Entitling his recording 'Stories and Soundscapes,' Irish but American -based Cathal Breslin brings together in his own words, complementary rather than opposed ways of listening to music. And this he does with a strength and conviction given to few pianists.
Opening and closing with two Nocturnes by his compatriot John Field(though with Chopin's B major Nocturne, opus 9 No 3 as an encore, its teasing eroticism a far cry from Field's innocence) he reminds you of the venomous Berlin critic Ludwig Rallstab for whom Chopin's Nocturnes, when set beside Fields, were little short of perversion. Thus, 'where Field smiles, Chopin makes a grinning grimace, where Field sighs Chopin groans,' etc; a classic if extreme instance of the hostility of the narrow and conservative for the audacious and prophetic, for Chopin's genius. More positively Liszt considered Field's Nocturnes to be like 'the norm of life...before the radiant freshness of emotion was over-clouded by the shadows of reflection.' which makes me wonder what Rallstab might have said about Liszt's late, dark-hued experiments; his 'La Lugubre Gondole,,' Nuages Gris' etc.
But warmly sympathetic as Breslin is to Field it is when you turn to his authority in the Four Chopin Ballades, the centre piece of his recital, that his full stature becomes clear. Even when blessed with many classic recordings whether from the past(Corto, Rubinstein, Moiseiwitsch etc) or present(Ashkenazy, Zimerman, Perahia etc) Breslin makes you re-think the Ballades in all their rhetorical grandeur and audacity Once more you feel the shock of the new, of Chopin's contemporaries bewildered by, say, the opening of the First Ballade where within a few bars the upward spiral turns via an imposing gateway to desolation, or to the coda marked 'appassionata. If piu forte possible' and 'presto con fuoco.' Breslin's unfaltering musical commitment and technical strength means that his re-creation is all-powerful, the very reverse of the decorative or superficial, of, say, Marguerite Long's infamous 'jeu perle.'
He finds an undertow of anxiety beneath the faux-naive opening of the Second Ballade before unleashing an elemental fury where every note comes at you with weight and significance. How he makes you realise that a composer once considered a salon figure could shake his fist with King Lear like rage at his uncomprehending universe.
Again, his approach is uncompromising in the relatively sunnier climb of the Third Ballade. More than ever he made me object to a mischief-making comment by Piotr Anderszewski, a great pianist, who found that this Ballade reminded him of 'a pretty girl in a white muslin dress, strolling down the Champs Elysee.' Chopin has always invited a startlingly wide variety of views!
As for the Fourth Ballade, greatest of the four and among Chopin's supreme masterpieces, Breslin again storms the heights, notably in the merciless labyrinthine coda, but also in an opening once described by a colleague as the equivalent of 'a blind man acquiring sight for the first time.'
Then there is Breslin's contemporary shift( from story telling to landscape) and to Linda Buckley and her 'Fridur'(meaning calm or peace) for piano and electronics, a memory of a stay in Iceland, and 'winter Witch' a response to 'Muireartach' a diabolic sea-deity of Irish Scottish folklore, the writing with suggestions of Mussorgsky's 'Baby Yaga but also Rzewski's 'Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues.'
But it is his Chopin that takes centre stage, of the familiar made unfamiliar not through idiosyncrasy but through an unfaltering sense of vision. I can hardly wait to Hear Breslin in the Sonatas(Nos 2 and 3) and the Scherzi. I also remain curious concerning his empathy with the more public side of Chopin, of the Waltzes, of music once described as 'nusic in which emotion is permitted to suggest itself only through a veil of civility.' Another aspect of Chopin's multi-faceted world. But already Cathal Breslin confirms himself not only of an outsize command but also of a special musical quality, enterprise and versatility.
Bryce Morrison