Like Michelangeli, Zimerman, Tureck, and Pogorelich, Piotr Anderszewski is an artist who lavishes great care and specificity over tone production and nuance. Sometimes the results can be overly studied, as in his recordings of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations or selected Chopin Mazurkas. However, Karol Szymanowski’s polytextural keyboard writing and ravishing post-impressionist harmonic palette particularly suit Anderszewski’s super-refined technique and temperament, as you readily hear in the three Masques that begin this recital.
The opening Schéhérazade, for example, holds up under Anderszewski’s patient unfolding as the pianist stage-manages the piano writing with painstaking calibration: notice the shimmering, absolutely uniform long trills, and hear how the big climactic chords display force without an iota of banging. And no matter how clearly Anderszewski articulates melodic strands across the keyboard’s registers, the music’s Scriabinesque sensuality always makes itself felt. Cogent examples of this can be found in the cascading figurations of Métopes, or in the dynamic extremes marking the Third sonata’s first movement.
At times Anderszewski’s deliberation soft-pedals the music’s rhythmic vitality. For example, Martin Jones’ quicker, drier account of Nausicca (Métopes’ final movement) conveys a crisper, more varied soundscape, while his traversal of the Third sonata’s ambitious concluding fugue boasts greater overall thrust and momentum than Anderszewski’s relatively heavy, slightly foursqauare reading. Yet the unswerving concentration and integrity with which Anderszewski communicates his conceptions cannot be denied, and for that he deserves my highest recommendation. [8/3/2005]
