Pianist Markus Schirmer has long desired to juxtapose Ravel’s Miroirs and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, and as it happens, these cycles make a stimulating coupling. Schirmer appears to work harder than necessary in Miroirs. In the opening Noctuelles, for example, he toys with dynamics and accents to the point where the composer’s actual espressivo and rubato markings lose their relevance. Schirmer’s slower than customary tempo for Oiseaux tristes causes the music to stand frozen, while the sweeping arpeggios in Une barque sur l’océan are not so supple and well-defined as they should be. Although fussy articulation and superfluous rubatos pockmark Alborada del grazioso, the shimmering polytextural landscape of La vallée des cloches is sensitively judged.
Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition also hits and misses. Schirmer’s overly sober treatments of Tuileries, the Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks, and Baba Yaga lack character and drive, while in Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle he underplays the whining repeated notes and jabbing accents that get your adrenaline pumping when Sviatoslav Richter mans the keyboard. By contrast, Schirmer’s massive sonorities and rock-steady trudge depict Bydlo’s overburdened oxen beyond a shadow of a doubt. Also note Schirmer’s intense concentration and sustaining power in Catacombae and Cum mortuis in lingua mortua. Schirmer plays a Fazioli F-278 concert grand, whose dulcet, responsive qualities are captured in gorgeously detailed, atmospheric sonic splendor worthy of the most demanding audiophile.
