Gregori Ginsburg is hardly a household name to Western listeners, but hard-core piano mavens know about his extraordinary keyboard artistry through rare Melodiya LPs. Five-eighths of this collection is worth owning. The symphonic contours of Ginsburg’s Tchaikovsky Sonata are roundly edged and vocally informed, in contrast to Richter’s steel-armed propulsion. Similarly, the flowing eloquence Ginsburg brings to Medtner’s Sonata Reminiscenza holds its own against Emil Gilels’ better known version (also available in Philips’ Great Pianists series). Like Moiseiwitsch, Ginsburg uncovers the lyricism and melodic richness underneath the terse garb that frames Prokofiev’s Third Sonata.
A handful of Liszt transcriptions (Alabiev’s The Nightingale, Schubert’s Stadchen, and the Polonaise from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin) stand out for impeccable timing and effortless control of voicing and shading. Pabst’s overstuffed Onegin paraphrase also sounds less bombastic than usual. The Liszt Rhapsodies, though, suffer from dry, airless miking, and Beethoven’s “Rage Over a Lost Penny” and “Turkish March” (in the Rubinstein arrangement) are nothing special. If you haven’t heard Ginsburg, I’d start with his matchless Liszt operatic transcriptions, along with his rollicking send-up of “Largo al factotum”, still available on Volume 12 of BMG/Melodiya’s Russian Piano School (BMG/Melodiya 33210 2). Philips’ Ginsburg compilation will be welcomed by certain collectors, but it could have been better.
