Many years ago Henri Neuhaus, the legendary Russian piano professor, told Ugorski that he was a free and independent spirit who would hardly benefit from further tuition. Today, Neuhaus might well have added a warning and a corollary, namely that the greatest imaginative freedom derives, paradoxically, from focus and discipline, and that there is a radical difference between independence and eccentricity. Regarding Ugorski’s Brahms many listeners will, I suspect, join me in celebrating his warmth and sincerity while at the same time questioning a romanticism that threatens all possible coherence and continuity; and this in works which cry out for lucidity if their early exuberance is not to seem chaotic.
This is notably true of Ugorski’s way with the F minor Sonata where his back-breaking rubato turns the opening pages into a freewheeling cadenza and which erases all sense of impetus in the Scherzo’s epic dance rhythm. For Ugorski poco piu mosso invariably translates into molto meno mosso and in the sonata’s final heaven-storming pages his sudden unmarked rit and breaking of chords which demand to be played whole and unarpeggiated blunts and finally cancels all sense of final glory. The Handel Variations, too, suffer from oddities that turn Var. 13 into a trudge rather than proud step, offer little sense of nostalgia in the musical-box charm of Var. 21 and switch off the current, so to speak, in the final fugal home-coming.
Elsewhere Ugorski is more convincing, relishing the fledgling F sharp minor Sonata’s near-Alkanesque whimsy and dislocation, where the composer’s cornucopia of ideas spills over in bewildering disarray. He makes something very special of the Bach-Brahms Chaconne for the left hand only, a glowing tribute to the original’s single line, but in the C major Sonata terms such as con espressivo once again tempt him to wander and luxuriate unduly.
Ugorski’s finest playing (in the Chaconne) is gloriously impressive but elsewhere the listener ends exhausted rather than elated, lost in a sea of detail, deprived of a compass and unable to see the wood for the trees. Other recordings by Julius Katchen (glamorous and swashbuckling in all three sonatas), Sir Clifford Curzon, Radu Lupu and Murray Perahia in particular show that some element of restraint is not incompatible with the keenest poetry and personal feeling. The recordings are brilliantly successful, but my recommendation is qualified.'