a handful of core composers.”

Piotr Anderszewski juxtaposes solo piano works by three composers who asserted and shaped the musical identity of their Central European countries in the earlier 20th century: Janáček in Moravia (which in 1918 became part of Czechoslovakia), Szymanowski in Poland, and Bartók in Hungary.

Mullova and Anderszewski have thought through every detail of their interpretations - these are performances of exceptionally wide expressive range, from passionate ardor to the dark and turgid to the touchingly melancholic. Mullova and Anderszewski give a wonderful impression of having thought through every detail of their interpretations. Throughout the three sonatas I was impressed, not just by the way they do everything Brahms asks for, but by their evident personal involvement in the music.

It tends to be Russian performers who capture the dark, emotional undercurrents of Shostakovich's music, but few chamber groups have ever done it as well as the Belcea Quartet, a London-based group of central and eastern European players. Neither the Piano Quintet in G minor, Op. 57, nor the String Quartet No. 3 in F major, Op. 73, is a commonly played work, but taken together, in the Belcea's more-than-capable hands, they have a powerful impact.

Piotr Anderszewski takes a characteristically creative approach to Bach’s Das Wohltemperierte Klavier (The Well-tempered Clavier). Rather than recording all 48 of its prelude-and-fugue pairings, he has focused on 12 pairings from Book Two. “I decided to put the pieces together in a sequence of my own subjective choosing, based sometimes on key relationships, at other times on contrasts. The idea behind this specific order is to create a sense of drama that suggests a cycle: 12 characters conversing with one another, mirroring each other.” Anderszewski’s last Erato album of Bach prompted BBC Music Magazine to write: “For anyone who loves Bach (or the piano) … this life-enhancing disc is required listening.