A forte for the piano

What do two Russians, one Italian and a Brazilian have in common? The ability to make listeners feel as though they are attending a private recital in their front room. Rob Cowan on the latest CDs of piano music

Maurizio Pollini's latest Schumann recital frames the fantastical suite Kreisleriana with two rarities, one youthful, the other poised on the edge of an abyss. The five late Gesänge der Frühe are like mutated song accompaniments, the first in particular, noble and reserved music but with the occasional harmonic smudge that suggests that all is not quite as it should be. Even Clara Schumann found them "difficult to grasp [and] with such a strange mood in them", but their mixture of nostalgia and sudden boldness suits Pollini who, as in "late" Liszt, offers us stark reportage with no frills.

That same blend of forthrightness and finesse finds more Beethoven than Schumannesque fantasy in Kreisleriana. But wherever a thoughtful co-ordination of ideas is called for, Pollini delivers handsomely – in the cantering finale, for example, where rogue notes fall spasmodically around the main theme like the spitting of raindrops before a downpour.

The recital opens with an early, oddball Allegro in B minor, freewheeling and restless but coaxed by Pollini to within a hair's breadth of the sonata movement it nearly became. But I couldn't possibly leave Schumann's piano music without at least mentioning the gnomic Papillons as distilled into miniaturist tone poetry by Sviatoslav Richter in the early Sixties and reissued at super-budget price by EMI. Richter's inwardly searching Schumann is light years removed from Pollini's aural sculpture, and the same disc also features an overwhelming Fantasy in C, epic in scale but deeply personal in spirit, and the exuberant Faschingsschwank aus Wien (or "Carnival Jest from Vienna").

Neither disc makes for a "comfortable" listen. So much intensity, and so much earnestness! Unlike Decca's new Chopin CD featuring the elusive Brazilian pianist Nelson Freire, where the grip loosens to reveal a veritable aural bouquet. Not that the programme is any sense "light". The B minor Sonata is a model blend of warmth and clear articulation, with a subtle but well-built first movement and a scherzo that for once has genuine shape. A sequence of Studies (Freire plays the whole of Op 25 and "Op Posth") has fine character and fluidity, especially the F minor and F major. The odd provocative gesture (and there are a few) serves more to enlighten than to shock. But what most strikes me about this playing, aside from its utter naturalness, is Freire's obvious love of the instrument: every note suggests tactile relish. Which is what you invariably felt at a Shura Cherkassky recital, that uncanny sensation that even if no-one had turned up on the night, he would still be playing the same repertoire in that same loving, fanciful and capricious way.

Ivory Classics (available via Priory) has released a digitally recorded 1982 San Francisco recital that includes, as its centrepiece, Tchaikovsky's potentially unwieldy 33-minute G Major Sonata. Some (including, I have to say, Richter) have stormed this music into a semblance of banal rhetoric, but not Cherkassky, whose mastery of nuance and refusal to overstate the case turn a potential rant into an unexpected masterpiece.

Equally piquant Lully, Mendelssohn, Chopin (Polonaise Fantaisie & Valse Op 42) and Hofmann complete the programme.

Schumann: Allegro Op 8/ 'Kreisleriana'/'Gesänge der Frühe' – Maurizio Pollini (DG 471 370-2)

Schumann: Fantasy in C/ 'Faschingsschwank aud Wien'/'Papillons' – Sviatoslav Richter (EMI 'Encore' CDE5 74233 2)

Chopin: Sonata No 3; Etudes Opp 25 & 'Posth' – Nelson Freire (Decca 470 288-2)

Shura Cherkassky: The 1982 San Francisco Recital (Ivory Classics 70904)