Szymanowski: Piano Works evaluate – glowing jewels from a supreme pianist | Classical music

Every new launch from Krystian Zimerman is a particular occasion, however this one is extra so than most. After a current collection of concerto recordings, that is Zimerman’s first solo disc for 5 years, which, following earlier discs of Bacewicz and Lutosławski, continues his exploration of music from his native Poland. Although this number of Karol Szymanowski’s piano works omits the most effective identified, the three “poems” of Métopes, in addition to all three of his piano sonatas, it does embody consultant items from all phases of his growth. The efficiency of Szymanowski’s different set of character items, Masques, dates again to 1994, however wasn’t launched on the time; Zimerman recorded the remainder of this disc in June this 12 months, in Fukuyama, Japan.

He begins with 4 of the 1900 preludes (Nos 1, 2, 7 and eight) that make up Szymanowski’s Op 1, reworking every right into a glowing jewel. The stylistic shift between their Chopinesque world and the Masques, composed 15 years later, is stark; these three items have been written when Szymanowski’s modernism, a mixture of Scriabin, Stravinsky and Debussy, was at its most intense, and Zimerman brings to them the wit and bewitching command of keyboard texture and color that makes his Debussy enjoying so peerless. A number of the set of mazurkas Op 50, representing the ultimate part of Szymanowski’s growth, presents an additional distinction once more, their delicately traced lyricism alternating with the country robustness stemming from his explorations of the people music of the Tatra mountains.

Zimerman ends the disc with the Variations on a Polish People Theme Op 10, from 1904, which features a funeral march (Chopin once more) and a bravura fugal finale that demonstrates yet one more side of his supreme pianism, for his command of virtuoso brilliance is simply as extraordinary as his management of probably the most refined nuances of phrasing and pacing. It is a marvellous disc from an completely distinctive artist.

One other of the good pianists of our time, Nelson Freire, died in November final 12 months. In tribute Decca, his document firm for the final 17 years of his life, has launched Recollections, a two-disc assortment of beforehand unreleased materials, recorded between 1970 and 2019. It’s a mixture of encore items – Gluck’s Dance of the Blessed Spirits, Beethoven’s Andante Favori, Debussy’s La plus que lente – and concertos, which vary from Beethoven’s Fourth to Bartók’s First through Brahms, Saint-Saëns and Strauss. The enjoying, as you’d anticipate, is glowing and deft, and in works like Strauss’s Burlesque and Saint-Saëns’s fourth concerto, it underlines the truth that in Britain we heard far much less of Freire than we’d have completed, and have been a lot poorer in consequence.