Brahms Handel Variations and (IV): Egon Petri

Series disk "great pianists of the twentieth century", there a dozen years, had still managed this feat, "forget" among them Annie Fischer, but also Egon Petri (Hanover, 1881 Berkeley, 1962 ), German pianist naturalized American in 1938. This selection had not forgotten some of his students, John Ogdon and Earl Wild.

And yet, great pianist, this disciple of the Busoni was beyond reasonable doubt. It's simple: an immaculate technology for an astounding intelligence of music.

The Paganini Variations (reissued a time in the collection "References") are placed at the beginning of the disk, and for good reason: the "delirium of the fingers" it reached a climax, and despite the old age of these waxes that dazzled in spring , stunned, groggy.

The Handel Variations, also captured the Abbey Road Studios the following year (1938) may yardstick figure for future recordings. What design Egon Petri he of the work? In short, for him, the op. 24 Brahms, it is not mainly or primarily a daunting monument musical knowledge, nor (horresco referens) a "like the baroque" backward-looking and cautious. It is a work full of lightness, fantasy, playful spirit of youthful imagination. Not a collection of miniature but a course that asks the interpreter extreme precision and freedom of movement.

At first, one might wonder if the pianist does not go too far: where is "gloomy Joe," the most mournful composer of the world? And in fact, one quickly understands all the work deserves to be treated with as much taste, tact, all that makes this volubility.

Let us listen to the sequence of V and VI variations that appear to be linked by association of ideas (Brahms invented the stream of consciousness).

XIII variation is ideal with its agreements with the left hand so perfectly proportioned, without a gram of fat, almost improvised his side, his fierce resolution.

Note the interlacing of stormy changes XXIII and XXIV, which makes more than a pianist and allow to throw literally on the variation XXV.

The Rhapsodies Op 79 No 1 and 2 and Op. 119 No. 4 (the last piece for piano by Brahms, true concentrate of his world) captured in New York in 1940, complete the program.

All variations of the two collections are plagées and we must thank Marina and Victor Ledin for their restoration work.

Egon Petri, the piano man.