Hlne Grimaud Chopin at Amazon
| Most helpful customer reviews 16 of 17 people found the following review helpful. 32 of 39 people found the following review helpful. In the great Chopin sonata on this record, Helene Grimaud combines her structural understanding with emotional strength and universality to achieve an interpretation that to me is substantially new and compelling. As she says in the notes, the sonata is about death, and its first movement, which she says is the heart of the work, “reflects the revolt and supplications of a tragic struggle against hopeless destiny”. This seems to me exactly how she plays it. The whole movement–the phrase of the whole–is played with a driving, passionate intensity, never letting up, never denying, but still containing and letting breathe the beautiful “supplication” and noble “revolt” sub-phrases that contrast with death’s relentlessly returning tocsin. The overall structure is constantly present and reinforced. Grimaud never indulges in idiosyncrasy or feeling for its own sake; she seems intent on letting the composer’s idea and purpose come through, and does so using her enormous understanding and expressive power, aided, I must say, by the fabulous sound of her piano. The rest of the sonata is equally rewarding. I would just mention how in the “Funeral March” movement, the tempo and dynamics of the march sections are almost utterly steady–surprisingly, one taps one’s foot–removing all personal sentiment, as though we are seeing an historical black-and-white film. The sense of distance is complemented by the sweet, ethereal passages that interweave the march; Grimaud plays them limpidly and wonderfully slowly. The other sonata on this disc, Rachmaninov’s 2nd, is new to me and I am still “learning it” from the pianist. But her playing displays the same structural insight, anticipation, and voicing that I have mentioned, underlying her characteristically beautiful expression both in the strong passages and the gentle ones. I have all of her CDs, and a very special quality, evident here, is Grimaud’s ability to be interesting wherever she is in a piece. There are no dead spots or contentless transitions: every passage always has something going on that holds interest, even fascination. In a sense she is a miniaturist in her immediate playing–I think that is the result of her deep grasp of what the piece, at every point, is saying. The Berceuse in D flat and Barcarolle in F sharp, familiar to every listener, complete this program of Helene Grimaud’s. They are beautifully rendered–the Berceuse with exceptional tenderness, the Barcarolle in all its unique originality. I give this recording five stars as a marvelous example of the work of a still relatively unknown pianist of exceptional quality whose approach and understanding and expressive power will, I believe, soon bring her recognition as one of the greatest pianists. 34 of 48 people found the following review helpful. However, this does not mean that the effort is completely successful. To put it as politely as possible, Grimaud is not a delicate, “pretty” kind of pianist. Anyone looking for that would be better served by Vasary, for example. Grimaud’s sound is large; she uses dynamics which would work very well in a concert hall. She is more faithful to the score than many, and she plays accurately and powerfully. On the flip side, she can occasionally sound harsh, but the sound is never ugly, as it has been in the past. Compared with the three recent recordings of the Chopin sonata I’ve heard (Pompa-Baldi at the Cliburn, Moravec, and this one), this is the most exciting and most accurate, but it seems less organic and flowing than many other readings. The Rachmaninoff is a straighter imitation of a poor performance (the 1980 Horowitz recording, taken at the nadir of his career), and it has too much volume and too little impact. The Chopin Berceuse is serious and rather strange, as Grimaud suddenly and inexplicably gets very loud and passionate at a time where the opposite is expected. I wouldn’t want to be the baby trying to fall asleep to this. The Barcarolle, too, is too intense. Grimaud is anxious in the languorous, elevated atmosphere of this music, and the result is too Germanic rather than Italianate. Although my tone may seem negative based on the above paragraph, I enjoyed this CD and I can recommend it. There are better recordings available of all of this music, though. For the Chopin Sonata, there is very little to match Moravec’s recent disc, and for the Barcarolle, Sofronitzky’s freely improvisatory manner carries the day. It is harder to make a recommendation of the Rachmaninoff sonata, because there are more poor performances of that much-abused piece than I can count. I certainly haven’t found a CD that makes me love the piece. |
Wonderfully Played. Imaginative, with Feeling
Unfocused Effort