Night Pieces
W.A. Mozart, Maurice Ravel, Alexander Scriabin, Robert Schumann, et al
Herbert Schuch, piano
Oehms Classics
Herbert Schuch’s provocatively programmed recital built around “Night
Pieces” reaches an extraordinary standard. Few keyboard artists have conveyed
the somber darkness and lyrical light that characterize Schumann’s Nachstücke, Op. 23 at Schuch’s level. The three short pieces encompassing Heinz Holliger’s Elis — Drei Nachtstücke feature dissonant outbursts, long, sparsely populated lines and resonant silences in the best post-Webern tradition. Narrative coherence and an innate affinity for the composer’s sound world distinguish Schuch’s command and control of the Scriabin Ninth Sonata’s multi-dimensional textures. One of the most absorbing, accomplished and individually profiled recordings of Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit follows. He hauntingly sustains a slow, basic tempo throughout Le Gibet, orchestrating the muffled chords, poignant tunes and tolling B-flats to three-dimensional effect. In this company Mozart’s B minor Adagio would seem anticlimactic, but Schuch’s forward thrust and purposeful inflections shed grittier, more masculine light on a piece we often think of as inward and fragile. The engineering captures Schuch’s piano as full-bodied, transparent and as alive as the music-making itself.
- Jed Distler
