Born in 1978, pianist Severin von Eckardstein has recently made his mark on the European festival and competition scene. In 2000 he placed third at the Leeds International Piano Competition, where he also won a special prize for the best interpretation of contemporary music. True, Messiaen, Janácek, and Prokofiev no longer are contemporary composers, yet their singular styles largely find a sympathetic interpretive voice through Eckardstein’s playing. His supple hands and astute sense of architecture help sustain Messiaen’s seemingly static La Rousserolle effarvatte. Moreover, his careful adherence to the composer’s wide dynamic gamut and nimble, pinpointed articulation brilliantly stage-manage the music’s polytextural logic. He treats Janácek’s two-movement sonata in a broad, orchestrally-inspired manner that differs from Ivan Moravec’s refined, chamber-like conception (compare how the pianists deploy the sustain pedal, and you’ll immediately hear the difference).
Eckardstein takes a spacious, unpressured view of the Prokofiev Eighth’s lengthy first movement, but his relatively bland projection of the second movement’s deadpan chords that jump across registers pales next to more incisive, colorful accounts from Sviatoslav Richter and François-Frederic Guy. Similarly, the finale’s feathery runs and woodwind-like interjections need sprucing up in the way of varied touch and rhythmic crispness. There’s little warmth in the cavernous, slightly metallic engineering, yet the sonics do full justice to Eckardstein’s considerable dynamic range. Recommended mainly for the Messiaen and Janácek.
