In the 1930s, Earl Wild heard his teacher Egon Petri perform the Brahms Piano Quintet with the NBC Symphony’s string section. The occasion instigated Wild’s long-held desire to explore the piano quintet repertoire with a string orchestra. It’s taken more than 60 years, but Earl Wild finally gets his wish with the Schumann E-flat and Dohnányi C minor Op. 1 quintets, abetted by the American String Orchestra under the expert leadership of Isaiah Jackson. In essence, the solo string parts are treated en masse, so to speak, with double basses added to provide discreet padding. You gain in tonal sheen and amplitude, yet lose the intimate give and take and potential for individual nuance inherent in the original scores. Because of this, the constant string tuttis offer little textural variety. At the same time, Schumann and Dohnányi’s important second violin and viola lines emerge with newfound fullness and clarity. In any event, Earl Wild is on fabulous form. He tosses off Schumann’s more taxing patterns with youthful assurance that belies his 84 years. He pulls a rainbow of nifty bunnies from his bottomless rubato hat in the Dohnányi. The latter is an early, derivative work by a budding 17-year-old master, oozing remarkable charm and fluency. All in all, an unusual, lovely disc, and well recorded too.
