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International Piano Magazine
When the baritone Nelson Eddy sang a recruiting anthem in search of ‘Stout-hearted Men’ in the MGM Hollywood musical New Moon, he might have had the Ilford-born British pianist John Lill (b.1944) in mind. With a massive discography on the EMI, ASV, Pickwick, Chandlos, Conifer, Nimbus and DG labels, Lill is nothing if not a dauntless, indefatigable workhorse. In 2000 Lill achieved unsought-after fame when he was mugged in London on his way home to Hampstead after playing a birthday concert for the Queen Mother. Although Lill’s hands were slashed, he recovered and resumed his career. The present CD was recorded some seven months before the attack, with Lill in typically energetic, expansive form. The clear-sounding recording was made in The Old Market, Hove, an arts centre and concert hall today which in past times served as a stable and bacon smokery – details that surely would have amused the earthy Brahms. The highlights of this recital are the softer, more meditative parts of the Brahms Intermezzi and Handel Variations, rather than the many extroverted, punchy passages. Lill gives the opening aria of the Handel Variations a tender and relaxed tone, tastefully eschewing any mock-Handelian veneer. His sober, deliberate, sometimes understated approach may be a legacy of his early years of study with the great poet of the keyboard, William Kempff.
Sometimes sounding more like the four-square Wilhelm Backhaus than the ethereal Kempff, Lill’s version of Schumann’s Fantasy can seem heavy and dogged at times, until the final slow movement achieves admirable seriousness. Still, Lill does not quite achieve the cosmic transcendence of pianists such as Richard Goode, Murray Perahia and András Schiff in this repertory today. Collectors will note that Lill re-recorded Schumann’s Fantasy in 2003 as part of an all-Schumann program (Classics for Pleasure CFP 5858992). There is enough searching, stout-hearted Brahms in the present release to make both CDs essential listening for Lill’s many fans.
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Musical Opinion
I can think of at least two reasons why this CD is and attractive purchase. John Lill is one of the world’s finest interpreters of both Schumann and Brahms.
He opens Schumann’s evergreen Fantasie with magisterial power before recreating this far from simple musical edifice as though there were no problems to its projection. Here is one of those rare accounts of a masterpiece from a composer who knows exactly what he wants and almost manages to put it down, by a player who knows exactly what is needed and delights in communicating it.
The three Opus 117 Intermezzi are delightfully serious while the great series of 25 Variations, culminating in a Fugue which would have greatly pleased Handel himself, remains one of the greatest keyboard works in the repertory.
I really hope that this release is soon to be followed by more from John Lill, surely among the giants of English musicians
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International Record Review
Rather oddly, John Lill is partly in competition here with himself. The present release, on Signum, was recorded in 2000 and appears to have been intended for a label that did not survive long enough to issue it. This is; I think, its first appearance. But then, in December 2003, Tony Faulkner’s Green Room Productions recorded this pianist in one of the works again, the Schumann Fantasie in C. It was licensed to Classics for Pleasure and issued in 2004. (There, the couplings are two more Schumann works.) Differences between the two performaces of this Everest among piano works are minimal, but I have to say I marginally prefer the piano sound on the Signum disc: the CfP version, amde in London’s Henry Wood Hall, where the acoustic comes across as vibrantly alove and seems in particular to encourage Lill to open up where appropriate in the grand manner. The great climaxes in the Schumann ring out magnificently – yet not for a moment are the terrifying details and difficulties of (say) the headlong second-movement Scherzo masked; nor is there any shortage of poetry in the final pages of the first movement, complete with its most poignant Beethoven quotation, or in the wondrous C major of the end. Lill’s control here, intellectual, emotional, technical, is complete.
A change of composer brings a reflective interlude, almost in the shape of Brahms’s late Intermezzos, Op. 117: playing, now, of deep gravity and sonorous reflection. absolutely not sentimentalized. And the, capping everything, more Brahms, a towering, granite-like performance of the Handel Variations. I puts the three listed above in the remote shade: Emanuel Ax, in 1991, comes across as a speed merchant, Seta Tanyel as lacking in sheer power and the classic Julius Katchen, for all his pearly articulation and fabulous control, now sounding rather dry and tired. Listen instead to Lill for his scrupulo9us rhythm at the start, the firmly articulated bass line, for the sheer strength he achieves at the risoluto in Variation 4, or the young-old ambiguity, hinting at those much later Fantasies, he finds in Variation 9, poco sostenuto, The quiet fantasy of Variation 12, the dark, brooding quality of its successor, then the dynamic force of Variations 14 and 15, trills precisely articulated – all this is marvellously and seemingly spontaneously realised, and has a huge cumulative effect too: near the end the tension almost overflows, before the final fugue. This is taken marginally slower than by some others, but the overall effect is tumultuous. It might almost be the old lion himself at the keyboard. What more can one say?
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Musical Opinion
I can think of two reasons why this CD is an attractive purchase. John Lill is one of the world’s finest interpreters of both Schumann and Brahms. He opens Schumann’s ever-green Fantasie with magisterial power before recreating this simple musical edifice as though there were no problems in its projection. Here is one of those rare accounts of a masterpiece from a composer who knows exactly what he wants and almost manages to put it down, by a player who knows exactly what is needed and delights in communicating it.
The three Opus 117 Intermezzi delightfully serious while the great series of 25 Variations, culminating in a Fugue which would have greatly pleased Handel himself, remains one of the greatest keyboard works in the repertory. I really hope this release is soon to be followed by more from John Lill, surely among the giants of English musicians.
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