Reinbert de Leeuw has followed up his collection of the early, better known piano music of Erik Satie with a CD which concentrates on works wrought through the composer's association (which started in 1891) with Joseph Peladan's Rosicrucian Order (Philips 454 048-2, 70 mins: Dial-a-track code 1421). De Leeuw is a ritualistically patient and musically, penetrating (soft toned and harmonically illuminating) guide to Satie in pieces which find this undervalued, ahead of his time composer at his most restrained and introverted.
A pianistic world away are the final recordings of the late, great Shura Cherkassky (Decca 448 401-2, 66 mins: Dial a track code 1531).
Cherkassky was, above all, an individualist, a true charmer, ever unpredictable in his pursuit of spur of the moment inspiration. He was a man who made time to deal with passing, musical distractions and whose fanciful handling of them was one of his most cherishable characteristics. The final recordings, of Rachmaninov (the Third Concerto with the Royal Philharmonic under Yuri Temirkanov, and a handful of short solo pieces), were made when Cherkassky was 83, as delightful of character as ever, if a little more angular of execution and harder of tone than in his prime.
Till Fellner is a young Viennese pianist who will be making his Irish debut with the NSO at the end of January. He's been recording for Erato since 1994, but his latest CD, of Reubke's B flat minor Sonata and Schumann's Kreisleriana (0630-12710-2, 63 mins: Dial-a-track code 1641), is the first to have come my way. Julius Reubke (1834-1858), a pupil of Liszt, died young and full of promise. The extent of the promise is well evidenced in his sole piano sonata, a 30 minute piece that's both persuasively Lisztian and independent minded enough to constitute a relatively unexplored peak of German romanticism. In a written endorsement, Fellner calls it a "wildly impassioned and trail blazing sonata", and that's exactly what his exciting performance makes it out to be. Kreisleriana is given a forcefully shaped reading, though the playing here is altogether less free ranging in instrumental colour than in the Reubke - the two works were recorded in separate sessions and at different locations.
In Dublin Fellner will be playing Mozart's Concerto in C, K503, recently released in a live recording by Sviatoslav Richter with the Orchestra Di Padova E Del Veneto under Yuri Bashmet (Teldec 4509-94245-2, 63 mins: Dial-a-track code: 1751). Richter's Mozart is here unsmilingly severe and the orchestral playing is not always of the best. There's far greater enjoyment to be had from this now octogenarian musician in the couplings, two concertos by Bach (in D, BWV1054, in G minor, BWV1058), re the playing is sturdy, almost implacable, yet always pointed and persuasively thrusting in its long visioned views.
The Argentinian Martha Argerich, now in her mid fifties is renowned for one of the most fiery and uninhibited of pianistic temperaments, and has long been celebrated for her playing of the Tchaikovsky concerto. The octaves and the sparks certainly fly in her new, live DG recording of the work, made with long time collaborator Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic (449 816 2, 53 mins: Dial a track code 1861). Unlike Cherkassky, whose fancies inclined towards the expansive, Argerich lives with Horowitzian demons and takes wing when the technical hurdles are at their fiercest. The Berlin Philharmonic offer playing to match, and the recording is extremely vivid. The coupling is a reissue from the early 1980s of a two piano arrangement with Nicolas Economou of the Nutcracker Suite, not quite what you would expect on a full price CD.
There's high wire pianism a plenty, too, in Barry Douglas's new recording of the 1967 Piano Concerto by John Corigliano with the Saint Louis Symphony under Leonard Slatkin (RCA 09026 68100 2, 66 mins: Dial-a-track code 1971). Corigliano, who created a media stir with his Aids inspired symphony, is a romantic composer in an often punchy, post Barber style, whose music is most notable for its sensitivity to instrumental colour and effectiveness. Crowd pleasing stuff is what Corigliano sets out to write, and his aims seem well if not distinctively - achieved in the strongly projected performances on this disc (which also includes three purely orchestral works, Elegy, Tournaments, and Fantasia On An Ostinato).
