Although his best music is contained within small forms, Edvard Grieg was no slouch when it came to delivering substantial larger-scaled works such as the Piano Concerto and the Violin Sonatas. His early E minor Piano Sonata, however, has more padding than sustained invention, save for the bristling, concentrated finale. Mikhail Pletnev brings supercharged yet amazingly controlled virtuosity and architectural sweep to each movement, making the music sound more urgent and substantial than it is. A group of seven fugues, written during Grieg’s student days in Leipzig, are recorded here for the first time. Each one more or less ends at the very point you’d want the music to continue. There’s not much you can do with these fugues but play them straight. And that’s exactly what Pletnev does, with perky tempos and dry-point articulation à la Glenn Gould.
Lastly, a selection of Grieg’s Lyric Pieces reveals the Norwegian composer at his most characterful and inspired, and the pianist in perplexing fettle. Pletnev fusses over and overphrases certain pieces, like Wedding Day at Troldhaugen and To Spring, sucking their uncomplicated lyricism dry. Likewise, Grieg’s winged, graceful Papillon evolves into an iron butterfly via Pletnev’s clipped, overtly worked out voicings. The pianist fares better with the more reflective selections. I’m especially taken with Bellringing (Op. 54 No. 6), where Pletnev’s ravishing dynamic gradations cast a spooky aura around the music’s stark, quasi-bitonal textures that reach out to Arvo Pärt’s meditative style a century later. Deutsche Grammophon captures Pletnev’s uneven yet undeniably individual artistry in sonics that are clear and impactive.
