Leon Fleisher
The Complete Album Collection
Review By Joe Milicia

  The latest of Sony's "Complete Album Collection" box sets is devoted to Leon Fleisher: all the music he recorded for Columbia Masterworks, their subsidiary Epic Records, and most recently Sony. Fans of great pianism should snap up this bargain-priced set of 23 CDs with original cover art while it lasts. Fleisher's recording career covers a nearly 60-year span, though unfortunately with a 30-year gap between the Epic and Sony recordings due to a disability in his right hand. The gap accounts for the relative paucity of discs: 19 LPs released between 1956 and 1963, plus four CDs from 1993 to 2009. (Fleisher did record a few discs for other labels, notably Vanguard, who produced his triumphant Two Hands CD of 2004.)

A prodigy who studied with Artur Schnabel for 10 years, starting at the age of 10, Fleisher (a San Franciscan) was championed by the likes of Pierre Monteux in his youth, and formed a celebrated recording partnership with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra (8 LPs) in his early prime. After his disability he had an important career as teacher, conductor and festival administrator, and eventually as a player of piano music for the left hand (a significant repertoire because of the commissions of Paul Wittgenstein). Botox treatments in recent years allowed Fleisher to play two-handed once again: the CD of Mozart concertos that concludes the Sony set was recorded a few days before his 80^th birthday.

Hearing that the reissue would follow Sony's original-covers format, reproducing CD by CD the contents of the original LPs, I initially had mixed feelings: it meant that some CDs would be short in length (e.g., Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto fills out an entire disc at only 33' 47"), and that there would be a redundant Beethoven Fourth, originally paired with Mozart's 25^th in 1959, before plans were made to record the other four concertos, with Beethoven's Second as a pairing two years later. But the bargain price makes the set a good deal anyhow, and once it arrived I found it pleasing in many ways. First, it is nice to have the cover art and even — if you have excellent eyesight or a magnifying glass — the complete LP back-cover notes on each sleeve. (The four CDs from 1993 to 2009, however, lack whatever booklet essays they might have had.) And some of the original LPs did have a lot of music compressed in their grooves: e.g. The Beethoven 4^th / Mozart 25^th disc times out at 62' 38".

Plus the format means that we get a few bonuses of music not performed by Fleisher. Have you ever wanted to hear Szell/Cleveland play Delius? A dreamy, delicate Prelude to Irmelin fills out the Rachmaninoff/Franck LP. We also get Hindemith's Five Pieces for Strings and Funeral Music for Viola and Strings as well as Fleisher's contribution that LP, The Four Temperaments for piano and strings; and an absolutely superlative Schubert The Shepherd on the Rock with Rudolf Serkin, Benita Valente and Harold Wright, originally paired with a Marlboro Festival performance of Brahms' Liebeslieder Waltzes, Op. 33, with Fleisher and Serkin as duo pianists. Schubert's 12-minute mini-drama with all its yearning, regret and rapture is performed — really sung — gloriously by the Boston Symphony clarinetist as well as the soprano and paced expertly by Serkin. Incidentally, Serkin and Fleisher must have inspired Valente and the other three singers in the Brahms as well: their performance of the 12 brief waltzes is energized and full of dramatic contrast, a perfect antidote for listeners who usually find this music too cloying.

Others have written in great detail and with great professional knowledge about many of the performances on these discs, and I can hardly cover all 23 discs in one review. The complete Beethoven and Brahms concertos with Szell/Cleveland are universally admired and should be richly rewarding to anyone hearing them for the first time: for many listeners, these recordings strike an ideal balance between Classical reserve and Romantic passion — order and impulse — absolute control and bristling excitement. Fleisher fans will find other old favorites in this set: notably his Brahms Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel, which he seems to have been born to play, or which Brahms seems to have written knowing there would one day be a Fleisher to play it. The crispness, brio, energy, flawless technique all make this a classic performance. I was also very glad to rediscover the Hindemith Four Temperaments (best known today as the music for a George Balanchine ballet of that title): after the moderately paced opening for strings, the piano's allegro outburst is exhilarating in Fleisher's rendering, and his way with the ¾-time trill-filled tune that follows is utterly compelling.

But there will be discoveries for anyone dipping into the boxed set. Fleisher and Szell's remarkable Rachmaninoff Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (in mono) is the driest, propulsive, I would almost say Stravinskian version I've ever heard. Jed Distler's booklet essay contains a wonderful anecdote about the recording of this work: "According to Fleisher, the Rhapsody was set down in one take, and when it came time for the 18^th variation's famous big tune, Szell apparently mouthed to his players ‘like the Philadelphia Orchestra!' in order to evoke that ensemble's patented lush string sonorities." (I daresay nobody will think "Philadelphia" when hearing this performance, though it's certainly a "big" statement.) Incidentally, Distler's well-written essay, with biographical detail and commentary on Fleisher's pianistic style, is another plus for this set, though I noticed a contradiction between his dating of the Hindemith recording and the date on another page.

I also greatly liked the Debussy/Ravel disc, where you will hear the most unsentimental but still engaging "Clair de lune" imaginable. The Liszt Sonata in B Minor is not the most soulful or demonic performance ever recorded, but the evenness and brilliance of Fleisher's finger work are thrilling. (He certainly doesn't dawdle: the recording clocks in at about 28.5 minutes.) The Liszt disc comes with a welcome rarity: the Fourth Sonata, in E Minor, of Carl Maria von Weber, a 24-minute work full of charm and grace.

Fleisher played contemporary music but recorded little of it, so it is especially good to have his 1963 disc of solo piano music by four major American composers: Aaron Copland, Roger Sessions, Leon Kirchner, and Ned Rorem. Fleisher's linear style and crispness of attack seem particularly suited for the Copland Sonata's nervous, spiky scherzo and glacial Andante sostenuto finale, but really the whole disc is rewarding to hear. Another disc with unusual repertoire is the solo left-hand recital recorded in 1991, including a Toccata and Fugue by JenoTakacs (a Hungarian who studied with Paul Wittgenstein) and Chacony, written for Fleisher in 1988 by the British Robert Saxton. (I needed to find these background facts via the Internet, since Sony doesn't give us the original booklet essays.) Of the older music on this disc I enjoyed in particular a set of Etudes by Saint-Saens, pieces that fit Fleisher's analytic style very well.  One other disc of rarities pairs chamber music by two Viennese composers, Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Franz Schmidt. The Korngold five-movement Suite, with Fleisher joined by violinists Joseph Silverstein and Jaime Laredo and cellist Yo-Yo Ma, is an odd but fascinating work of 1930, falling in between the Richard-Straussian operas of Korngold's youth and his career in Hollywood.

A CD of left-hand piano works with Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony has a disappointing Ravel Concerto that fails to crackle with tension, despite some outstanding wind solos, but it also contains an outstanding Prokofiev Fourth Concerto, with both dash and soaring lyricism when the music calls for one or another. A bonus here is Britten's Diversions on a Theme, a set of variations that is rarely performed but exciting to hear. Finally, the recent Mozart CD features an outstanding Concerto No. 12 and a delightful No. 7, the concerto Mozart wrote originally for three pianos and then arranged it for two: here Fleisher is joined by his wife, Katherine Jacobson.

As for the sound of these discs, I haven't made comparisons with the original LPs or with various earlier CD transfers, of which there are quite a few. But I can say that although the sound is clean and clear on most of the discs made from the LPs (there is some distortion in the Rachmaninoff), there is still a degree of constriction or boxiness; I've heard Sony remasterings of Vladimir Horowitz RCA recordings from the 1950s that capture a much richer piano sound. Things improve by 1961: both piano and orchestra sound much better in the four Beethoven Piano Concertos recorded that year than in the one from 1959, where the sound is relatively muffled (oddly, more so in the disc pairing the Fourth with the Beethoven Second than the one pairing it with the Mozart 25^th). The CDs from the 1990s do not have especially distinguished sound: e.g. In the Korngold / Schmidt chamber disc (recorded 1991 / 1993 but released only in 1998) both piano and strings have a bit of a harsh edge, and the Ozawa/Boston disc is far from state-of-the-art. But both piano and orchestra on the 2009 Mozart disc have full, warm presence.

Performance: 

Enjoyment: 

Recording Quality:    to    (disc 23 is )

DISC 1 Schubert: Sonata in B-Flat Major; Schubert: Ländler, Op. 171
DISC 2 Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini, Op. 43; Franck: Symphonic Variations; Delius: Irmelin-Prelude
DISC 3 Brahms: Variations and Fugue on a theme of Handel, Op. 24; Waltzes, Op. 39
DISC 4 Hindemith: The Four Temperaments; Hindemith: Five Pieces, Op. 44, No. 4; Hindemith: Funeral Music for Viola and Strings
DISC 5 Brahms: Concerto No. 1, Op. 15 Leon Fleisher - The Cleveland Orchestra - George Szell
DISC 6 Debussy: Suite Bergamasque; Ravel: Sonatine; Ravel: Valses Nobles et Sentimentales; Ravel: Alborada del Gracioso (from "Miroirs")
DISC 7 Beethoven: Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58; Mozart: Concerto No. 25 in C Major (K. 503)
DISC 8 Mozart: Sonata in C Major (K. 330); Sonata in E-Flat Major (K. 282); Rondo in D Major (K. 485)
DISC 9 Liszt: Sonata in B Minor; Weber: Sonata No. 4 in E Minor, Op. 70; Weber: Invitation to the dance, Op. 65
DISC 10 Grieg: Concerto in A Minor, Op. 16; Schumann: Concerto in A Minor, Op. 54
DISC 11 Chamber Music from Marlboro: Brahms: LiebesliederWalzer, Op. 52; Schubert: The Shepherd on the rock, Op. 129
DISC 12 Beethoven: Concerto No. 1 in C Major, Op. 15
DISC 13 Beethoven: Concerto No. 2 in B Flat Major, Op. 19; Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58
DISC 14 Beethoven: Concerto No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 37
DISC 15 Beethoven: Concerto No. 5 in E Flat Major, Op. 73
DISC 16 Brahms: Concerto No. 2, Op. 83
DISC 17 Aaron Copland: Piano Sonata; Roger Sessions: From my diary; Kirchner: Piano Sonata; Rorem: Three Barcarolles
DISC 18 Brahms: Quintet in F Minor, Op. 34; Leon Fleisher - Juilliard String Quartet
DISC 19 Schubert: Fantasy in C Major, Op. 15 (D. 760); Piano Sonata in A Major, Op. 120 (D. 664)
DISC 20 Piano Works for the Left Hand: Takács, Saint-Saens, Saxton, Bach, Blumenfeld, Scriabin, Godowsky
DISC 21 Piano Concertos for the Left Hand: Ravel, Prokofiev, Britten
DISC 22 Korngold, Schmidt: Music for Strings and Piano Left Hand
DISC 23 Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 7, 12, 23

Leon Fleisher, piano; with George Szell conducting the Cleveland Orchestra (Discs 2, 5, 10, 12-16); Szymon Goldberg conducting the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra (Disc 4); Rudolf Serkin, piano, Harold Wright, clarinet, Benita Valente, soprano, other vocalists (Disc 11); Julliard String Quartet (Disc 17); Seiji Ozawa conducting the Boston Symphony (Disc 21); Joseph Silverstein, Yo-Yo Ma and other string soloists (Disc 22); Katherine Jacobson Fleisher, piano, Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra (Disc 23)