Here is a delectable choice of works-- of my own personal favourites-- but one that makes exceptional and many musical demands. There is, aabove all. a need for swift changes and identification with widely varying idioms. McCawley's best playing comes in his opening, the Bach-Liszt Prelude and Fugue in A minor where, if others have achieved a greater and necessary tonal opulence, his playing has an admirable clarity and command. A reminder, too, that Bach-Liszt is a radically different proposition to Bach pure and simple.
Then there is Beethoven's 'Andante favori,' the composer's first thoughts for his 'Waldstein' Sonata's central 'Adagio molto.' The removal of music overly florid and extended and its replacement with the later dark and mysterious core of the 'Waldstein' was a wise decision. But it is both here and in the 'Waldstein' that McCawley's limitations become marked. Admirably schooled( he studied with Elanor Sokoloff at the Curtis Institute) he remains just that, making you long for greater imaginative freedom and scope. The ' Waldstein's brilliant virtuosity, its racing impulse, is kept strictly on a leash. This is not the sort of performance that prompted the French to speak of l'aurore, the breaking of dawn, evoked by the opening of the concluding Rondo.
Chopin's Berceuse, that litmus test of musical and pianist quality, reminded me of a comparative review I made some years ago citing one pianist after another(some of them celebrated) who struck me as unequal to such a subtle and daunting task. My voyage(headed 'joy at last' by a crude assistant editor) ended with a dream reading by Murray Perahia. I'm afraid that McCawley' is no more successful than other in that long line. Again, simplicity that evolves into a 'rain of slivery fire' remains earthbound and the effect, while correct at one level, is unevocative at another.
The Barcarolle,(for me Chopin's supreme masterpiece), is too inhibited to take wing, to soar above and beyond the page. Finally there is Franck's Prelude Chorale and Fugue where once more half measures are not enough for such emotionally charged music.
Overall, I found myself recalling a review of my beloved teacher, Alexander Uninsky, by the New York Times critic Virgil Thomson. There, he wrote of qualities which for all their virtues seldom rose above themselves, the music 'read rather than played.' Enlarging, he went on to speak of 'piano playing that sounds like piano playing, never like singing, trumpets, harps or wind or quiet rain.'
I have admired Leon McCawley, both live and on record on several occasions and feel saddened by what too often seemed to me like a retreat into academicism. Somm's recording is very close; there is a lack of space round the sound magnifying the sense of literalness.
Bryce Morrison