For many music-lovers, this could be the sleeper in Philips’s “Great Pianists” series. It would be idle to pretend that Ivan Moravec is the most famous pianist in the world, but for a goodly number of enthusiasts the notion that he may be the greatest living one is by no means idle. There is a probity of musical purpose, a stylistic perception, a freedom combined with strictness of rhythm, a mastery of varied sonorities, and a sovereign technical command about his playing that has perhaps, in recent decades, been matched only by Sviatoslav Richter - and Richter is no longer with us.

In these pages I have had occasion in the past to commend Moravec’s playing of Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms. No less remarkable are his interpretations of the French and Slavic repertoire. While several of them are already available scattered around the VAI, Vox, Nonesuch, and Dorian labels, the selection Philips has gathered here makes a useful and nicely contrasted compilation, and if in the star-studded company of this series it attracts new admirers to the Czech pianist’s art, that will be all to the good.

Both in detail and across the broad interpretive arc of each work, these are readings of magical sensibility and awesome power. The volcanic impulse he brings to Franck's Prelude, Chorale, and Fugue has been widely praised. (Taped by Connoisseur Society in 1962, this is the oldest recording in the set. The newest ones are the three mazurkas and Scherzo no. 2 from Dorian's 1989 disc. All of them are rendered here in near-impeccable richness and clarity of sound, but Philips really ought to have mentioned somewhere in its otherwise admirable documentation that some are of analog origin.) The Ravel Sonatine, from 1969, is an equally compelling performance, one of the few I have ever heard that realize the decorous minuet feeling of the second movement so surely that it does not at moments begin to sound too much like a rehash of the first. The remainder of the two discs is given over to Chopin and Debussy, and in their music Moravec's virtues are just as impressive and distinctly more unusual. Not for him is the too common view of these two composers as rather fragile and hypersensitive artists. I do not mean to imply any insensitivity in his handling of them. But an irrepressible rhythmic life and an astonishingly solid yet luminous tone, especially in the left hand, contribute to a realization of their music that, while as imaginatively beguiling as any, is also far stronger and more virile than most.

It may be to this determined avoidance of the wishy-washy that some of the very few questionable interpretive decisions in the set are due. Once or twice - for example in Reflets dans l'eau, the opening piece in Debussy's first book of Images - I felt that Moravec's determination to make every note sound was pushing him beyond the normal confines of a pianissimo dynamic. As against that, the atmosphere of this and every other piece is delineated with such clarity and wealth of nuance that quibbles over dynamic detail seem churlish. Aside from that, and from a conclusion to Pour le Piano that is not quite the “double plus lent” that Debussy asks for, I find these performances beyond praise and beyond any ordinary human competition. It was - just a few years back, let me confess - Moravec who began to show me that Chopin was not the neurasthenic ninny he appears in many pianists' portrayals, and who first demonstrated to me rather longer ago the rocklike solidity of line and texture that underpins even the airiest and most fanciful of Debussy's inspirations. I am duly ashamed of those old misconceptions - but having once harbored them, I feel all the more confidence in recommending Moravec's performances to any comparably deluded unfortunates among Fanfare's readership. At the same time, I have now done enough comparing with most of the other celebrated Chopin and Debussy exponents in our century to be sure that Moravec is - as that excellent critic Jim Svejda called him more than 10 years ago, when certain other luminaries were still before the public - Debussy's “greatest living interpreter.” Even listeners already devoted to Debussy and Chopin are likely to find the present set of performances unsurpassed.

Philips's edition of great pianists constitutes a parade of distinguished and distinctive personalities. Ivan Moravec's Chopin, drenched with atmosphere, blends poise and fragrance into a seductive potion: few pianists seem so dedicated to producing magical sonorities.

Asked in an interview to describe the qualities of great piano playing, the Czech pianist Ivan Moravec (b 1930) used terms like “serious craftsmanship, cultivated sound, good taste, truthfulness - and beauty”. If asked to describe the qualities of Moravec’s piano playing, I would use exactly those terms. Everything in his performances has been thought through and is impeccably executed in every detail, with each phrase shaped to fit into the structure of the piece - but it never sounds calculated. His use of rubato may seem excessive to some, but it contributes to great warmth and naturalness of expression. His exceptional tone control and mastery of the sustaining pedal make him one of the great colorists of our time.

Moravec is a perfectionist and spends years working on a piece before he presents it to the public; as a result, his repertory is somewhat limited, but it includes the major works of Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, and the French and Czech composers. The selections made by Philips for this release in their “Great Pianists” series are all French (including Chopin in that category), and it would have been a good idea to include something to show his grasp of the Central European tradition. But what we have - performed and recorded between 1962 and 1989 for various labels (Vox, Connoisseur Society, Dorian) - displays his artistry very well. His Chopin is manly, elegant, and poetic, his Franck Prelude is among the most noble and convincing of them all, and his Debussy and Ravel have the architectural solidity, the shimmering play of light and shadow, and the glowing beauty of a Cezanne painting. You may already have some or all of these performances in your collection, but if you don’t, they have a great deal to offer.

Clara Haskil’s second volume in this series [457 829-2] is ... another ‘must have’. But not more so, in my view, than the very different offerings from Ivan Moravec [456 910-2], a great artist and supreme pianist whose relative neglect by the major record companies is little short of criminal. No player known to me has ever elicited a more refined or wide-ranging tonal palette, but what makes his playing most memorable isn’t just his lustrous sound but his searching musicianship, complemented by an eloquent sophistication of phrase which makes many of his more famous colleagues look almost primitive by comparison. Like his teacher Michelangeli, he has chosen to play (in public, anyway) a relatively restricted repertoire. The present volume is devoted to Chopin, Debussy, Franck and Ravel, all in superbly recorded sound, and may finally result in the much deserved fame which has so far eluded him.

L’un des intérêts de la collection de Philips est de nous faire découvrir des pianistes peu connus, dont les enregistrements ne sont pas faciles à trouver. Ivan Moravec est tchèque. Il a soixante-neuf ans. Il n’est pas très connu (en France), sans doute parce qu’il n’enregistre pas pour les majors, et parce que sa carrière de concertiste est peu passée par la France. Il y a environ un an, il a sorti un bel enregistrement de concertos de Mozart chez Hänssler. Cet album nous le fait découvrir en soliste dans Chopin, Debussy, Ravel et Franck. Son jeu se caractérise par une absence totale de sécheresse, accentuée par une pédalisation très raffinée (un peu à la Brendel, mais en moins accentué), et des sonorités attirées par le medium. Ses Chopin sont tristes, et d’une rare élégance, Moravec les expurgeant de toute mièvrerie sans pour autant transfigurer les oeuvres. On a bien affaire à des mazurkas, mais écrites par un esprit d’une très grande hauteur de vue, qui évitait toujours la facilité — et encore plus la bassesse. Avec Moravec, on reste toujours à cette très haute altitude. Ses Debussy sont beaucoup plus épais qu’à l’accoutumée (sans donner dans la puissance, comme chez un Zymerman), et sont joués avec cette qualité de sonorité indispensable pour recréer l’univers debussyste. Il s’agit là d’un très bel album, qui nous fait découvrir un pianiste dont le talent dépasse largement la renommée. On regrette d’autant plus que d’autres grands pianistes méconnus, comme le hongrois Deszo Ranki, n’aient pas également été retenus dans la collection.

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The battle for the most convincing, or at least resonant, Chopin might be a two-person standoff between Ivan Moravec and Artur Rubinstein. Moravec's Nocturnes nos. 17 and 18 (Op. 62) are about as exquisite as any on record, with life enough to sound as though they were being played in person only inches from the ear. Throughout the first of these two CDs, Moravec uses his pedals to hold Chopin's tones for so long that they become rhapsodic in their balanced extendedness.

A native of Prague, Moravec has eschewed the spotlight, mostly because of his emphasis on teaching and assiduous practice. He's famous for insisting that every aspect of his performance be near-perfect, from his clear command of the work to his intimate knowledge of the instrument on which he'll perform. So it's ideal that he focuses on repertoire fed by perfectionism and elaborately precise pacing--not to mention his penchant for unmistakable contrast. This last trait is most evident in the big energy of Franck's Prélude, chorale, et fugue (recorded in 1962).

The selections on Disk one convincingly back up the claim that Ivan Moravec is the world's greatest living Chopinist, including a majestic performance of the 4th Ballade that has no recorded equal. But the jewel of this collection is the definitive performance of the Cesar Franck Prelude, Chorale, and Fugue: a work which Mr. Moravec just absolutely “owns”. Clarity and pure musicianship are the hallmark of this recording, and Mr. Moravec succeeds in bringing out the complex voices of the fugue in such a way as of which other pianists only dream! The cadenza that mystically weaves together the themes of the three separate parts into a whole is a joy to listen to, and Mr. Moravec resists the mistake made by other artists of rushing the final bars in a high speed bravura dash to the end, instead allowing the broken chords of the chorale to bring the work to a stately yet glorious conclusion. There are a lot of recordings of the Franck Prelude, Chorale, and Fugue. But if you haven't heard this one, then you haven't heard it at all!

“Critic's Choice” rating

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