Best known as the founding and long-time pianist of the recently disbanded Beaux Arts Trio, as well as a much sought-after teacher, Menahem Pressler has been focusing on solo repertoire in his ninth decade. Pressler was 89 when he recorded this movingly performed Schubert, Mozart, and Beethoven program, and while he may not play with the speed and incisive dynamism of his youth, his pianism remains remarkably supple, colorful, and refined, and his musicianship as insightful as ever.
What incredible nuance, flexible rhythm, tonal variety, and sensitively inflected fingerwork he brings to the Schubert G major sonata’s long first movement! Listen to how he shapes the Andante so that its long phrases weightlessly float over the barlines. Listeners used to a firmly delineated Menuetto will be surprised and hopefully convinced by Pressler’s leisurely gait and muted sonority, which he carries into an equally slow and understated yet gently gripping finale.
If you listen beyond the lyrical glow and surface simplicity with which Pressler unfolds Mozart’s A minor Rondo, you’ll hear assiduous dynamic hairpins and slight changes in balance or emphasis that discreetly underscore harmonic and contrapuntal felicities. In Beethoven’s Op. 126 Bagatelles Pressler underplays the combative, fiery qualities of Nos. 2, 4, and 6, yet he more than compensates for his gorgeously fluttering passagework and trills in the first piece. He reminds us that No. 3 is a living, breathing Andante, not the sleepwalking Largo that many pianists adopt in the name of “profundity”. My observations about the aforementioned Mozart Rondo further apply to the fifth Bagatelle’s graceful, lilting reading. In fact, everything about this release is first class, from beautiful sonics to the kind of elegantly typeset multi-lingual annotations, artwork, and booklet design that make CD collecting worthwhile.
