To paraphrase Mark Twain’s famous comment about Wagner’s music, this live Rachmaninov concerto cycle with pianist Lise de la Salle and the Philharmonia Zurich under Fabio Luisi may be better than it sounds. After two hearings, I’m not so sure. The distant, slightly murky sonics and mishmash balances in the Paganini Rhapsody and first three concertos do variable justice to the composer’s masterful orchestration.
In the Paganini Rhapsody the piano dominates to the detriment of the important solo passages and concertante-like ensemble writing. The First concerto fares best in the brisk and supple finale. The Second’s broad first-movement basic tempo is heavy and lumbering compared to the similarly paced yet far shapelier Richter reference recording. The Adagio sostenuto gets stuck in the mud because pianist and conductor fall into the common habit of slowing down at phrase ends to predictable effect, thereby dissipating the music’s polyrhythmic tension. De la Salle’s fingers traverse the final movement with fleet assurance, but without the point and punctuation one hears from Zimerman, Andsnes, and Katchen.
Aside from excellently built-up climaxes in the central Intermezzo, the lackluster Third concerto performance skates over the music’s harmonic felicities and fervent lyricism. The pianist aimlessly stretches out softer passages and imposes gratuitous expressive gestures throughout the slighter and superior of the composer’s two first-movement cadenza options. However, the Fourth concerto’s noticeably ampler and warmer sonics allow more details to be heard (the first movement’s repeated-note brass and woodwind phrases, for example), and as a result, the performers appear more engaged with their work, especially in the third movement’s rapid soloist/orchestra exchanges.
On balance, however, de la Salle and Luisi cannot compete with the superior Hough/Litton/Dallas and Kocsis/de Waart/San Francisco reference cycles, not to mention dozens of individual versions. Pass on this one, and hope that the Fourth concerto will become available as a download.
