Fromn the New York Times:

January 19, 2003
If Practice Makes Perfect, Practice Less?
By BERNARD HOLLAND

We underrate imperfection as an expressive device. Music lovers yearn for flawlessness, but when it arrives, there is something missing. A kind of beauty may lie in the act of reaching, however short of the mark it falls. Perhaps humanity feels uncomfortable in a world where nothing discernible is wrong.

I put off playing Murray Perahia's Sony Classical CD of Chopin's 24 Études, nominated for a Grammy for best instrumental solo performance, until a few days ago. These pieces comprise two groups of 12, listed as Opus 10 and Opus 25, and with rare exceptions hearing them end to end means listening to recordings. Few pianists have the courage to try them in real time with people around; they are simply too hard. Even in the recording studio, a certain amount of fear manages to leak through the microphones.

Chopin, the piano composer, was the genius of song form: play a melody, play another melody, come back to the first, embellish everything with whatever twists and turns are desirable. The études, like a palimpsest, bear the traces of song form, but their overt physicality makes them different. Browse through the score. On the page they look odd next to Chopin's other music. Their name explains why. These are studies. Each deals with a technical problem: making the hands do a certain kind of thing on the keyboard. They are usually totally new problems. Musicological tracings of cause and effect notwithstanding, Chopin invented modern piano playing out of the blue. Without him neither Rachmaninoff nor Bill Evans would exist.

Every pianist — professional or would-be — has worked on the Chopin études. They explore octaves, chords, legato playing, double notes, arpeggios of different kinds but usually involving uncomfortable stretching of the hands. They are there to teach problem-solving, but so, too, are the dreary exercises of Hanon and Czerny, bogymen of every child at the keyboard. The Chopin études come with wider ambition, prescribing horrendously difficult physical acts that, if properly addressed, promise satisfying music. Chopin's critics, often misguided, complain of his wandering sense of form and organization. In this regard, the études are unassailable. The problem at hand, relentlessly pursued, is the form. The materials of the études are self-organizing.

Mr. Perahia accomplishes astonishing things. Every wicked obstacle is cleared; he heads straight to the musical finish line. Fast tempos seem to accelerate past your memory of them. There is a theory that composers hear their own pieces faster than the musicians who perform them. In other words, what has originated in the composer's head is a kind of gravity-free perpetual-motion machine, one that bypasses the performer as middleman and all the poorly greased gears and inefficient wheels that accompany the playing of an instrument or the functioning of a voice box.

Mr. Perahia's amazing prowess has a little of this feeling. Julius Katchen, the American pianist, was once stopped during a Brahms rehearsal in London by a not unsarcastic conductor, who asked, "Why do you play that passage so fast?" Katchen answered, "Well, you see, I can." A nice parry in musical swordplay, but two-edged at best.

There is no more thoughtful, more serious musician among us than Murray Perahia, and no one who has worked harder at articulating the good ideas that run around in his head. He pulls the famous Opus 10, No. 3, for example, out of the feverish, sentimental swamp to which most pianists consign it and restores Chopin's brisker tempo. Indeed, every item leads directly and confidently to the music that lies beyond the technique, so much so that Mr. Perahia's success can be unnerving. Pieces that survive for almost 200 years carry with them a tradition, and in the case of the Chopin études, part of that tradition is failure or, at best, victorious struggle. We are not used to someone who plays the piano as well as this.

Tradition also associates the word "cold" with the word "perfection." It is an irony to those who are not cold but who have worked hard to be perfect. The Emerson String Quartet is an intensely musical ensemble, yet the uncanny clarity of its playing takes getting used to. The gut roughness of Beethoven's middle quartets or of the six quartets by Bartok sounds at first to have been airbrushed to a Playboy-centerfold idealization. Actually, it is not, but it takes a while to realize that the Emerson is just telling the truth more clearly than most of its colleagues do.

Some pieces are deemed unplayable until people learn to play them. The Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto is one. Other pieces are deemed unplayable and really are. Did Beethoven — deaf and perhaps half mad — really expect pianists to rattle off the fugue of his "Hammerklavier" Sonata? The converse explanation is that our greatest of psychological architects was more clearheaded than we give him credit for: consciously building physical frustration and fear into the musical message. I think the answer lies somewhere in between.

My reaction to Murray Perahia and the Chopin études is more shock than disapproval. Lay it at my door, not his. Maybe the upward progress of virtuosity begins with newly set benchmarks — to be pursued and soon equaled by others — and with this CD another one has been set. Am I a victim of some grotesque paradox: disappointment in having my expectations exceeded? Mr. Perahia's virtue makes me a little uncomfortable, but what am I to do? Ask him to play less well?

I don't think this guy's ever heard Gavrilov

I've heard the Gavrilov set, in fact it was the first set or Etudes I bought. After getting the Perahia, I sold the Gavrilov to a second-hand CD shop. Sure, Gavrilov plays the fast Etudes with speed and power, but Perahia also achieves balance--which is much harder to attain. He is also more sensitive on matters of phrasing and rubato, and the slower Etudes are much more interesting on Perahia's set. He also gives each Etude a sense of narrative that I haven't heard in any set since Cortot (or course Perahia is incomprably superior technically to Cortot!).

I agree with Hank. Perahia's set is in general a lot more interesting than Gavrilov's. I still like Pollini's the best, even though many are put off by his "machine-like" playing. Also, Cziffra pulls off some of the faster ones amazingly well. Richter's performance of the Op. 10, No. 4 in c-sharp minor a few weeks in the "Richter - The Enigma" video is breathtaking.

I would agree Perahia's version is more phrasing sensitive. But i was referring to the reviewer's idea that Perahia is technically without equal: Now you tell me there's nothing peculiar about that statement.

And yes Tavner, Cziffra's set is amazing. Technical highlights include op10-1&4&12 and op25-1&2&6. In 10-4 especially, he sounds so different from the others thanks to all those "random" accelerations.

I don't like Pollini that much though

It sounds to me like the reviewer gets paid by the word.

6th finger -- it's not only the excerpt you quoted that sounds peculiar. The whole wandering review is profoundly ambivalent. From this I don't know if I want to hear the CD or not (no, not really; I rather like Perahia).

Which value judgment is this reviewer struggling not to make? "Perhaps humanity feels uncomfortable in a world where nothing discernible is wrong." Such utter twaddle. Humanity certainly feels uncomfortable in a world where we don't believe we can say what we think or feel, is more like it.

Who is the reviewer trying to placate, and why?

Yeah this certainly isn't the most persuasive review i've read. Contrary to the reviewer, i find Perahia's technique to be a weakness (relatively speaking) rather than a strongpoint. His left hand in op10-4 is especially clumsy. Just compare with Cziffra/Gavrilov's versions.

That said, i still enjoy listening to his op10-3 or op10-11. He lets out the music as long as his fingers aren't too over-stressed.

Really??? I totally disagree. Which measures?

I find Perahia's set to be one of my favorites. IMO he has the best balance of technique and musicality. Ok, I agree he doesn't sacrifice expression for clinical precision (ala Pollini, Gravrilov, etc.), but he doesn't throw away notes like Cortot. I wouldn't call any of them clumsy, though. They are fluid and graceful and cause me to listen to the music rather than the performance.

Ryan

I just listened again to the Perahia Op. 10, No 4, and I totally disagree. Just because Perahia doesn't break any speed records in this piece doesn't mean he isn't playing it well. In fact, it's a lot easier to rush through this piece, gabbling-up the notes at tremendous speed (Rubinstein was notorious for that in his earlier days) than to play every note in place, as Perahia does (and as Horowitz did in earlier days).

I like the John Browning performance -- and my teacher always loved the Bachaus recording. I think Perahia does a great job of balance.

Ken

In Perahia's op10-4, he crushes several notes together in some the left hand runs. In the opening sections (and the repeat later), there is little clarity in the left hand. The "crushing" occurs in the coda as well, the left hand figures sound like 3 notes not 4. Although the energy is certainly there, he did go a little further than his technique would allow. Again ihmo, Cziffra/Gavrilov deliver definitive versions of this piece. PS: Cziffra's left hand is a highlight.

Cortot is a little TOO clumsy for me to sit through, no matter how musical he may be.

John Browning sounds very very identical to Gavrilov, with a little less velocity.

I personally like Pollini for the etudes. I cannot imagine them played better, technically or musically.