Not a bad programme. The Brahms Intermezzos are balm and solace after the rodomontade of the Rachmaninov last movement, and the link of key between the last of those and the Bach Prelude and Fugue from Book One of the 48 is a happy idea. From there, through Honegger's excellent little hommage a Bach, to the Berg Sonata is another pleasing sequence.
But if it's the music you're after, to follow Mikhail Kazakevich is a perplexing experience. To me, it has not been interesting more than about two and a half times. His sound is lovely and the playing has a control and a finish to remind one of Pletnev; but the musical personality is not in a class to match. I don't mind being discomfited if an artist can put something convincing in place of a traditional view: as Beethoven is reported to have been fond of saying, the opposite may also be true, and it is good to have one's expectations challenged. But the mind at work here, though musically intelligent, is not very searching. It may provoke—how novel to start the Bach Prelude strongly and reduce so much of the end of it to a whisper, and then begin the Fugue as if out of nothing (yes, why not?); but it is also often tiresome—how silly not to allow the dynamics of the Fugue to increase for the culminating last page. An avoidance of climaxes and direct statements seems to be characteristic of Kazakevich. Even the outer movements of the Rachmaninov Sonata are approached rather obliquely, as if there were virtue in being different.
Some of the Brahms group is good. These four Intermezzos are perceived as being not of our world at all, so that everything is brought to us da lontano, through veils and across chasms. This can work well: in the shadowy E minor Intermezzo, Op. 116 No. 5, for example, which always reminds me of Webern, where Kazakevich is at his best. And he plays the E flat minor Intermezzo, Op. 118 No. 6—barely audible at the start—as a sort of misty Debussyan Image, a notion I rather like. But when every forte and rinforzando is emasculated (last page of the great B flat minor, Op. 117 No. 2) you begin to long for fewer half-lights and a feeling for the sheer strength and range of late Brahms.
So, swings and roundabouts. Or, in the case of the Berg Sonata, a roller-coaster: all little rushes and holdings-back, and never mind too much where, in a manner that might once have been thought acceptable for the interpretation of the masters of the Second Viennese School but needs now to be condemned. Kazakevich is not dull but I cannot follow him through that sort of wilful nonsense. I wonder where the core of him is. The medium is completely at his command but, on first acquaintance, I don't get much in the way of message. The Rachmaninov Sonata is the most satisfying performance here, done with a sort of 16-cylinder effortlessness, as if there were always plenty under his foot. Excellent recording, from sessions last year in All Saints' Church, Petersham.'