My youthful memory of Misha Dichter’s 1977 Brahms D minor concerto with Kurt Masur on LP was that of an agreeable, well played, middle-of-the-road, and somewhat bland interpretation. Experiencing it anew via PentaTone’s SACD multi-channel remastering presents a weightier, more diversified orchestral image and a wider array of nuance and tone color on the pianist’s part. Granted, Dichter does tend to taper phrases in a sing-songy, predictable manner, yet he compensates with appropriate headlong urgency in the first movement’s gnarly octave passages, and inflects the Rondo’s left-hand counterlines to a more pointed degree than my LP pressing reveals. Dichter also interpolates a low B-flat at the top of measure 238, as did Brendel, Backhaus, and Rubinstein in his last recording of the work.
However, Dichter’s individual profile emerges more forcefully in Beethoven’s “Moonlight” sonata. Although his basic tempo for the famous first movement is slightly more brisk than Beethoven’s Adagio sostenuto marking suggests, the pianist’s delicate phrasing conveys plenty of poetic introspection. Dichter uncovers unconventional yet convincing inner-voice movement in the Allegretto, and concludes with a conservatively paced, meticulously accentuated finale.
