Martin Helmchen appears to be an earnest and fairly solid Schubert player, whose main attribute is not getting in the way of the scores. Nor does he often bring anything interesting to them. His D. 959 first movement (minus the exposition repeat) comes off relatively square and sober next to the wider range of dynamics, moods, and articulations you hear from Perahia (his remake), Lupu, and Pollini. While the pianist’s sustained concentration prevents his slow pacing of the Andantino’s main theme from falling apart, he holds back in the shattering central climax. He similarly takes his sweet time over the Scherzo’s ländler-like Trio, giving an appropriately bassoon-tinged character to the staccato bass lines. Unfortunately, the bland, uneventful Rondo only gathers energy and lyrical breadth in the final pages and often sounds slower than the overall timing implies.
The Moments Musicaux also could benefit from stronger dynamic contrasts. Still, I enjoyed Helmchen’s intimately scaled, fluently sung account of the C major (No. 1), along with the pianist’s excellent harmonic intensification of the central minor-key episode. The hackneyed F minor is simple and direct enough, but Radu Lapu’s delicacy and uncanny tonal gradations continue to spoil me.
Snooze through the remaining three selections, passing over the ambling, one-dimensional note-spinning in No. 4’s Bach-inspired outer sections–not to mention its laggard, prosaic Trio, the sing-song phrasing in No. 5, and an uninvolved, flat-footed No. 6 that sends you clinging for comfort to the limpid, tonally varied versions by Dejan Lazic, Clifford Curzon, and Stephen Kovacevich. Decent, if dryish sonics (either in SACD or conventional two-channel playback) mark Helmchen’s inauspicious solo debut for PentaTone.
