BBC Legends 3: Pianist Shura Cherkassky

Shura Cherkassky after a performance with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in Tel Aviv on January 3, 1954 (photograph by David Eldan, from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

The pianist Shura Cherkassky holds a special place in my personal history of collecting recordings. One of my earliest (but not the first) CD purchases was a two-CD release by Nimbus Records entitled In Concert 1984. By the time of that release, I was no stranger to piano recitals. However, this was a “recital document” in which Alban Berg’s Opus 1 piano sonata was flanked on either side by Ferruccio Busoni’s reworking of the Chaconne movement from Johann Sebastian Bach’s D minor solo violin partita (BWV 1004) as the preceding selection and Franz Liszt’s “Funérailles,” taken from his Harmonies poétiques et religieuses (Poetic and Religious Harmonies), as the successor. Furthermore, this approach to programming was clearly not an outlier, because a subsequent Nimbus release situated the first and last of the “Ile de Feu” (fire island) movements in Olivier Messiaen’s set of four rhythm studies (Études de rythme) between Edvard Grieg’s Opus 7 sonata in E minor and Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Opus 42, deceptively entitled “Variations on a Theme of Corelli.” (Nimbus subsequently collected all of their Cherkassky releases in a limited-edition 8-CD box set.)

Cherkassky is the featured artist on the eleventh CD in the latest BBC Legends series. Most of the album is devoted to recordings made at a recital in Wigmore Hall on February 20, 1982. The primary selection on the program is Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition suite. This is followed by two encore tracks, the first of which is a composition by Cherkassky himself, “Prélude pathétique.” This is followed by Rachmaninoff’s transcription for solo piano of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s orchestral interlude in his opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan, best known by the title “Flight of the Bumblebee.” All of these solo performances are preceded by a concerto selection, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Opus 23 (first) concerto for piano and orchestra in B-flat minor. Cherkassky performs with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Georg Solti in a concert at the Royal Festival Hall on January 30, 1968.

Like many (most), my “first contact” with Pictures was through Maurice Ravel’s orchestration. Indeed, that was one of my earliest pocket score acquisitions. I cannot remember when I first encountered the original version. Most likely it was at a recital at Carnegie Hall that left me totally hooked on that music as it had been written for solo piano. By now I have acquired a few recordings of pianists performing the composition; but Cherkassky definitely had me hooked from the opening “Promenade” to all the notes piled up to depict “The Bogatyr Gates” (better known as “The Great Gate of Kiev”).

The Tchaikovsky concerto did not make quite as much as an impact. One got the sense that both pianist and conductor acknowledged that, between concert performances and recordings, this is music that has been encountered by most listeners too many times. Nevertheless, there were a generous number of moments that revealed serious and nuanced attention to the details in the score.

This album was Cherkassky’s first appearance in a BBC Legends anthology. However, according to his Wikipedia page, the recording is one of six “singles” released by the BBC Legends label. While I am delighted to have this particular album in my collection, the release that really interests me is the one consisting of two piano concertos. Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 73 (fifth) piano concerto (given the title of “Emperor”) is followed by George Gershwin’s “Concerto in F.” This was not Cherkassky’s only connection with an American composer, since Leonard Bernstein was included on one of his Nimbus albums. Given that I have previously written about Sviatoslav Richter’s recording of “Concerto in F,” I would definitely like to give those tracks side-by-side listening with Cherkassky’s interpretation!