Alexander Kantorow’s Brahms and Schubert

This morning my efforts to catch up with recordings that have recently come to my attention led me to a BIS album, which, according to my Amazon.com Web page, was released at the end of last July. Entitled Brahms & Schubert, the album presents two major solo compositions by (in order of appearance) Johannes Brahms and Franz Schubert. These are separated by an “interlude” consisting of five of the many songs composed by Schubert that were transcribed (and, to be fair, embellished) for solo piano by Franz Liszt. The album begins with Brahms’ Opus 1, his first piano sonata, composed in 1853; and it concludes the Schubert’s D. 760 fantasy in C major, best known as the “Wanderer Fantasy.” Both of these works are structured in four movements.

The performer of these selections is Alexander Kantorow, winner of the 2024 Gilmore Award and the youngest recipient in the award’s history. He was also the first French pianist to receive the Gold Medal at the Tchaikovsky Competition in 2019. (He also received the Grand Prix, which had only been awarded three times over the competition’s past history.) In addition, he was chosen to perform at the Opening Ceremony of the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics (which, it turns out, required playing in the pouring rain).

I suppose what mattered most to me in listening to this album was the Brahms sonata. If my records are correct, I have not encountered it in performance since July of 2021, when Garrick Ohlsson selected it to begin the last performance in a four-concert cycle of Brahms piano music, prepared for San Francisco Performances (SFP) recitals in Herbst Theatre. To be fair, this is Brahms very early in his career; and there is a “show-off” factor in this music that cannot be denied. Fortunately, a pianist like Ohlsson could “tame the beast,” providing his audience with a more-than-satisfying listening experiences. Sadly, Kantorow was not as skilled a beast-tamer; and there were too many moments in his performance of this sonata that felt as if he had let the music run away from him. The good news (for Kantorow) is that his command of Schubert’s music was solid in D. 760. Where the Liszt transcriptions were performed, he could honor Liszt’s transcriptions without taking them “over the top.”

Pianist Alexander Kantorow on the cover of his Brahms & Schubert album (courtesy of Unison)

Taken as a whole, this album serves as a “portrait” of the first half of the nineteenth century; but, to continue with that metaphor, Kantorow’s “brush work” was inconsistent in doing justice to the selections he prepared for this album. Mind you, the photograph on the cover of the album (shown above) came across as more than enough make Spock raise both of his eyebrows. A bit less focus on overall physical deportment and a bit more focus on the music and its respective composers would probably be in order!