Wherever you sample, this is piano-playing of superlative finish – more finished than almost anybody has achieved in the Brahms B flat Concerto, in which Zimerman delivers the notes (and I mean all of them) with amazing command. This live version of the concerto from 1984 has been widely admired, and I admire it too – though I would rather every note of the piano part were not always so upfront. The impregnable aspect of the playing contributes to a rather one-dimensional and monolithic effect, as if the achievement of such security and power had to be at the expense of the work’s intimate qualities. There is not enough response to the variety of the relationships of piano and orchestra, and you may agree that a performance of the concerto falls short when the lyricism of the slow movement is generalized rather than acutely touching.
Several of the solo tracks are intermittently (but quite seriously) disfigured by singalong, notably Liszt’s ‘Funerailles’ and the Fourth Ballade of Chopin. At the beginning of the Chopin, where Zimerman’s poetic sensibility contrives an effect of the music drifting in from afar, the fault is maddeningly intrusive. Nevertheless, there’s much to enjoy in his superfine quiet playing and passion is there too, ready to be ignited by his strong contrasts and wide dynamic range (which I suspect has sometimes been artificially assisted). Much of the Ballade is slow; at this tempo many other players would have sounded becalmed or laboured. The temperament and general high musical intelligence most often carry me, though not in the opening pages of the Chopin Fantaisie, where Zimerman’s halting delivery of the slow march at a snail’s pace is stilted and very odd, as if he were intent on proving something – or at any rate denying what was surely an operatic source of inspiration (Meyerbeer?). It is four-and-a-half minutes before the piece gets going.
When I’m out of sorts with what’s on offer it is either because Zimerman seems to have a bee in his bonnet, as he does there, or because he is too literal or tends to veer from one high contrast to another. This portrait does not show him as a master of transition. Nor, I think, of suggestion – there are not enough half-lights in the Debussy Preludes, which are often startling in the wrong way. Best of them is ‘Feux d’artifice’, which is thrilling and startling in absolutely the right way. The Liszt Totentanz is another complete success, but the track I prefer to all the others is the Brahms Scherzo, Op. 4 (the earliest recording here – dating from 1982), played with a Lisztian diablerie and fire. They are qualities which might have surprised the composer, but they seem well in place, as does Zimerman’s glowing Schumannesque warmth in the contrasting episodes. '