Defining the Etudes isn't easy. Are they simple follow-the-leader-type printed exercises? Are they "from the ground up" skeletal schematics requiring enhancement (derangement?) by the pianist? Are they both? Are they neither? Something in-between?
Dunno, really. The trick as I see it is to somehow take the mass of Etude notes and spring them from the confines of the written page. If all goes well then out pop musical statements. Simple enough, apparently, since this philosophy is the backbone of ALL musical interpretation. But for me something about the Etudes has kept them at arm's length from me throughout the decades. Finding a recording which ticks every single conceptual box leading to a sort of concrete "sweet pick" (so to speak) hasn't been easy.
Not that I haven't enjoyed performances from pianists who run the interpretive gamut, including, say, Pollini or Freire, who epitomize the former approach above, to Gavrilov and John Browning, each of whom espouse the latter approach above, to Cziffra, who is an island unto himself.
In their own respective ways each of these pianists has taken the printed notes and made them their own. They have delivered, well...music. No easy feat. But I've always craved more from these pieces. Could it be I've wished for perhaps more than is
available in those printed notes? Again, dunno. In the end, though, I've always held out hope.
And I'm glad I did. Just recently I discovered what I feel is a recording which fulfills every whimsy of mine in the Etudes, the recording by Janina Fialkowska below, a pianist who until now has been completely unknown to me.
Well, it's safe to say, she's led off with a bang!! This is exactly how I've always envisioned the Etudes: one part "study", a la Pollini, one part "swashbuckling", a la Browning, and one part, well..."X-factor", which in this case is Fialkowska herself.
It's the entire Etude "ethos" wrapped in one tidy package. The panache is off the charts. What exactly does she do to accomplish this Herculean feat? Well, I suppose she's
"taken those printed notes and made them her own". Unlike anybody I've ever heard.
To be a little more specific perhaps, I'd say there's a unique pliability to her approach, with a sinewy sweetness, which goes a long way towards taming the idea of "mere study" in these pieces. But just as importantly she never loses sight of the fact that these pieces are indeed
grounded in study! Another way of putting it might be, what we hear is something akin to a
refraction of the pieces, reflected and refracted through some sort of uniquely cut prism. Each piece
sounds like an Etude but there's fundamentally more
to those sounds. An "enhancement" as mentioned at the start of this post, perhaps, but emphatically not a "derangement". Something like that. "Flair", maybe.
Helping Fialkowska is first-rate sonics.
