Alexandre Kantorow
(Bis)
The French pianist revels in the virtuoso demands of Brahms’s early sonata

Alexandre Kantorow completes his journey through Brahms’s piano sonatas with the work in C major that he designated as his Op 1. Like Beethoven’s first two piano concertos, though, the numbering of the first two sonatas is actually misleading, for the sonata in F sharp minor that’s now known as No 2 was composed a year earlier than No 1, in 1852, but published later. Those sonatas were the works that convinced Robert and Clara Schumann of Brahms’ enormous talent, and the C major sonata is clearly a work written to impress. In his performance Kantorow never tries to underplay that bravura element; if anything he underlines the brashness of some of the piano writing, revelling in its virtuoso demands, especially in the chordal writing of the scherzo, and the explosive opening to the finale, though never neglecting the moments of lyrical tenderness that are few and far between in the sonata.

Kantorow pairs the sonata with Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy, another work in which the bravura element is very much to the fore. His performance of it seems marginally less remarkable than that of the Brahms, and the rather mannered way in which he accents the opening of the final fugue may not be to all tastes. A group of Liszt’s transcriptions of Schubert songs separates the large-scale works; they are all beautifully shaped, though the two numbers from Schwanengesang, Die Stadt and Am Meer, are especially atmospheric.