12/26/2021
December 2021 Releases
Craig Sheppard Live - piano
A new eMusic exclusive project with 5 live recordings
The five CDs were produced by Annette Tangermann (Berlin)
Roméo Records 7337
Chopin
Scriabin
Roméo Records 7338
Beethoven
Scriabin
Schubert
Roméo Records 7339
J.S. Bach
Roméo Records 7340
Scarlatti
Rachmaninoff
Roméo Records 7341
Schumann
Reviews from Music Web International:
Romeo Records 7338
The interpretative problems in the Diabelli Variations are significant. There is considerable colouristic potential, numerous marked dynamic gradients, issues of rhythmic licence, the question of appropriate tempi in the faster numbers, the matter of volatility and the silences between variations; running through all these of course there is also the comedic element. Plenty more considerations apply to a successful traversal and these are only some of the more obvious. Craig Sheppard has taken on these challenges in this Meany Theatre recital recorded in May 1995 and has emerged triumphant.
Here are some highlights of his splendidly persuasive performance. He catches the mock sententiousness of the first variation with splendid layering of weight, and gives the voicings in the Poco Allegro second variation their due balance. His warmth in the fourth doesn’t at all preclude strong entry points and whilst there is a little indistinctness at the beginning of the sixth that soon passes. He generates energy and momentum in the seventh and equally mines bluff humour to tremendous effect in the ninth. The decisive bravado with which he ends the Presto tenth is splendid. The dangers of the thirteenth variation are well negotiated – this powerfully internally contrastive variation relies on those pointed silences and the juxtaposition of power and an answering relative timidity, to which Sheppard adduces a crucial skittishness. In the fourteenth there is no hardening of tone above forte; he holds the bass line well and is not as abrupt as some pianists – Schnabel, I suppose, is the locus classicus here – can be. In the seventeenth he is delightfully propulsive and the clarity of his entries are not in doubt in the nineteenth. In the twentieth, the remarkable Andante, there is plenty of depth of sonority – whereas Schnabel is quicker, less reliant on Sheppard’s sense of stasis. The twenty-third is pungently done, the succeeding variation explicitly contrasted with the former, the fugal entries delicate though they soon gather in amplitude – a strength born of directional acuity (though maybe, arguably, too much so). The delicacy of the twenty-ninth is tempered by alert timing and the discursive depth of the Andante; sempre cantabile is well realised. These then are the highlights of a most satisfying and successful traversal.
The disc is rounded out with Scriabin and Schubert. The former’s Fifth Sonata is negotiated with architectural strength and a luminous tone whilst the Schubert G flat Impromptu sounds as if the piano hammers were encased in down. This is hyper-romantic audacity of the Old School and won’t suit those of a more ascetic disposition. For others it will be simply beautiful playing. A strong recommendation then for this splendidly astute and affectionate disc.
Jonathan Woolf
Romeo Records 7339
Recorded live in concert at the Philharmonie in Berlin in April 1999 this performance of the Goldberg Variations contrasts profoundly with that by Jean Louis Steuerman, recorded two years later in London, which I’ve also recently reviewed. It’s not just a question of repeats that means that Craig Sheppard takes less than forty minutes and Steuermann more than seventy-three. The difference between them goes beyond mere temporal considerations, significant though these can be. But whilst Steuerman’s sometimes notable pianism is put to the service of an intensely meditative, frequently static, muse, Sheppard, with no loss of depth, invests the Variations with colour and animation, freshness and vitality. The two approaches are musically oppositional and whilst Sheppard isn’t invariably convincing in all he does his is the performance that comes closer to the core of the music, that responds more appropriately to its reflection and dance, which discovers more fruitfully its seriousness without becoming sententious. It’s also an approach I found intensely sympathetic and likeable.
If Sheppard has a fault it is an overuse of the stabbing staccato, and he serves notice in the course of an otherwise affectionate and beautiful statement of the Aria that the left hand’s animating propensities will be thus used. The first variation is full of tonal gradation however and infectious and I delighted in the animation, the brio and drive of the Fourth. The excellence of the Fifth is followed by a rather staccato sixth – the air of deliberation and stuttering progress is a disappointment though this is clearly a thoroughly thought-through interpretation. It sounds directionless to me. The second canon likewise never quite comes to life whereas the fourth canon is a thoroughly convincing and beautifully played affair. In the Thirteenth Sheppard is full of decorative and rococo charm though ones that gather in strength but I was less convinced by the succeeding fourteenth. In his inspiring review of a Quintet of Goldberg recordings recently, colleague Christopher Howell refers to Sheppard’s playing of this variation as "messy" and here, as so often elsewhere, I find myself echoing him. In the Fifteenth variation I found Sheppard’s noble dignity rather too heavy but I greatly admired the subtle rhythmic bite with which he vests the Eighteenth. Freshness and animation, prime Sheppardian constituents, drive through 20 and a thrilling wit and clarity radiates from 23 as he relishes the hands’ discourse and brings out the left hand lines. The Twenty-fifth is the so-called Black Pearl and Sheppard is suitably intense and but at a relatively flowing tempo. From here in Sheppard’s tonal beauty makes its mark – number 26 is especially rounded tonally. I very much share Christopher Howell’s reservations concerning variation 29 however. On record and in concert Angela Hewitt, for one, has shown how intensification does not necessarily mean over aggressive playing of this kind. When however the Aria da capo is heard it is with a proper sense of visionary return.
A Washington performance of the Fifth Partita is included. It’s somewhat afflicted with mechanical bumps in the sound and the central Sarabande is very slow and whilst of almost evasive delicacy might well sound etiolated to less sympathetic ears. I admired the clarity of voicings and the vivacity of the Gigue. But the Goldberg Variations is the focus of interest and I would certainly recommend Sheppard. He has tonal resources that are at the service of the music and never deployed for narcissistic effect; his is a Goldberg, as I suggested earlier, of colour and animation and it’s one to which I know I shall return.
Jonathan Woolf
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