Remembering Sir Roger Norrington: An Appreciation

This Friday, July 18th, Sir Roger Norrington, a pioneer, a crackling wit in the classical music scene, a researcher, a gentleman-rebel, and a wonderful musician, has passed away at the ripe age of 91. Few people are afforded to touch as many lives as positively; to strike as many chords, to resonate so considerably with so many people as did Norrington – and all of that, senza vibrato!

Norrington (OBE, CBE, Knight), born on 16 March 1934 in Oxford, to a very Oxfordian family, was a towering figure in the English and international Historically Informed Performance scene. In 1962 he founded the Schütz Choir, with which he made his first Proms appearance in 1966. In this, coming from the choral tradition (his father was in the Oxford Bach Choir, of which Norrington became the President), he followed a trajectory that was typical for HIP conductors. But (although there was a good amount of, obviously, Schütz and Monteverdi – but also Berlioz, already) he was also one of the first conductors in said scene to focus very soon on the classical and romantic periods. He did so, primarily with the London Classical Players which he founded in 1978. Before (and for six more years after) that, he spent formative years with the Kent Opera, from 1969 to 1984. (The Kent Opera was eventually nixed by the Arts Council in 1989, because, hey, why not!)

The London Classical Players eventually became a major force in HIP performance and recording, a cornerstone of the British period-instrument movement, and stacked with the many period instrumentalists that were loitering about London at the time and who also filled the seats of many of the other early music bands that would follow suit. In 1986, EMI, on its (largely forgotten) early music imprint Reflexe, had him start on the Beethoven Symphonies, which upended ears around the classically interested globe, shocking, delighting and, in a few cases, horrifying Beethoven lovers everywhere. (“Norrington’s atrocious complete symphony cycle”, D.Hurwitz) How do they hold up, almost half a century later? Well, the playing is admittedly rough, which, with some charitability, you could call: exciting. The tempi are fast but no longer that fast, in comparison. (Then again, HvK was already pretty fast, for his time) The performances definitely have a pioneer-spirit about them and reek of gasoline. But I wouldn't say they're unattractive. In some ways, they are among the most audacious Beethoven performances of the time, and a good deal of that is still transmitted.

I don’t mind if a performance is unhistorical; I do mind if it isn’t fun.

L.v.Beethoven Symphonies London Classical Players EMI/Virgin (1986-88) US | UK | DE

L.v.Beethoven Symphonies Stuttgart RSO Hässler (live, 2002) US | UK | DE

J.Haydn Symphonies 99-104 London Classical Players EMI/Virgin (1992/93) US | UK | DE

H.Berlioz Symphonie fantastique London Classical Players EMI/Virgin (1989) US | UK | DE

A.Bruckner Symphonies 3, 4, 6, 7, 9 Stuttgart RSO Hässler (2006) US | UK | DE

L.v.Beethoven Symphony No.9 Stuttgart RSO Hässler (2007?) US | UK | DE

Also early-on came some recordings of Haydn, which were probably my introduction to Norrington, back when I eagerly collected and listened to, whatever I could get my ears on, between the BMG Record Club and Tower Records. Hailed for their “erratic brilliance”, they still had to fight against longstanding favorites from stalwarts like Jochum and Davis, in the reviewers’ estimation. But Haydn may have been something like the godfather of Norrington’s musical adventures. The wit, humor, quirk, Puck united them, and it is not a coincidence that Norrington ended his performing career on November 18, 2021, leading the Royal Northern Sinfonia in an evening of a wildly diverse program of all-Haydn at Sage Gateshead.

While Norrington certainly researched each work and each composer painstakingly, before tackling the music, and while he held firm – even dogmatic – beliefs (especially about the absence of vibrato – here’s an op-ed of his in The Guardian: ”Bad vibrations” and one in the NYT, titled ”Time to Rid the Orchestras of the Shakes”), which opened him up to a few broadsides), his ultimate goal was always to have fun with the music; to make it entertaining. “The reason to do so is not because pure tone is ‘authentic’,” he concludes that op-ed, “but because it is beautiful, expressive and exciting.”

It is true, his ideas and his approach did not work equally well for all the music or on all the occasions he performed. Norrington, once dubbed “as stubborn and dogmatic and controversial a musician as one is likely to encounter these days” (Sudip Bose, in an article for The American Scholar, where he makes a beautiful case for Norrington), was accused of being a charlatan by some, and “just a man with a bizarre fixation ruining the music he conducts.” (This from a review in The Times from Stephen Pollard).

This kind of hyperbole always struck me as a curious mix of impotence and bluster. Things can not to be one’s liking, of course. One may, indeed, deem someone’s ideas about certain music poppycock. But clearly someone like Norrington was not out to wilfully desecrate music or ruin our enjoyment of it, whether his theories where right or wrong or the execution of it lacking. I’ve indulged in my share of hyperbole, even of that sort, but Norrington playing an Elgar Symphony or Pomp and Circumstance, is not akin to “burning torches at the gates of Buckingham Palace.” It’s just a bloody Elgar, or Beethoven, or Mahler, or (as it were) Bruckner Symphony played not to one’s liking. Switch the CD, go to another concert, you’ll hear it more to your liking. Vive la difference.

Incidentally, it was a Bruckner performance, that I first heard Roger Norrington in concert with. He was guest conducting the National Symphony Orchestra, not the most natural Bruckner Orchestra, and (reviewing it for ionarts) I approached it with some caution:

Sir Roger Norrington conducting is always an event, but when he takes on Bruckner, the Brucknerian must fear for the worst. The “worst” in this case being a playing style that conforms (or allegedly conforms) to the way these symphonies were performed during Bruckner’s time. Or, to be more precise: how this particular symphony would have been performed, had it been performed at all, since Norrington opted for the ‘original original’ version of Bruckner’s 4th – the 1874 Nowak edition that did not receive an outing in that form until 1975 with the Munich Philharmonic.

It was not a great success and I felt “rather conflicted” about it. Part of the problem with Norrington’s approach was, that it depended on the absolute will and ability of his orchestras to go along with this non-vibrato approach. Even with all the will in the world, not a given with any professional orchestra, a few rehearsals cannot suffice to master this approach in a way that the music will achieve the desired effect and lift-off.

Much of this was very interesting, like seeing a favorite building from a different angle for the first time. But it was also a building where the parts didn’t quite seem to fit together, as though they were glued together just a bit off, or puzzle pieces forced to fit when they don’t quite.

The London Classical Players, even if they could be a bit scrawny, in the 80s, had the will and drilling. So did the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, the second major continental orchestra with which he held a position, next to the Camerata Salzburg (1997 to 2006). These willing Stuttgarters he led for 13 years and they became a vehicle for him to prove his point. He may never have fully convinced the majority of scholars – but his performance became increasingly convincing. For me, the musical triumph of this approach, came in unlikely recording success, fairly late in his Stuttgart tenure, when he put out interpretations of Bruckner’s Sixth and Mahler’s Ninth symphonies that knocked my socks off, when I heard them. (ClassicsToday’s David Hurwitz*, never a fan and vocal in trying to debunk Norrington’s vibrato-theories, called his “Stupid Mahler Ninth”.)

Norrington gives the great diffuser and comfort-smudger that permanent vibrato admittedly is, the boot, and has his modern instrument violinists, violists, cellists, and double basses hit the notes and play them clean without—literally—the wiggle room that vibrato provides, intonation-wise. Since his orchestra knows how to do that now, the sound isn’t off; instead, it’s more direct, seeming a little more strident at first, a little sharper, but certainly also more detailed and clearer… Loving this performance [doesn’t mean] being sold on his theory to the exclusion of the various other current ways of performing Mahler, but I, well… I love it. There is a zany bite and yet a plain simplicity to the music that is very refreshing, gripping, and exciting…

His Bruckner Sixth is, if anything, even better (see the ionarts “Best Recordings of 2010 – ‘Almost List’”). The Stuttgarters’ sharp attacks, crisp tempi, and lean textures work much better in Bruckner’s Sixth than you’d ever guess. It’s a perfect spoil to Celibdiache’s Sixth with the Munich Philharmonic or Haitink’s stupendous Dresden performance. Norrington and the orchestra make the music sound feisty where it should, and gleam along where it may. Both recordings make Norrington’s point not by dint of ideology but his true mantra for which the HIP elements were merely the means: Music needs to sound good. Concertgoers, listeners, even those he may have infuriated on occasion, will certainly cherish his memory, his life, his enormous contribution to music, and his wonderful, smiling legacy.

* In defense of Dave: When he liked something by Norrington, even in unlikely repertoire, he would say so, although not usually without some barbs to make his general point.
P.S. A tribute from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenement.


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In Memoriam: Listening to Alfred Brendel

Most people listening to classical music today have, to a greater or lesser degree, been musically socialized with the performances of Alfred Brendel. He was a fixed star on the international scene when it came to Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert and a few other of his favorite composers. His dry wit, usually gentle, rarely acerbic, poignancy, his unapologetic classicism made him an unlikely, charming icon. He has passed away on Tuesday, June 17^th, 2025 at his home in London.

I was on the steps outside the Musikverein when I read the news that Alfred Brendel had passed away in London, at the age of 94. This was the place he had given his final recital of his truly final farewell tour and this was the town where he lived when his career got under way in 1950 after first successes in Graz and before he permanently settled in the UK in 1971.

His success was a stellar one; born in the 1930s, Brendel was of a time that came a generation-plus after the keyboard titans à la Arthur Schnabel (1882), Wilhelm Backhaus (1884), Edwin Fischer (1886), Arthur Rubinstein (1887), Wilhelm Kempff (1895), Vladimir Horowitz, Rudolf Serkin and Claudio Arrau (all 1903). He was thus a “modern” artist, to anyone born before 1980, and, crucially, born into the stereo age. This is relevant, because as the exclusive go-to pianist of one of the major labels – Philips (now Decca) – for the heydays of the late analog and digital age, Brendel became a superstar of – and to some extent also because of – the recorded age. In the 100-volume, 200-CD “Great Pianists Of The 20th Century” project of Tom Deacon’s – to which Brendel was an advisor – Brendel is one of only seven pianists (Arrau, Gilels, Horowitz, Kempff, Richter & Rubinstein being the others) with three volumes dedicated to his art. If it had to be the classical repertoire – Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven – Brendel was there for you. Within that realm – and a little beyond – he recorded most of what there was to be recorded and much of that twice, some, like the Beethoven Sonatas, even thrice or more: In the 60s for Vox, in the 70s for Philips, analog, and for Philips again in the 90s, digitally. And of select works Brendel, who exerted quite a bit of control over what would get released and what would not, opted to have live accounts published, which he professedly preferred over his studio accounts. With the different releases of each of these versions (and most of them on Philips or Decca, still), it can get a bit messy trying to figure out which the analog second recording of D.960 or the digital remake of the Moonlight Sonata is or isn't. (But I am here to help.)

Alfred Brendel on Ionarts: In Performance His Soft Touch, Powerfully Moving, 02/09/2006 (jfl) Closing the Lid: Alfred Brendel, 19/03/2008 (Charles) A Conversation with Alfred Brendel, 20/03/2008 (Michael Lodico) Alfred Brendel Speaks, 11/18/2000 (Charles) On Record: Best Recordings of 2004 (#8), 12/16/2004 (jfl) From Goerne to His Distant Beloved, 07/18/2005 (jfl) Brendel and Mozart, 02/06/2006 (Charles) Brendel’s Choice, 02/06/2006 (jfl) Best Recordings of 2009 (#3), 12/14/2009 (jfl)

In Austria, his success shadowed that of fellow pianists Paul Badura-Skoda (1927), who, to some degree, escaped into the historical performance niche, Jörg Demus (1928), who found his main fame in Lied accompaniment, Ingrid Haebler (1929), who recorded much the same repertoire but whose star waned earlier, and Friedrich Gulda (1930), who became the eccentric: Considered by people in the know as a superior pianist but with a far smaller reach, ultimately. Internationally – specifically in America – there were contemporaries Byron Janis (1928), Glenn Gould (1932), Van Cliburn (1934), Leon Fleisher (1928), Richard Goode (1943), most of whom had their careers cut prematurely short; elsewhere, pianists like Ivan Moravec (1930) were stuck behind the iron curtain. As a result, the name “Alfred Brendel” and the maroon bar of the Philips label’s recordings became as indicative of a musically interested household as Wilhelm Kempff on the Yellow Label had been, a few decades earlier. Brendel’s association with the “Complete Mozart Edition” only furthered this omnipresence.

This kind of prominence brought about the invariable backlash in the form of criticism – the thrust of which, generally, was that Brendel was boring. This accusation might have had its understandable roots in Brendel’s style, which relied on subtlety and wit, level-headedness and sincerity, articulation, intelligence, and purpose, but never flash. The grand romantic gesture, even if it had been within his reach, was not temperamentally his. Even Liszt (where he did show the kind of chops that some critics might occasionally have forgotten he had) was not showy with Brendel.

It also showed in the repertoire he chose to play and even more so the repertoire he chose not to play. He left out composers most pianists couldn’t envisage making a career without: Chopin was (largely) missing; hardly, if any, Debussy or Ravel; no Rachmaninoff was ever in his sights, nor Tchaikovsky. Instead, he dropped morsels of

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Remembering John Browning: A Short Portrait

S.Barber, Piano Concerto, Sy.1 J.Browning, L.Slatkin, St. Louis SO RCA

S.Prokofiev, Piano Concertos J.Browning, E.Leinsdorf, Boston SO RCA

S.Barber, Complete Songs C.Studer, T.Hampson, Emerson SQ4t, J.Browning DG

The Complete RCA Album Collection, John Browning Sony/RCA

Born on this day, May 23rd, in 1933, in Denver, pianist John Browning was a student of the famed Rosina Lhévinne, who taught the cream of the pianistic crop at the Institute of Musical Art (the Juilliard School) in New York. He was a direct contemporary of a North American group of pianists that might be dubbed the ‘Tragic Five’, namely Julius Katchen (1926), Byron Janis, Leon Fleisher, and Gary Graffman (all 1928), and his classmate Van Cliburn (1934). These pianists all started with the very highest hopes and for one reason or other had their careers prematurely ended, curtailed, or fizzle. John Browning's career, too, took a dip – caused by the strain of too many concerts and a subsequent decline in pianistic standards – when it should have been at its peak, but perhaps not sufficiently to make it a ‘Tragic Six’. By the time he played his last recital, at the National Gallery of Arts in 2002, which included a memorable Sonata in E-flat Minor by Samuel Barber, I attended ignorant of who he really was. Those in the know valued him for his “unremitting application and vast reserve of talent… [and] invariable dignity, without recourse to ballyhoo and banality.” (LA Times)

John Browning’s career was jumpstarted when he won the Steinway Centennial Award in 1954 and the Leventritt Competition the next year, then taking the second prize behind Vladimir Ashkenazy at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 1956, the prize won by fellow Americans Leon Fleisher before him and Malcolm Frager after him. That same year he made his debut with the New York Philharmonic under Dimitri Mitropoulos, which is where Samuel Barber heard him play and was much impressed with his great technique. So impressed, indeed, that Barber wrote difficulties into his piano concerto, with Browning in mind, that were beyond what was humanly possible to play. Browning, in an interview with NPR, recalled Barber taking him to Vladimir Horowitz, to have a look at the score. Horowitz browsed through it and said: “The young man iz right, this iz impossible to play”—whereupon Barber toned the demands down a little.

John Browning’s recitals notably included much Bach and Scarlatti, composers that were not then considered repertoire staples and probably still weren't, even after the landmark recordings of Gould’s Goldberg Variations (1955) and Horowitz’s Scarlatti (1964). But he will be foremost remembered as a champion of Barber. Browning premiered Barber’s piano concerto under Erich Leinsdorf in 1962, and for his second recording of the Piano Concerto, with Leonard Slatkin, he won his first Grammy. Recording the complete solo works of Barber garnered him his second Grammy. In his surprisingly small discography, much of which is hiding on minor labels, his Prokofiev Concertos with Erich Leinsdorf on RCA also stand out. John Browning died on January 26th, 2003, of heart failure.

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Maurizio Pollini, an Appreciation

Maurizio Pollini was perhaps the most important figure in my musical upbringing that I never knew.

Twenty years ago, on October 27th, 2004, I walked down the aisle of the Kennedy Center’s Orchestra Hall with two* (!) press tickets in my hand, headed towards perfect seats for a Maurizio Pollini recital that Eileen Andrews, then with the Washington Performing Arts Society, had unconscionably handed to this upstart crow. Row 18 (T/1&3?) or something, piano left – the first time I had requested review tickets for a “proper” concert where the tickets cost money – an unaffordable sum at a time when a sandwich was a luxury. And I remember keenly thinking to myself: “I will never stop pretending to be a critic!”

Lv.Beethoven, The Late Piano Sonatas Maurizio Pollini DG (1975/77)

Lv.Beethoven, Late Piano Sonatas 101 & 106 Maurizio Pollini DG (2021/22)

Lv.Beethoven, The Piano Concertos Maurizio Pollini, Berlin Phil, C.Abbado DG

L.v.Beethoven, Complete Piano Sonatas Maurizio Pollini DG

W.A.Mozart, Piano Concertos K.453 & 467 Maurizio Pollini, WPh DG

W.A.Mozart, Piano Concertos K.414 & 491 Maurizio Pollini, WPh DG

Stravinsky, Prokofiev et al., Petrouchka, Sonata No.7...) Maurizio Pollini DG

F.Chopin, Etudes opp.10 & 25 Maurizio Pollini DG

F.Schubert, The 3 late Piano Sonatas & 3 Pieces. Maurizio Pollini DG

I had picked Maurizio Pollini for this attempt at getting review tickets, not only because I wanted to see if that racket might work – but because Maurizio Pollini had long been in my personal Hall of Fame (where Eileen joined him that day). It was his disc of the late Beethoven Sonatas (subject of one of the earliest Dip Your Ears reviews) that hooked me. I innocently picked it up in a Best Buy in Fargo, ND, and brought it back to my college room. Even played on my rickety boom box, it was an overwhelming experience. The granitic perfection opened my ears not only to Beethoven sonatas, but, to an extent, to late Beethoven and the fascination of piano sonatas itself. I imprinted so hard on these performances that it’s sometimes been difficult to properly appreciate anyone else’s opp. 106 or 111.

Later came his Beethoven Piano Concertos, the second recording with Abbado, now with the Berlin Philharmonic, which fascinated me equally, if, alas, less momentously. Years went by until – it would have been in 2004 – I ‘discovered’ his Chopin Études at Tower Records, took them home, and marveled at the sound that came forth. Opus 10/1: Like marbles rushing down a marble staircase. So clean, so precise and pristine, you could hear every note and there wasn’t an ounce of fat or sentimentality anywhere in sight. I was bowled over once more.

These recordings – and the one of the Stravinsky Petrouchka movements – contributed as much to the reputation of Pollini as an ingenious perfectionist of unparalleled technical standards as they did to the stereotype that he was necessarily a cool, unemotional pianist. True, his clear-as-a-brook, granitic playing cleansed the treacle from many romantic piece and offered stunning x-ray views into contemporary works. But this did not always bear out in concert or on record, where he was well capable of considerable warmth. Case in point his (relatively) late live Mozart from Vienna, which is “understated, sunny, and genial… sophisticated in its simplicity…, [even reminiscent] of Keith Jarrett’s Mozart playing, but with ‘warmer’ results…” (MusicWeb review) The days of being a left-wing political firebrand (“Champagne Socialist” was a less kind, if certaily apt, moniker) had by then long been over, but the passion for the music burned unabated.

The recordings also set an almost impossible standard for live performances – those of others but also his own. In the recital in 2004, he still held up to that standard. Two years later, at a recital at Strathmore, he didn’t quite, but still moved and impressed:

Still, even at the least involving, the marvelous soft notes – never shy-sounding – demanded respect… The Ballade No. 1 in G Minor had been bumped up from encore status, last year, to the main program – and it suits Pollini’s rigor, his iron-frame rubato much better. Those who like his style in Chopin (it’s not the leaves that shake on the tree, the whole trunk is slowly moving), are invariably fascinated by his approach.

More recently, I wrote for Forbes.com and LISTEN Magazine about his Beethoven Piano Sonata Cycle, a project that he took 39 years to complete:

Beethoven Sonata cycles used to be monuments. Milestones. For a pianist today, a Beethoven Sonata cycle has become more of an ultimate business card, which is why we see so many of them. But one cycle issued last year is still a monument amid business cards: Maurizio Pollini’s. After four decades in the making, it has every bit the feel of a classic, like Kempff, Arrau, Backhaus, or Brendel. That's partly because Pollini is one of the last active titans of the ivories, and partly because the set is anchored around his towering, legendary 1975/77 recording of the last sonatas. His Hammerklavier is a pianistic Matterhorn, imposing and awesome. Thomas Mann spent a whole chapter in Dr. Faustus on op.111. Listening to Pollini, you wonder why not an entire book.

Somewhere in between, I actually did meet the man for a brief second, crossing the floor of an empty Philharmonic Hall in Munich, during or before or after rehearsals. Overcoming the (appropriate!) reticence, I approached my idol, pitched some awkward idea and made an even equally lame compliment, which was met with courteous disinterest. On greeting or parting I shook his hand, quite seemingly against his will, but he was too polite to not go through the motions and put his hand in mine, where it briefly lied, like an anesthetized squid. In my defense: I felt an acute and lasting sense of shame and remorse and I did not squeeze too hard.

I last saw Maurizio Pollini at his final penultimate recital in Vienna (review Wiener Zeitung), in the summer of 2021, at the Musikverein, within weeks of hearing Daniel Barenboim play the same hall. This battle of the dinosaurs, not that it was billed as such, made for instructive listening. That the latter performed Beethoven-as-Bruckner was one thing. One can like it or not. Mistakes in the heat of the passion are also one thing; only curmudgeons begrudge ’em. But the visibly – or seemingly – unmotivated, lazy sloppiness was hard to forgive. Even when you almost knew that you could expect as little. Barenboim made every indication of not giving a damn, played through his recital, and collected the rapturous applause he knew he was going to get, no matter what he did.

Further reading: Andrew Ford, "The clarity of Maurizio Pollini" (Inside Story, 2017).

Quite different Maurizio Pollini, born in Milan, on January 5th, 1942, and just ten months older than Barenboim. When he had given his first recital at the Musikverein, 60 years prior, my mom was still in high school. Now – in '21 – he still attacked every note with the same intensity and expectation of perfection as he had so long been able to do, unwilling to make any concessions. But in several places, like Schumann’s op.18 Fantasie or Chopin’s B minor Sonata, the hands no longer did his bidding in the way he wanted and he grumbled along, and every slip seemed to upset him. The tender moments were breath-taking, still, even if not everything was, strictly speaking, at the highest pianistic level anymore. And then for the Berceuse op.57 and the Polonaise Héroïque, it was back: That absolutely even touch, where every note, no matter which finger takes it, is perfectly even.

The ovations were the ovations not just for that night, but a veritable lifetime achievement award. The audience, myself appreciatingly among them, well knew that this might have been the last time they heard a legend live – and it was. He may have heard his last applause, but Maurizio will live on in the gratitude of music-lovers for a long, long time. Mille grazie per tutto, Maestro.

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P.S. If you want to hear Pollini perform Stockhausen's Klavierstück X, you can/should do so here. No matter how you feel about the music or Stockhausen in general, it is an amazing feat and something to behold.

* With me was ionarts' Charles Downey, who thus celebrated the birth of his first kid, earlier in the day.

Anatol Ugorski, the Great Bewilderer: An Obituary

To say that Anatol Ugorski – born on September 28th, 1942 in Rubtsovsk – was not a favored artist in the Soviet Union is putting it mildly. Something about his character had always seemed to rankle the regime and those in its service. His piano teacher, once Anatol had received his formal training, pretty much left him to his own devices as regarded interpretative personality. (She did insist on Bach.) The talent of this quasi-autodidactic pianist showed early, however, and it couldn’t be quenched entirely: At the Fourth George Enescu International Piano Competition in Bucharest (in a very much Soviet-supervised Romania), he was awarded a Third Prize the year that Radu Lupu won the First. This might have given him a boost, but an early talent for squirreling-out – and performing – the standards of the Western avant-garde gave rise to early suspicions about his political reliability. (Which, in the Soviet Union, was tantamount to being considered morally defective.) He went on to prove the apparatchiks right as best he could by clapping so ostentatiously, demonstratively loud and hard, both hands flat against each other, after a 1967 performance of the BBC Symphony Orchestra led by Pierre Boulez, that he was consequently ivory-blocked by the powers-that-be and from then on played to school children in the vast provinces of the Soviet hinterlands or at private soirées.

In this artistic vacuum, Anatol Ugorski was, to paraphrase Haydn, ‘forced to become original’. And “original” may be an understatement. To quote Jed Distler: “If Deutsche Gramophone thought they had the eccentricity market locked up with Ivo Pogorelich, they hadn’t reckoned with… Ugorski.” Two heaping spoons full of crazy (or inspired or insightful or revealing – which is exactly the question that surrounds his artistry) are most notable in the recording that ended up launching his spell with DG, his Diabelli Variations. These recordings made his name after fleeing post-communist Russia to Berlin – but the transition had been anything but smooth.

Broke and homeless, he resided in a refugee camp with his wife and pianist-daughter Dina in eastern Berlin for a while, before eventually upgrading to regular poverty and a tiny flat, living on the outskirts of town for nearly a year and – once again – on the outskirts of his profession. Dressed in ill-fitting hand-me-downs, Anatol Ugorski certainly made an impression wherever he went. There was something quintessential Soviet, even alien, about him. When he came into a small amount of money, he decided to invest it in a digital piano.

With a dear friend, he set out to go to a store in Berlin that sold such equipment. He wore a black rubber coat, way too large for him, but effectively warming his body and spirits. Looking like something a scarecrow would have glanced at askance, he entered the store, where the German sales staff descended on him at once and tried to shoo him back out of the store. Oblivious and undeterred, Ugorski, made a beeline to the most expensive e-piano model in the store, sat down to the silent gasps of a horrified staff, switched it on, and proceeded to play. Pictures at an Exhibition. The whole way through! It must have been his first performance in the West, technically, and afterwards, the audience, stunned into submission and having successively grown over the course of his playing, burst into loud applause. The episode sounds like an amplified scene that the filmmakers of “Shine”, about David Helfgott, would use a few years later. With the significant difference that, unlike Helfgott, who is a cultural phenomenon but decidedly not a proper pianist, Ugorski could really play!

“Could”, not “can”, because Anatol Ugorski, who passed away earlier today in Berlin> Lemgo, had spent the last four years – since his daughter Dina died of cancer – no longer playing. Instead, he spent his free time listening to music and living – together with his new, young pianist wife.

As a pianist, Ugorski zeroed in on the essence of a work as he, un-influenced by any performing tradition, perceived it – and then he exhumed exactly that essence out of the notes. When he recorded Beethoven’s last piano sonata, he slowed it down to a contemplative crawl – taking as much time for the variation movement alone as the aforementioned Pogorelich took for the whole sonata on his DG recording ten years earlier. The resulting gravitas befits the pathos that Thomas Mann ascribed to this work in his Dr. Faustus. To Ugorski’s great credit, the second movement – while it opens itself to reveal maximum fragrance – does not fall apart like a wilted rose dropping all its petals. His passive-aggressive pianissimos, a specialty of his were a tactical delight as they enforced close listening. Amid his musical finger-pointing with acutely slow tempi and punched-out notes, there was never a sense of any particular school of pianism audible. Just Ugorski for better or, arguably, worse. To what extent this approach succeeded in unveiling hitherto hidden musical details always depended very much on the listener’s subjective response. Those who responded to it never forgot a performance of his.

His name will live on, not the least in his perfectly uncontroversially great recordings of Scriabin and Messiaen. In the latter’s Catalogue d’oiseaux feathers are ruffled here, beaks beckon and claws clutch: The aviary is filled with trilling, thrilling sounds. Colors abound, as they do in and the piano concerto where he performs with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Pierre Boulez, whom Ugorsky had once applauded so much 30 years earlier, that it almost cost him his career.




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