Melodiya presents recordings by one of the best known pianists of the 20th century Lazar Berman.
A graduate of the Central Music School and Moscow Conservatory where he studied under professor Alexander Goldenweiser, Lazar Berman, while still a student, became a prize-winner of the World Festival of Youth and Students in Berlin, and the prestigious Queen Elisabeth Music Competition in Brussels and Franz Liszt International Piano Competition in Budapest. He who struck the audience with his phenomenal virtuosity and unsurpassed technique became the best interpreter of Liszt's music in this country (in particular, he was the first Soviet pianist who recorded all twelve of Liszt's Transcendental Études). However, his repertoire grew year after year, while the pianist perfected his performing skills making them artistically well-reasoned. Playing piano works from three centuries, from early classicism to contemporary music, Berman especially shone in romantic repertoire.
This album includes Lazar Berman's interpretations of a one-movement piano suite by Franz Liszt, which assumes an explicitly "autobiographical" character when it is performed by Berman, and first two sonatas by Robert Schumann, which appear as genuine "works by Florestan and Eusebius" with their bright psychological contrasts, exquisite reproduction of soul motions and inconstancy from rapturous reverie to dismal drama.
Lazar Berman (1930–2005) was one of the most splendid pianists of the 20th century. Music critics often included him in the top three of Russia piano geniuses along with Emil Gilels and Sviatoslav Richter.
Lazar Berman was born in Leningrad. He began to study music at the age of two tutored by his mother. When he was four, he became a pupil of Samary Savshinsky, a famous Leningrad teacher and professor of the Leningrad Conservatory. In 1939, the family moved to Moscow where Lazar entered the Central Music School in the class of professor Alexander Goldenweiser. Since that time — about eighteen years in all — he studied under Goldenweiser: in the Moscow Conservatory after he finished the music school and during his post-graduate course which Berman completed in 1956. “Alexander Borisovich taught me how to work on the text of a composition in a proper way. In class, we often heard that an author's concept is only partly realized in music notation. The latter is always conditional, approximate… One has to guess a composer's intentions (this is what an interpreter's mission is about) and reflect in the performance as precisely as possible. Alexander Borisovich himself was an excellent, amazingly shrewd master of musical text analysis — he accustomed us, his pupils, to this art…” (L. Berman)
Upon graduation from the conservatory, Berman toured across the USSR and then abroad. Among his achievements are a victory at the World Festival of Youth and Students in Berlin in 1951, the fifth prize at the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition in Brussels in 1956 and the third prize at the Franz Liszt International Piano Competition in Budapest in 1956. After the competitions, Berman was invited to play overseas where he not only performed at concerts but also made a number of recordings.
During 1959 to 1971, Berman was restricted from travelling abroad as he married a Frenchwoman, but their marriage didn't last long though. The pianist continued to give concerts and make recordings in the USSR (his famous recordings of Liszt's Transcendental Études on Melodiya was one of them). The year of 1975 became a turning point in Berman's biography when he was personally invited by Herbert von Karajan to record Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto with the celebrated maestro and the Berlin Philharmonic. In early 1976, Berman had a big concert tour of the United States. Besides, he continued to record new albums.
Berman played at some of the most prestigious venues of the world and collaborated with great conductors such as Leonard Bernstein and Claudio Abbado, and orchestras such as the New York Symphony, the London Symphony and Vienna Philharmonic ones. In 1990, Berman left the USSR for Norway and then Italy where he took up teaching. Four years later, Berman was granted Italian citizenship. In 1995, he was invited to the Liszt School of Music in Weimar, Germany, where he taught until 2000. Lazar Berman also performed with his son, violinist Pavel Berman.
Berman's phenomenal virtuosity which astonished his contemporaries as early as when he was a post-graduate student of the Moscow Conservatory was one of the brightest features of his pianism. His warm touch which makes his performance of not just bravura but also lyric and cantilena pieces deserves special attention. Berman said, “To my mind, culture of piano performance begins with culture of sound. When I was young, I sometimes had to hear that the sound of my piano was not so good, that it was dull and faded… I began to hearken to good singers. I remember playing gramophone records with Italian stars. I began to think, seek, experiment… The sound of my teacher's instrument was peculiar enough, and he was hard to imitate. I borrowed something in terms of timbre and sound colouring from other pianists. First of all, from Vladimir Vladimirovich Sofronitsky — I loved him very much…”
According to the pianist, his repertoire was not beyond the limits of “romantic coordinates” — Liszt, Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, etc.
The Piano Sonata No. 1 in F sharp minor, Op. 11, was composed by Robert Schumann from 1833 to 1835 and published under the name Pianoforte-Sonate, Clara zugeeignet von Florestan und Eusebius (a piano sonata dedicated to Clara by Florestan and Eusebius). “The sonata was a cry from the heart to you,” wrote Schumann to Clara Wieck.
Florestan and Eusebius were members of the music society Davidsbündler (League of David after the biblical legend of King David who conquered the Philistines) created in Schumann's imagination. Schumann wrote on behalf of the imaginary members of the league in his New Journal for Music. Ardent and passionate Florestan and dreamy and poetic Eusebius are like two sides of Schumann himself. The First movement of the Sonata is filled with Florestan's passion, while Eusebius's motifs sound in the Aria, the Second movement of the Sonata. “A child of awakening romanticism,” composer and pianist Ignaz Moscheles called the Sonata.
Schumann conceived the Piano Sonata No. 2 in G minor, Op. 22, at the same time with the first one but finished it in 1838. Schumann dedicated it to Henriette Voigt (1809–1839) who he called a "dear, always caring friend, as-dur at heart." In his last letter to her dated 11 August 1839, Schumann wrote, "The only thing I wish now is to see the sonata coming [after publication] for the world to see who I dedicated it to…" The sonata is full of fascinating sincerity, freshness and gentleness. One may call it the most serene and lyric of all Schumann's sonatas.
Franz Liszt's Sonata in B minor (1852–1853) is filled with totally opposite romantic moods. Liszt dedicated the Sonata to Robert Schumann in response to Schumann's dedication of his Fantasie in C major, Op. 17, to Liszt who often played it; he also transcribed it for piano and orchestra. The B minor Sonata was first performed by Hans von Bülow. Liszt finished it immediately before began to work on the Faust Symphony, therefore they are close in concept. That is why the Sonata is frequently called a Faust one as opposed to the earlier Dante one (from the second part of the piano cycle Years of Pilgrimage).
