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March 22, 2009

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Leon Fleisher CDs offer glimpse of early glory

Posted byMichael Huebner -- Birmingham News

Leon Fleisher's career can be parsed roughly into three periods. Before the pianist, then 36, was stricken with focaldystonia in his right hand during the 1964-65 season, he was on top of the classical music world. Definitivereadings of Brahms piano concertos with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra were among the string ofrecordings -- including Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Schumann and Grieg -- yielded from that stellar combination.

Leon FleisherThe ensuing decades of left-hand-only piano music, conducting, teaching and painful therapy led to an importantmilestone. In 1995, he returned to two-hand performance, performing again with the Cleveland Orchestra. SoloCDs followed -- "Two Hands" in 2004 and "The Journey" in 2006. Two more follow this year.

A six-CD set of recordings from 1958 to 1963, available from www.arkivmusic.com, has been remastered andreleased on Sony. When Fleisher comes to Birmingham this week, he will give listeners the chance to compare theyoung upstart pianist with a musician who, at age 80, seems to have unlimited destinations. Next Sunday, aftersoloing in Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand Friday and Saturday with the Alabama Symphony, he will play a solorecital in which three works from those early recordings are programmed.

LEON FLEISHERSix-CD setSony4 stars out of 5

Schubert. From 1954 comes a 36-year-old Fleisher playing Schubert's B flat major Sonata, D. 960, with unforcedbeauty and almost religious devotion, from the undulating, ambient bass notes of the opening movement, throughthe intricate dramas unfolding in the Scherzo and finale. Eight short pieces from Schubert's "Landler," Op. 171,could almost be danceable if not interrupted by Fleisher's rhythmic playfulness and arresting virtuosity. Fleisher willperform both of these works next Sunday.

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Debussy, Ravel. Also on next Sunday's program is Ravel's "Valses Nobles et Sentimentales," which, in this 1958recording, exudes ease and confidence. More noble than sentimental, it never succumbs to impressionistichaziness. Debussy's "Suite Bergamasque," with its famous "Claire de Lune" third movement, is played boldly andsecurely, bursts of joie de vivre mixed with pointillistic dryness.

Liszt, Weber. A recording from 1959 reveals Fleisher's overwhelming strength and stamina. Liszt's Sonata in Bminor surges from a lyrical, endearing calm in the Andante to a wild, nearly demonic temperament in the finale. Sounfettered is Fleisher's dynamic range in this album, the origins of his future physical maladies can easily beimagined.

Mozart. Two piano sonatas are combined with the Rondo in D major in performances from 1958 and 1959.Although performed with metronomic regularity, Fleisher makes these pieces breathe with his architectural vision,swelling and ebbing dynamics and cascading arpeggios and scales.

Copland, Sessions, Kirchner, Rorem. In 1962, Fleisher was providing living composers with performances of alifetime. The recipients on this recording were a diverse group whose music ranged from pillars of dissonance tonostalgic tenderness. No composer is treated less worthily than any other, but Copland, in his more adventurousmode in the Piano Sonata, is given a particularly vibrant reading. More melancholy writing pervades Rorem's"Three Barcarolles," Fleisher performing them with haunting beauty.

Brahms. The Juilliard String Quartet could not have asked for a more communicative collaborator than Fleisher forBrahms' Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34, recorded in 1962. Impeccable ensemble, grace, drama and, mostimportant, unanimity of musical vision, make this a treasured component of a historic set.

The pitfalls of the set are obvious and expected. Half-century-old recording equipment and techniques put listenersin a what-if-this-was-digital mode, and occasional tape splices interrupt the flow. Get past that, and listen to Fleisherduring his first heyday. Then hear him next weekend in his third.