Schubert: Sonata in B-Flat, D. 960 - Liszt: Mephisto Waltz No. 1, S. 514

Album review

As a youthful prodigy, Evgeny Kissin awed an international audience with his astounding performances of Chopin, Rachmaninov, and Shostakovich while still a teenager. His technique was huge. His tone was enormous. His interpretations were eccentric, inspired, and, more often than not, utterly compelling. As the teenager grew into young manhood, Kissin's technique and tone remained imposing, but his interpretations went from inspired eccentricity into willful eccentricity and, more often than not, complete superficiality.
As a mature pianist of 32, Kissin has produced a supremely superficial account of Schubert ultimate Sonata in B flat major. Kissin's technique and tone remain impressive, but his interpretation is, when not willfully eccentric, utterly conventional. His opening Molto moderato is soporifically placid when not absurdly tempestuous. His central Andante sostenuto is dismally dour when not ridiculously histrionic. His Scherzo is blessedly brief but truly trivial, and his closing Allegro, ma non troppo is blissfully unaware and deeply superficial.
It gets worse. Kissin follows the sonata with four of Liszt's transcriptions of Schubert's songs. In Liszt's transcriptions, Schubert's sublime songs are turned into works of virtuoso sentimentality and, for better or worse, Kissin's performances are equal to Liszt's transcriptions. It gets worse. Kissin follows Liszt's transcriptions of sublime songs with his own infernal Mephisto Waltz No. 1, surely one of the trashiest pieces of music in Liszt's trashy catalog and, once again, Kissin's performance is equal to Liszt's music in both its transcendent virtuosity and its supreme superficiality. RCA's recording is masterful: warm, detailed, and almost real.

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