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Fanfare

Having not been familiar with the keyboard art of Burkard Schliessmann, I approached his chosen program of “transcendence, vision, and personified aesthetics of effect” with some skepticism, if not a predisposition for cynicism. The recordings, previously unknown to me, derive from sessions made 1990–2000, here remastered by Paul Baily. To my sustained delight, Schliessmann reveals himself as a Romantic temperament deeply motivated by both intimacy and intuition, sustained by a wholesome and astonishing technical resource. His capacities in contrapuntal music assert themselves fully and without pedantry in Busoni’s transcription of Bach’s Chaconne from the Partita No. 2, the Schumann Symphonic Études and Fantasie, and in the heroic, stratified figures in the Liszt Sonata, even before he wrestles with the intricacies of Scriabin, whose miniatures often prove more mechanically daunting than his larger forms. The placement and order of the assembled works no less contributes to the cumulative effect of the evolution of a Romantic ethos, an increasingly subjective outlook that subsumes reality into an affirmation of selfhood.

What proves consistent in this traversal of essentially Romantic repertory emanates from the pianist’s sense of space and of individual coloring. Much in the tradition of Cherkassky and Michelangeli, Schliessmann allots each of the evolving musical lines its own breadth, which becomes instantly apparent in the various permutations in the Bach piece and in virtually every line in the Schumann Fantasie. The art of applying silence between notes and distinct musical lines never fails to make or to undo a dramatic performance. In this regard, I find Schliessmann eminently theatrical in style, compelling in the grand line he assumes for each of his endeavors. The Schumann Symphonic Études enjoy their proclaimed “symphonic” ambitions, certainly. But in incorporating the full set of Schumann’s posthumous and various appendices Schliessmann burdens himself with the problem of musical and dramatic continuity, having to sustain a canvas that now spreads out well beyond established time parameters, at almost 40 minutes.

If my remarks seem to suggest a highly “contrived” sensibility, let me assure possible auditors of the miraculous power of spontaneity that permeates these realizations. The Liszt Sonata regains much its shocking originality, its tempestuous and outrageous shifts of mood and musical means, especially in the manipulation of its Grund-Gestalt, its through-composed opening motifs and the subsequent harmonic audacities that follow. The Schumann Fantasie and the Liszt Sonata, works coincidentally dedicated reciprocally by each composer, occupy the same disc, providing an hour’s unrelenting display of controlled, intelligent passion in the same paradoxical moment. The immanence of the urge to poetry suffuses every musical impulse. We sense as we move to the music of Alexander Scriabin and the “new” school of Alban Berg that the keyboard instrument has gained an increased sense of liberation in its power to express subjective reality, even as traditional harmony breaks down. True, we have skipped over the contributions of Beethoven and Chopin, a substantial break in the history of keyboard transcendentalism. But in compensation, Schliessmann turns in disc 3 to a concentrated survey of the Russian mystic Scriabin, all too easily dismissed as an eccentric, musical solipsist who always spells Reality with a capital I.

Schliessmann opens his Scriabin sequence with the 1898 Third Sonata, meant to express the composer’s flights of the soul toward liberation. The oceanic imagery Scriabin invokes for the last two movements, no less based on cyclical motifs and transposable fourth chords, intensifies the paradoxical sense of unity in the midst of free-fall. Schliessmann provides a pungent, searching sonority to the music’s nervous rhythms and ardent declamations. His third movement Andante finds a moment for childlike simplicity. Schliessmann’s left hand helps catapult the last movement, Presto con fuoco, to a Tristan-inspired paroxysm of energy, the “uproar of life,” fraught with fervent rebellion. The taut, forward motion may remind auditors of the classic Horowitz approach. As in his Schumann, Schliessmann applies a canny soft pedal, when required. Schliessmann concedes to popular taste for the moment, performing the two most famous études, those in C♯ Minor and D♯ Minor, with the op. 2/1 providing an immediate contrast to the emotional throes of Sonata No. 3. The famed D♯-Minor returns to the primal passions, insistent and voluptuous. Schliessmann then turns to the variegated world of Scriabin’s 90 preludes, of which the op. 11 set (1888–96) follows Chopin in his arrangement in the circle of fifths, and varying the form of these pieces as nocturnes, études, and mazurkas. A fine example occurs in the E Major, No. 9, in which Scriabin avoids the tonic triad until the end, and Schliessmann’s attentions to designations rubato, ritardando, and accelerando create a poised nocturne tinged by mazurka rhythm. The use of parallel motion in sixths in No. 13 reminds us of Bach as well as Chopin. The pattern of sixths informs the Andante cantabile, op. 16/3, to create its restrained angst. The preludes of 1900, op. 27, reveal a new and rich assertiveness. The Prelude in B Major, op. 27/2, from Schliessmann has a luxuriant abandon, a fertile reverie. Schliessmann plays the Prelude in A Minor, op. 51/2, Lugubre, which the composer avoided in his public performances. The music imparts an eerie atmosphere, somewhat in the manner of late Liszt. Scriabin called it “a ghastly piece!” Fluttering motives define the Dance languide in G Major, op. 51/4, which hesitates and then ends as one of Schliessmann’s riddles.

With the Deux Dances, op. 73, we enter into Scriabin’s last phase, a distillation of harmony and vision. Schliessmann realizes the crystalline figures of Guirlandes with the required “languid grace.” Scriabin characterizes the figures as “sweet to the point of agony.” The Flammes sombre invokes Dante and Liszt into the equation. A perverse eroticism pervades this piece, a descent into the labyrinth, “an orgiastic dance” among the ruins. The weird agogics of the piece proceed with a “natural supernaturalism” entirely suited to the occasion. The complete set of Five Preludes, op. 74 (1914), gives us Schliessmann’s perspective of Scriabin’s last opera. Miniatures they are, but their intensely compressed fusion of consonance and dissonance testifies to a mind’s seeking new paths. Heartfelt anguish joins with points of resistance, spiritual fatigue with infusions of aching energy. The number four, Lent, vague, indécis, proceeds in four-part, uncertain harmony. Each of these five “mysteries” Schliessmann reveals with a deliberate, tempered fury.

And so we proceed to the musical compressions of Alban Berg’s 1909 sonata. Berg’s sonata in one movement owes its color to Wagner, Liszt, and the late-Romantic concept of “developing variation.” Janus-like, the work bids farewell to the Romantic syntax and likewise looks forward to the 12-tone system about to be initiated by Schoenberg and his school. The opening, with its dotted rhythm and perfect fourth/tritone intervals, followed by falling thirds, announces a serious departure from tradition, even as the structure follows the pattern of exposition, development, and recapitulation. Schliessmann realizes its various swells and retreats, its idiosyncratic counterpoint, with insistence and often delicate clarity, a lyric sense of its diverse, keyboard palette. We have moved, in Schliessmann’s own words from his extensive liner notes, from “the ecstasy of expression to the ecstasy of structures.” The extensive journey has proved most compelling.