Both of Maurizio Pollini's recitals this season in London have included Schumann - the Davidsbundlertanze and the F minor Sonata last autumn, the early Allegro Op 8 and Kreisleriana here. It's music that brings out the best in him; where his approach to some parts of the repertory can be dour, he finds a sense of adventure in Schumann, and fresh corners of his output to explore.
Hardly anyone plays the Allegro in concert nowadays. It is all that was completed of a projected B minor Sonata, and shows the young composer trying to reconcile three different tendencies in his music - freewheeling invention, flashy display and the rigour of a classical sonata form. It's not entirely successful, but Pollini provided all the clarity it needs, unerringly identifying those moments when Schumann's own voice emerges from the whirl of figuration and strenuous thematic working, and turning them into uncomplicated poetry.
Kreisleriana balances form and lyrical content well-nigh perfectly, and this reading did not try to tip the scales either way: the bone structure of each of the eight pieces was effortlessly clear, the pacing nearly always faultless. The extrovert numbers had all the necessary athleticism and some magical transitions; the introspective ones were just occasionally pushed too hard, but in the fourth piece they also found themselves in dark territory, and in the sixth in an almost trance-like self-contemplation. Perhaps an element of fantasy was missing, though: Schumann's imagination was not allowed to fly quite as freely as it can.
The score of Kreisleriana was dedicated in 1838 to Chopin, who returned the compliment the following year with the second of his Ballades. Pollini played all four of them, with the Op 45 Prelude in C sharp minor as a palate-cleansing hors d'oeuvre. Each contained things to admire. In the First there was the sleight-of-hand to sneak in the second subject and the cumulative power of its dramatic climax; the furious eruption of the second theme in the Second made the contrast with its innocent opening complete. In the Third, the symbiosis of the two main themes was made to seem the most natural thing in the world, while all the constituent parts of the Fourth were welded into a seamless unity, every detail under immaculate technical control.
A version of this review appeared in later editions of yesterday's paper.
