Also, Faschingsschwank
aus Wein. Susan Merdinger, piano. Sheridan Music Studio 8-84501-93323-0.
What is a Steinway Artist? As the folks at Steinway put
it, “Without them, a Steinway piano is silent. But together, the artist and
piano create music--such beautiful music that most professional pianists choose
to perform only on Steinway pianos. For decades Steinway & Sons has
cultivated special relationships with pianists from every genre. From classical
pianists like Lang Lang, to jazz stars like Diana Krall, to pop icons like
Billy Joel, to ‘immortals’ like Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Sergei
Rachmaninoff, and Arthur Rubinstein--more than 1,600 artists make the Steinway
their own.” Pianist Susan Merdinger is a Steinway Artist.
Ms. Merdinger received her formal education at Yale
University, the Yale School of Music, the Manhattan School of Music, the
Westchester Conservatory of Music, and the Ecole Normale de Musique,
Fontainebleau, France, and is a recipient of numerous scholarships and awards.
Among other things, Ms. Merdinger has won the 1986 Artists International Young
Musicians Competition, the 1990 Artists International Alumni Winners Prize, the
1990 Dewar’s Young Artists Award in Music, the 2011 IBLA Grand Prize
Competition “Special Liszt Award,” the 2009 Masterplayers International Music
Competition, the 2012 Bradshaw and Buono International Piano Competition, and
the 2013 International Music Competition of France.
What’s more, she is a laureate of the prestigious Leeds
International Piano Competition, Montreal International Concours de Musique,
and William Kappell International Piano Competition. Additionally, as one part
of the Merdinger-Greene Duo Piano Team with her husband Steven Greene, she won
First Prize in the 2013 International Music Competition of France and First
Prize in the Westchester Conservatory Chamber Music Competition and was a
Semi-Finalist in the Murray Dranoff International Two Piano Competition.
Although Ms. Merdinger’s name may not be as familiar to
most listeners as some other concert pianists in the field, she has been
performing internationally to great acclaim for several decades. On the present
album she tackles Robert Schumann’s Carnival
and does so with the expected ease of a Steinway Artist, as a thorough and
gifted professional.
In Carnaval
(“Carnival”), subtitled Little Scenes on
Four Notes, Op. 9 (1834-35) German composer Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
wrote a series of brief piano pieces portraying various revelers at a masked
ball during Carnaval, a festival held immediately before Lent in largely
Catholic countries. In these short musical tone poems the composer represented
himself, his friends, and his associates, as well as a few offhand characters
from Italian comedy. A returning theme unites the twenty-one piano pieces,
which contain, according to Schumann, coded puzzles of four notes each. He
further suggested that "deciphering my masked ball will be a real game for
you."
We’ll let the puzzles be and concentrate on the music,
which Ms. Merdinger plays with consummate skill, despite the great technical
difficulty in performing it. (In Schumann’s own day, few pianists attempted the
piece, and Chopin, who took a dim view of Schumann’s work in general,
apparently didn’t even consider it music.) Anyway, I would now have to count
Ms. Merdinger’s account of Carnaval
among the outstanding recordings of the score, recordings that include in my
experience those of Alicia De Larrocha, Cecile Licad, Mitsuko Uchida, Nelson
Freire, Claudio Arrau, and a few others I’ve probably forgot. Unlike some of
these pianists, though, what characterizes Ms. Merdinger’s interpretations is
her razor-sharp delineations of each piece. Yes, of course, she is sweet and
mellifluous and flowing and vibrant and all the rest when necessary, and, no,
she’s not quite as patrician as Arrau or as penetrating as De Larrocha, yet she
is able to depict each of the people in Schumann’s collection with a clarity
and precision that is almost surgical. Not that she is distant or overly
analytical, however; her readings are warm and colorful, drawing fully on
Schumann’s imaginative writing.
Ms. Merdinger's playing is from the outset radiant,
energetic, and aesthetically poised. When she needs to apply bravura
showmanship, she's ready; when she needs a delicate touch, she's there; when
she needs charisma or charm or poignancy, she's on top of the game. These
portrayals of Schumann's characters and events sound beautiful, precise, and
exciting. The big moments come through with enthusiasm and the soft moments are
heartfelt. I loved every minute of her presentation.
Accompanying Carnaval
is Schumann's Faschingsschwank aus Wein
("Carnival Scenes from Vienna"), Op. 26 (1839), subtitled Phantasiebilder ("Fantasy
Images"). Like its more-popular sibling, it, too, paints a series of
pianistic images, although fewer of them. As in Carnaval, Ms. Merdinger delivers them in a concise, creative,
expressive, utterly pleasing manner.
Engineer Mary Mazurek and editor Mark Travis recorded Carnival in 2011 at WFMT Studio,
Chicago, Illinois and Faschingsschwank aus
Wien in 2012 at Nicholas Hall, Music Institute of Chicago, Evanston,
Illinois. The piano sound in both works is dynamic and fairly close, with
excellent body, clarity, and definition, perhaps a tad softer in the Music
Institute location. There is enough natural resonance in each room to provide a
realistic presence yet not so much as to veil detail. It's among the
more-appealing piano sounds I've heard; very lifelike.
To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:
JJP
