Revelatory Brahms from another age
Michael Church welcomes the long-overdue release of recordings by a great but neglected Russian pianist
Her Handel Variations draws us in with heartwarming immediacy
Brahms
Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel; 4 Ballades, Op. 10 Nelly Akopian-tamarina (piano) Pentatone PTC 5186 677 (rec. 1995-96) 63:38 mins Born in 1944, the Russian pianist Nelly Akopiantamarina won the gold medal in the Zwickau
Robert Schumann competition at 19; she was one of the last students of Alexander Goldenweiser, and the first of Dmitri Bashkirov. As a soloist of the Moscow State Philharmonic she was one of the bright hopes of Soviet pianism, but her sister married a Jew and emigrated to the West. As a result, Akopian-tamarina’s career was blocked by the censors, preventing her from recording or performing for more than a decade; she turned to painting instead. Moving to the West, she carved out a niche as a recitalist and won a devoted following, but her discography has remained very small. Her celebrated recording of Chopin’s Preludes, made in 1967, is a reminder of what might have been.
This recording of her Brahms was made at Snape Maltings in 1995, but is only now released for the first time. And it’s a revelation: I’ve never heard Brahms’s Handel Variations played like this. The music seems to come from a distant place and time, but it draws us in with the most heart-warming immediacy. It’s partly the singing line and the pearlised glow she puts on the notes, and partly the fact that she lets each variation unfold in a natural and unhurried way, as though she and we have all the time in the world. When the score calls for lyricism she finds a caressing tone, and when it demands assertiveness she’s absolutely there, but the drama is restrained until the towering fugue at the close.
Her playing of the Ballades (recorded 1995-96), with their reflection of Schumann’s influence writ large, is intensely poetic, amply justifying the analogy with the seasons which she draws in her liner-note.
PERFORMANCE
RECORDING