Benjamin Frith, it seems, occasionally plays duos with Peter Hill, which leads one to speculate about the possibility of their exchanging Diabelli recordings this Christmas. Hill is no stranger to the studio, of course; his Messiaen recordings for Unicorn-Kanchana have been widely praised in these columns and elsewhere. Frith's career, by contrast, is just beginning to attract notice. One of Fanny Waterman's star pupils, he missed out on Leeds (twice) but latterly has been joint winner of the Busoni competition (1986) and the Artur Rubinstein (1989), where he also picked up an award for chamber-music playing. To judge from his recording of the Diabelli and the spirited fill-up, the 32 Variations on an Original Theme in C minor, he possesses a formidable talent both musically and technically. Indeed, I would go as far as to suggest that there has not been a finer Diabelli on record from a young pianist since the classic 1968 Philips recording by the 28-year-old Stephen (Bishop-) Kovacevich.
Coping with the physical and intellectual variousness of Beethoven's transformations of Diabelli's street-wise tune has always presented pianists with a peculiar range of problems. It is a work at once massive and endlessly particular, mysterious yet also unblinkingly physical. For the listener it is a stimulant and a puzzle, an incitement to riot that is at the same time a sublime essay in the ordering power of genius. Peter Hill's performance, backed by his long and interesting booklet essay, offers a questioning, exploratory view of the work, intellectually 'fine' and backed by a tolerably good technique. He is at his finest in the more introspective variations, in the final group of variations, and in the midway resting points. (Variations Nos. 14 and 20 are both beautifully poised.) Elsewhere (as early as Variations Nos. 2 and 3) a note of gentility occasionally creeps in, a porcelain graciousness that doesn't necessarily sort well with Beethoven's keen gamesmanship, let alone his more red-blooded caperings. Hill doesn't quite have the technique to allow the Presto Variation No. 10 to roar wildly off, like old mad Lear down Dover beach; there is even a touch of gentility about the Leporello variation. Variation No. 8, the transformingly songful Poco vivace, is as spaciously played as you are likely to hear it (though Brendel on Philips is almost as leisurely) and this, in a sense, offers a clue to Hill's view of the work as a whole. It is a reading that is strongest in moments of quiet musing; and though Hill, the pianist, puts up bravely with the work's more extrovert side, its huge rough-and-tumble, the impression I take away is of a certain Hamlet-like quiescence. If there is a fault here, it is that of thinking too precisely on each event.
After Hill, Frith might seem too little the thinker, too much the man of instinct. But the wonder of Frith's reading is the counterpointing of an astonishing energy and elan with a superb command of detail, plus a quality of musical diction that is as keen-edged as it is richly modulated. It is a quicker performance than Hill's (50 minutes to Hill's 59) but rarely a more superficial one. Occasionally, one senses an unsettled element in the reading itself (the start of the Fugue seems oddly rough and ready in some of the texturing and voicing) but the big virtuoso variations are played with surging confidence and the lack of real slowness in some of the slower variations is a boon when it is justified by the kind of sensitive diction already mentioned.
Frith's account of the C minor Variations, WoO80, provides us with pleasures that are, by contrast, wholly without complication. Perhaps, in due course, he will find more complication in the Diabelli, though untangling fresh insights from debilitating self-consciousness might be difficult for us when it happens. The joy of the present reading, like that of Kovacevich's (also on CD and cassette and possibly even more finely pointed), rests in Frith's compelling match of intelligence, technique, and endlessly flowing musical adrenalin.
ASV's recording and Frith's piano seem to provide us with a riper, more robust, more immediate sound than that offered by Hill on UnicornKanchana; contrasts that further underline the differences that exist between the performances.'