COMPOSERS: Hindemith
LABELS: Warner
ALBUM TITLE: Hindemith
WORKS: Ludus Tonalis; Suite 1922
PERFORMER: Boris Berezovsky (piano)
CATALOGUE NO: 82564 63412-2
In Ludus Tonalis, Hindemith takes
Bach’s Kunst der Fuge as a model for
a tour of the tonal cosmos: of the
gravitational forces, as he understood
them, holding all the keys together.
Applying Baroque polyphonic
skills to 20th-century vocabulary, he
produces a sequence that contrasts
the strict counterpoint and many
voices of fugue with a kaleidoscope
of character pieces. Symmetry is
imposed by the bookending Prelude
and Postlude: the Postlude is the
Prelude backwards and upside-down.
There are opportunities in plenty for
bravura playing, but the challenge is
to make none of this sound dry and
bring out the humanity innate in
even the most abstract movements.
Berezovsky seems to me only
partially successful. His technique
throughout is sparkling, on a
par with Olli Mustonen’s Decca
recording; but where Mustonen
sometimes over-characterised with
wilful distortion, Berezovsky seems
somewhat unengaged and superficial
until something clicks into place
round about No. IX, the scampering
‘Interludium quartum’. Thereafter
matters are much improved, and I
admired the eloquence Berezovsky
brings to the great slow numbers XV
and XXV, and his mercurial despatch
of the faster ones, though his touch is
on occasion a little on the heavy side.
The coupling, the early, dissonant
and jazz-influenced suite 1922 is
a perfect foil to the polyphonic
philosophizing of 20 years later. Here
Berezovsky is flamboyant to say the
least, with an uproarious account of
the ‘Shimmy’ movement. However
John McCabe presents the same
coupling in his version for Hyperion,
and in both works he shows greater
warmth and, it seems to me, a closer
involvement with the music. Even
so the account of Ludus Tonalis
which has most to offer, intellectual,
emotional and spiritual, remains
Bernard Roberts’s magnificent
Nimbus recording of 1995.
Calum MacDonald