★/★★★★★
Some people love cheese, others turn green at the sniff of it. We are talking here of matters of taste and discrimination.
Several people whose judgement I respect have responded with great enthusiasm to Eric Lu’s twin sets of Schubert Impromptus on the Warner label. Lu, 28, is the American who won last year’s Chopin Competition in Warsaw and the Leeds in 2018. Regardless of how one views those results he is a competent, dedicated and experienced pianist who will enjoy a long career.
That said, I practically threw up at the opening note of the opus 90 impromptus, and again in the third piece in the set. The prefatory note is extended so long that its decay grows enough mould to fill a penicillin lab. This is wilful, ostentatious, ear-catching playing that is aimed chiefly at making an impression. I have heard every major pianist from Schnabel to Lang Lang in these impromptus and none of them, not even the last mentioned, puts themselves so much in front of the music the way Eric Lu does here. As for the third impromptu, it slows down like the centre of Manchester in rush hour, advancing in unreasonable fits and spurts.
The prefatory note is extended so long that its decay grows enough mould to fill a penicillin lab
This is a matter of personal taste and opinion. Others may feel otherwise. But I cannot bring myself to attempt a fourth hearing without the onset of dyspepsia.
To recover, I spun Piotr Anderszewski’s new account of late Brahms meditation, from opus 116 to 119, and was struck immediately by the rightness of the interpretation. Anderszewski, now 56, walked out of competitions rather than wait for a result. He limits his concert appearances and focuses on a handful of composers with whom he feels a particular affinity, among them Bach, Bartok and Szymanowski. There is nothing contrived about his playing. If flows, as Mozart would have said, like oil.
This is Brahms for people who know their Brahms – faultless, literal and full of restrained feeling. It is the perfect antidote to much that is presently wrong with the world. Take it morning and night.
