Judging from this Schumann recital, Lise de la Salle seems to have evolved from the remarkably talented 14-year-old prodigy on her debut release to a bafflingly inconsistent pianist in her mid-20s. Right at the start of Kinderszenen you sense a problematic interpretation in store. The pianist dutifully plods through Von fremden Landern und Menschen, but makes more of Curiose Geschichte’s accented G-naturals than most pianists. She works too hard to play Bittendes Kind simply, resulting in tiny bumps and accents in the same lyrical lines that Wilhelm Kempff and Ivan Moravec so effortlessly and naturally sculpt.
Next to Radu Lupu’s sophisticated balances between hands and his making the forte and fortissimo markings distinct, de la Salle’s Wichtige Begebenheit is mostly loud, hammered-out, and just plain crude. The pianist tries to make Träumerei expressive by imposing tiny accelerations, whereas Annie Fischer, Artur Schnabel, and Vladimir Horowitz keep the tempo as strict as possible yet fully bring out the counterpoint. She plays Ritter vom Steckenpferd’s basic rhythmic figure inaccurately; and her unusually slow and enervated Der Dichter spricht might as well be called The Poet Sleeps.
Likewise, the Abegg Variations lack the suppleness and sparkle of the 19-year-old Evgeny Kissin’s incredible live 1990 Carnegie Hall recital debut recording. The C major Fantasy alternates between heavy, square, loud passages and shapelessly stretched-out lyrical episodes (the second movement’s central section). While her basic third-movement tempo is appreciably animated and fluid, the relationships between melody and accompaniment go in and out of focus, in contrast to Wilhelm Kempff’s impeccable textural clarity. In short, this oddly unsatisfying release falls far short of de la Salle’s best recorded and live performances.
