Carefully worked out voicings, rubatos, and dynamic scaling characterize Nikolai Lugansky’s approach to the Appassionata sonata’s tumultuous first movement. The overall effect, however, is sectional rather than cumulative. More often than not the composer’s unexpected accents and frequent subito dynamics emerge as isolated, abstract events rather than integrated dramatic gestures. This also pertains to the slow-movement variations, where much of Lugansky’s playing is too loud. But everything comes together for the pianist in his steadily navigated, powerfully projected finale, where he gradually builds up to the Coda’s wild conclusion.
Listeners accustomed to Rudolf Serkin’s veiled and severe way with the Moonlight’s first movement may find Lugansky’s tapered phrases and lingering upbeats too Chopinesque, although such beautiful, unforced, and unselfconscious playing appeals to me more than the stilted, finicky gestures I’ve heard other pianists superimpose in the name of “expression”. Likewise, Lugansky’s judicious tempo fluctuations in the Finale do not at all detract from the big picture.
Lugansky effectively brings out the lilting lyricism in the Op. 54 sonata’s first movement, but he leans too heavily and squarely on the triplets and doesn’t let the feathery right-hand arabesques in the recapitulation take wing. The toccata-like finale may lack Richard Goode’s light-textured whimsy or Richter’s suppleness and color, yet Lugansky’s poise warrants respect. Op. 10 No. 3’s finale receives a witty, rabble-rousing, and dynamically vivid reading that I wish Lugansky also had applied to his relatively held-back first movement. Conversely, the great slow movement boasts a number of interpretations (Arrau, Kovacevich, Schnabel, and, believe it or not, Horowitz) that are more intense and searching than Lugansky’s pretty yet less involving traversal. Obviously Nikolai Lugansky is still finding his way in this repertoire, but his best moments certainly command attention.
