Lazar Berman was born in 1930 in Leningrad, or St Petersburg as it is now again called. During the 1950s his exceptional virtuosity won him admiration in Western Europe and America, but he has rarely played publicly during the last three decades although he left the USSR and settled in Italy. It is therefore good to have him again on this new disc (a companion to last month's solo recital), recorded at a live concert in Oslo with his son, who was born in 1970.
The programme reflects a public recital in its diversity, rather than offering the homogeneity that we usually get on a recital disc, but there is nothing wrong with that, although it seems a little odd to meet Prokofiev between Mozart and Beethoven. The Mozart is a two-movement work, but its minor key gives the Bermans grounds for making something dramatic of it and the first movement has much drive as well as some elegance. I find it too strongly projected (e.g. in the coda) but in its way it is compelling; however, the minuet-finale is dragged out and romanticized more than the music will bear.
The Prokofiev Sonata also begins rather deliberately, and while his Andantino marking for the first movement may justify this, the music fails to flow, and this is also to some extent true of the finale with its marking of Allegro con brio. However, the fantasy and tonal finesse of Pavel Berman's playing is good to hear, notably in the mercurial scherzo and the melodious Andante. In this work, I hear some murmurings which may come from Berman pere.
Beethoven's G major Sonata has plenty of energy, but the central minuet strikes me as too lushly played: the bustling finale goes best here. Brahms's work is his last and most openly passionate violin sonata. Here, too, the rapport between father and son is close and the work unfolds with shape and drama; this is the most convincing of the sonatas here. The Bloch piece is presented with an appropriate Jewish fervour. The recording is close and at times heavy—the closing passages of the Prokofiev and Brahms sonatas are examples—but the violinist's tone seems well enough captured. One hears the occasional page turn in this unedited live recording, but the audience is pretty quiet and applause is quickly faded. The disc is generous in length.'