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Fanfare

This commanding, almost regal selection of recordings from Burkard Schliessmann was recorded 1990–2000. It is a shining example of integrity and intelligence in music, welded to a technique of gargantuan proportions. There is logic guiding in the programming also: The Liszt Sonata and Schumann Fantasie bear mutual dedications, while the worlds of Scriabin and Berg are hardly a million miles from one another. This is the first digital issue of all tracks on this set.

The three-disc set therefore posits one route from Bach (in Busoni’s granitic hands) to Scriabin and Berg. The Bach/Busoni Chaconne is a fine performance, big-boned and captured in superb sound that really allows one to enjoy the strength of the bass of Schliessmann’s Steinway piano. In this context, the sober, chordal opening of the Schumann could almost be by Busoni; as the variations unravel, the piece could only be by Schumann. Schliessmann includes the posthumous variations in what becomes a panoramic journey through myriad vistas: Schliessmann’s ability to utilize tone color within stylistic bounds is something any pianist could learn from profitably. Textures are always carefully considered (the tremolos of Variation 16 being a case in point), while the finale is as brilliant as its indication requires, and, most importantly, properly cumulative in context, ending in what amounts to a pianistic pealing of bells. As Schliessmann pointed out to me in an interview once, no less a figure than Brahms included the posthumous variations, so it makes sense to do so.

It is fascinating how, while being part of a larger whole, each individual disc operates as a cycle within itself. So, one has the Bach/Busoni and the Schumann above, perfectly contained and with a real sense of inevitability of continuity; the second disc has those pieces of mutual admiration, the Schumann Fantasie and the Liszt B-Minor Sonata, both major masterpieces of the Romantic era. The sense of grandeur we heard particularly in the Bach/Busoni recurs in the first movement of the Schumann Fantaise, while the tricky second movement holds no perils for Schliessmann (and he maintains the indication Durchaus energisch: energetic throughout). One of Schliessmann’s core properties is that he can bend his sound and way with tempo to each individual composer perfectly, and we certainly feel that here. He creates two separate sound worlds: Schumann’s is full of fantasy, as if trying to escape the world’s strictures and limitations to ascend Heavenwards (one certainly feels that is how the songful finale operates, with those themes ascending ever upwards, garnished with delicious celestial decorations in the high treble), while Liszt’s sublimity is more sensual, more demonic. One hears the prefiguring of the dark nights of Liszt’s very late works in the sonata’s opening, and this colors the octave explosion: yes, we hear virtuosity, but it is part of an over-riding diablerie. While Schumann ascends radiantly, Liszt struggles with his inner demons to do so, and Schliessmann leaves us in no doubt of the power of that struggle. The fine piano he plays on is part of this; it is clearly a majestic instrument, sublimely prepared. Schliessmann’s slower sections have a distinct simmer underneath them, ready to explode into headier regions. It is this mix of visceral excitement combined with a tour guide who always has the end in sight that is so impressive, so that when the end comes, we feel we have come full circle and the journey can begin again. Both the Schumann Fantasie and the Liszt B-Minor sit up there with the greats: Polini’s DG accounts of both are classics, another pianist with a fierce musical intellect, but Schliessmann offers an alternative that is just as engrossing.

Scriabin’s Third Sonata sees the composer moving away from his explicitly Chopin-influenced output to a more inner space that was perfect for his Theosophical-based reflections on mysticism. Interestingly, Schliessmann shares Scriabin’s synesthesia (the equating of colors to key areas in this case). Schliessmann’s Scriabin sits in the line of Scriabin playing that emanated from Vladimir Sofronitsky. His Third Sonata begins volcanically, but it is in the harmonic explorations where it becomes most alluring. It’s interesting that Schliessmann bookends this disc with sonatas (another indication of the discs acting as mini-recitals within themselves); here the antipode is a superbly delineated performance of the Berg Sonata, op. 1, like the Liszt, in B Minor (although unlike the Liszt the B Minor it is more a structural reference point than an anchor). Schliessmann’s second movement of the Scriabin Third Sonata is beautifully unsettled, the bass ominous, the rhythms themselves of foreboding intent. The twilit, Russian pastoral shades of the Andante in Schliessmann’s performance are revelatory. Again, we get a sense of cyclical arrival at the beginning of the Third Sonata’s finale before the music devolves and spirals into milieus of heady energy. After the sonata, Schliessmann presents a sequence of 21 pieces by Scriabin that move from the famous, post-Rachmaninoff Étude, op. 2/1 through a selection from the exquisite op. 11 set of Preludes, tracing a journey all the way to the harmonically adventurous “Danse languide” of op. 51/4, itself the gateway for the Deux Danses, op. 73 (the delicate traceries of “Guarlandes” and the flickering “Flammes sombre”) and the harmonic ambiguities of the set of five Préludes, op. 74. And while the opening gesture of the Berg Sonata might seem to equate to the perfumed world of Scriabin, Schliessmann ensures we hear all of Berg’s contrapuntal rigor.

This is a most thought-provoking set, overflowing with performances of insight, and beautifully recorded.