Pianist Klára Würtz has attracted positive attention through her superb Mozart and Schumann cycles for Brilliant Classics. Her performance of the Schumann Op. 54 concerto appears here. It’s a good but not great reading, mainly because the pianist’s intelligent, poetic projection of the solo part is undermined by less than world-class orchestral support. Würtz makes a strong impression in the Rachmaninov Second Concerto and particularly dazzles in the finale’s vertigo-inducing passagework. Too bad that the sonics are a bit diffuse and lack impact, for the Ukrainian orchestra has this music in its bloodstream and plays superbly.
In Würtz’s rapid, lyrically shaped Waldesrauschen, the murmuring right-hand figurations manage to be well articulated without sounding notey. She takes Gnomenreigen at quite a clip (shades of Rachmaninov’s classic recording) and emerges with nary a battle scar. Though every note of Mephisto Waltz No. 1 is properly in place, the central love music drags, and the final pages cough rather than spill their demonic guts. Likewise, Les Jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este is beautifully sculpted without quite matching Arrau’s ecstatic, rainbow-tinted vision, and Debussy’s L’isle joyeuse is light and playful rather than orgiastic.
And while we’re on the subject of water, Würtz proves too cool and efficient a captain on the good ship Barcarolle for me to savor Chopin’s alluring harmonic ports of call. I have no qualms, however, about her solid, poised traversals of Chopin’s G minor Ballade and the Schubert B-flat Impromptu. And had Würtz not lingered too long over the transitional section prior to the main strain’s second appearance, her Schumann Arabesque would have been perfect rather than merely excellent. In sum, there are more than enough memorable moments here to justify ordering this inexpensive collection.
