DOING my listening this week, it was impossible not to think of the pianist Susan Tomes’s recent book Beyond the Notes, a wise and wonderful tour of the practicalities of a chamber musician’s life, just issued in paperback. Her comments on the recording process provide some of the most ear-opening insights: the hours spent seeking perfection through retakes and inserted “patches”; the claims of flow and spirit versus the minute, unblemished detail.
No wonder, then, that so many CDs these days capture the musicians in concert. EMI Classics at the moment offers listeners a chance to join Martha Argerich and Friends performing live at the Lugano Festival (4 76871 2; three discs). Another release whisks us far from the Swiss lakes to an Art Nouveau-style power station in Heimbach, Germany, site of Lars Vogt’s own chamber festival, Spannungen (5 58062 2).
The artistic worth of the Lugano box is variable. Curiosity should draw many to Shostakovich’s Second Piano Trio, performed by Argerich, Maxim Vengerov, and the superb French cellist Gautier Capuçon. Here the all-stars deliver gripping music-making — just what this angry memorial to lost lives needs. To hear the downside, turn to the wilful account of Schumann’s adorable Piano Quintet, forced along by Argerich at her most mercurial.
Most other items occupy the middle ground. The pianist Lilya Zilberstein lends a welcome steady hand to Brahms’s Third Violin Sonata, but Vengerov needs to generate more excitement here. The two-piano items offer roaring fun, particularly the arrangement of Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony, lightly tossed by Argerich and Yefim Bronfman. Pros and cons everywhere you look: this is a difficult set to estimate.
Lars Vogt’s Heimbach sampler has fewer thrills and spills, but is much more manageable. There’s only one disc; and Vogt’s focused keyboard manner leaves no room for Argerich’s volatility. The main pleasure is the Tchaikovsky Piano Trio, with the violinist Antje Weithaas and cellist Claudio Bohórquez. These names may not beckon like Argerich’s friends, yet the players fuse as a unit in a way the Lugano spitfires rarely do.