To be blunt, New York-based pianist Beth Levin’s live Schubert Wanderer Fantasy shouldn’t have been released. Her rhythmic mauling in the outer movements turns the music’s momentum to slush, to say nothing of her crude sonority and occasional simplifications of the text. To cite one instance, she fakes the left-hand part during those difficult octave exchanges between hands at the end of the first section. Granted, this is a live and unspliced situation where mishaps and bobbles can and do happen. But the performance’s drawbacks outweigh the virtues by a distressingly wide margin, notwithstanding the audience’s wildly favorable response. Not all archival concert recordings deserve to be perpetuated on commercial CDs, and I can’t fathom how this particular release will further Levin’s reputation.
By contrast, Michael Guirt’s fluent, assured pianism is the primary attraction of his Liszt Sonata (no octave problems for him!). He tends to impatiently plow through sections that require more weight and grandeur, and treats Liszt’s introspective sequences in a matter-of-fact fashion that pales next to Arrau’s handling of the coda, or alongside Richter’s hypnotic legato arcs in the slow passages before the fughetta. In addition, Guirt’s basically flinty tone turns increasingly brittle as the music gets louder. His encores, though, are worth hearing. Guirt has lots of fun with Gottschalk’s The Banjo as he deftly tosses off the tremolo chords and sparkling repeated notes. A big ritard midway through Moszkowski’s Étincelles seems to represent a momentary lapse in reason, but the pianist quickly gets back on track. He leaves the audience with an intimate, lithe, and spontaneous account of Granados’ Quejas o la maja y et ruseñor that is well worth the price of this release culled from the 1999 International Piano Festival at Williams College. [Editor’s Note: You can purchase this CD online at www.taubman-institute.com]
