Somero plays Rubinstein: CD Review

[saxtromba]

A recent release from Fc Records, a Finnish company, is the fourth in a series of Russian pianio music disks.  The first three are Tschaikowsky, Arensky, and Tschaikowsky, respectively; apparently someone decided that Russia's most important 19th Century piano composer shouldn't be ignored altogether, though little thought seems to have gone into the selection of pieces.

The major work is the Sonata #1 in e minor, Op. 12 (now the most frequently recorded of Rubinstein's four solo piano sonatas).  Somero's performance is earnest, though generally lacking in passion.  As do the others who have recorded the piece, he omits the first movement exposition repeat.  As is the case throughout this disk, he favors slower tempi; his timings are consistently slower than anyone else's.  In movements 1 and 3, the difference is but a few seconds, but movement 2, at 8'36", is more than two minutes slower than anyone else, and movement 4, at 9'03", is almost two minutes slower than anyone else.  While tempo is, to a degree, a matter of taste, there comes a point, especially in Romantic music, where the melodic line starts to sag and loses focus, and I believe that to be the case here.  There are also some noticeable finger slips in some of the harder passages which would be less significant at a faster pace.  The fugal section of the last movement is hard to follow, and the climax loses some of its spectacular aspects.  This isn't really a bad performance (there is some nice work in each of the movements, and especially in the scherzo), but it is uncompelling, and does not overshadow either of its predecessors.

The remainder of the disk is taken up with a hodge-podge of shorter pieces drawn from several different sets.  The big three (Melody in F, Reve Angelique, and the Romance in Eb, Op. 44, #1) appear, as do the only slightly less familiar Barcarolle #3, Op. 50,#1, and Etude in C, Op. 23, #2.  These performances are all s-l-o-w; in every case save one, they are the slowest known to me, often by far (take the Reve Angelique: Somero's 10'52" is longer by more than two minutes than any other solo piano recording I've heard, and almost exactly twice as long as Michael Ponti's 5'30" (okay, Ponti favors speed, but the point is still valid.)).  Again, it's not the tempos per se which are problematic, but their impact on the musical line.  The Barcarolle (5'38") is becalmed, losing all forward motion, and even the indestructible Melody in F (5'30", but this includes some slightly extended internal cadences) drags unduly.  Rubinstein himself played it quite quickly, and he would probably have preferred to shave a minute or more off the timing.  Only the Romance in Eb (3'27", about a minute longer than the standard timings) seems to gain from the slower tempo; its climax was perhaps the most passionate moment in the whole recording.  The Etude (4'57") is the only piece for which I know a slower recording (Morton Estrin, at 5'11'); Somero's version played some games with tempo shifts and dynamics which made it more interesting than most of the other well known pieces.

Rubinstein completists will want this disk, though, for the other two short pieces: the Preghiera in Bb, Op. 44, #3 and the Melancolie in g minor, Op. 51, #1, both apparently receiving their first recordings here.  Just following the scores suggests that the tempos are slow, with the Preghiera suffering as well from a rather dry recording ambience, which minimizes the operatic melodic aspects (so often important in Rubinstein's music).  Nonetheless, the performances are focussed enough to give at least some idea of the better qualities of each piece, and the latter part of the Melancolie, with its fluttering sixteenth note triplets, rises to a certain power.

I wanted to like this disk more than I really can, and I wish more thought had gone into the selection of music (did we really need new recordings of the big three?).  Nonetheless, it is not without interest, and those looking for variant interpretations of some of Rubinstein's better known music (or who are less averse to slow tempi in shorter pieces than I am) will find something to think about here.