Sonate K330 - Fantaisie opus 17 - Excursions - Nocturne opus 55

Description

It was Herbert von Karajan who brought Shura Cherkassky to Salzburg. Together they recorded a dynamite version of the Hungarian Fantasy, Karajan himself a pianist, left stunned by this little man who looked like nothing special but from his keyboard sent out rockets and stars as if Liszt himself had been at the piano. On the Mozarteum stage he made a point of beginning with Mozart, knowing that he would also “sell” Barber’s Excursions to the audience in a recital whose variety was in itself a kind of slap in the face. And he played his Sonata in C so stylishly and yet so singularly that the audience was instantly captivated. You can hear a motor in the distance, but in the hall not a breath. Schumann’s Fantasy, oceanic, concealed virtuosity so well that at the end of the Mässig the leaps in the chords went unnoticed, but not the immense cantabile of the third section of a tomb that does not say its name. Tableaux with embellishments (but not Horowitz’s) are a pleasant surprise, but it is in Barber’s Excursions that Cherkassky unleashes his demons. What genius! who, as an encore, plays a Chopin Nocturne, and then, to finish things off, the Andante spianato and Grande Polonaise, stylish, dazzling, Rubinstein would have applauded! But the encores were even more generous: the sound engineers ate up Liszt’s Ronde des lutins and Shostakovich’s Polka! (Discophilia - Artalinna.com) (Jean-Charles Hoffelé)