The unpredictable Dejan Lazic is at it again. His clipped phrasings, capricious agogic shifts, and pokey accents turn Schumann’s Papillons into iron butterflies. For example, check out his pounding in No. 3, or how his fidgeting with No. 4’s dotted rhythms and No. 8’s repeated chords impedes the music’s flow. Waldszenen is better, but not without problems. Lazic overphrases Eintritt to the point where its calm, long line is nowhere to be found, and he dispatches Jäger auf der Lauer’s octaves as if he were playing a typewriter instead of a piano. Yet he deftly spins the filigree in Freundliche Landschaft and Vogel als Prophet with impressive poise and lyricism.
Eccentricity rules Lazic’s Brahmsian roost in the Op. 118 Piano Pieces. Extreme rubatos stop No. 1 dead in its tracks, to say nothing of No. 2’s arch distensions–and why all of that ugly, emasculated, detached articulation in No. 3? True, Lazic’s dryish contrapuntal shaping of No. 4 brings out details most other pianists ignore, but at the expense of the music’s agitato impulses. To his credit, Lazic plays the last two pieces directly, and with no loss of individuality. Channel Classics’ SACD surround sound is as full-bodied and vibrant as ever.
