Weissenberg: Ravel - Schumann - Mussorgsky
The pianist Alexis Weissenberg also died in 2012. He made his breakthrough in Salzburg during the Karajan era and is now represented in the Festival Documents with his solo recital of 1972. His evening began with Ravel’s Tombeau de Couperin, played transparently and with a highly flexible touch. Even the technically trickiest passages of Schumann’s C-major Fantasy were embedded organically and convincingly into the musical flow of the work. Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition could hardly be played more effectively or with more colour than in Weissenberg’s interpretation. This work ended the “official” part of his recital, though there followed many surprising encores, which can all be heard on these two CDs (for the price of one) and thus round off this memento of the artist.