The sheer quality of Can Cakmur's recordings prompts me to make a few introductory remarks.
Approaches and attitudes to performance, to what Michael Tippett called 'the great effort of interpretation,' change rapidly over the years. What was once considered admirable in its crowd-pleasing showmanship and dazzle is now frequently frowned on and dismissed as superficial. Per contra there are those who, reflecting on what they consider a 'golden age of pianism,' regard present day trends as puritanical; short change for, say, Chopin's dream world. Artur Schnabel was, of course, a key figure in such change, his sayings or aphorisms such as 'I only play music which is always better than it can be played' taking on the status of dictates and holy writ. Yet he was the first to admit that his philosophy or view of an art above and beyond entertainment had become distorted and exaggerated by his 'disciples.'
Rubinstein's Chopin was initially considered a cold, patrician alternative to former freedoms. Lipatti, too, was initially thought poised to the point of detachment, and it took time for the public to adapt to Pollini's Chopin, in his early career a taut and heroic alternative to more easily assimilated salon attributes.
Which leads me to today and a time peopled with pianists anxious to impress with a seriousness far removed from a more ornamental or self-absorbed style. I should add that asked to speak at a German Festival about the relative influences of Horowitz and Schnabel I felt compelled to say that many young pianists now take their lead from the latter rather than the former. As Vladimir Ashkenazy put it, 'once we were a composer's masters, now we are their servants.'
And so, to Can Cakmur, who even at the start of his career was a powerful and significant voice. Capable of virtuoso brio(but in the fullest sense) exemplified by his performance of the Liszt E flat Concerto, his prize-winning choice for his triumph in Japan's Hamamatsu Competition, he remains a pianist with little time for levity, intent only on the most concentrated drama and a quest for musical truth. Side-stepping conservative repertoire his early disc of the Schubert-Liszt Schwanengesang and Liszt's four Valses oubliee already tells of a linking of past and future prophecy.
Cakmur's Beethoven-Liszt, Schubert, Haydn, Fazil Say, Bartok and Fuyhijo Saaki is as enterprising as it is startling, one containing hidden links and connections. In the Schubert E flat Sonata. D.568 his manner is both expressive yet economical. This is not the world of, say, Kempff's or Schiff's more gentle or affable Schubert, but a shining of a fierce light on the inner workings of the composer's genius. Here, creator and re-creator emerge in a vivid and intense embrace. And, overall, nothing could be further than the comfort and domesticity conjured by the term, 'Schubertiad.'
Again, Cakmur makes it hard to imagine a more meticulous performance of Haydn's F minor Variations, and he is as keen as he is atmospheric in Bartok's 'Out of Doors' Suite; never more so than in 'The NIght Music,' a fine addition to his recording of the Bartok Sonata.
Ernst Krenek, Piano Sonata No 2, opus 59. Schubert Sonata in C major, D.840, Ungarissche Melodie and Allegretto in C minor. Can Cakmur. Bis 2690.
In his latest disc of Schubert Sonatas, re-thought in the light of other composers'(Brahms, Schoenberg and now Krenek) Cakmur once more acknowledges links with the past and a seemingly conflicting modernity. And it is when you turn to Schubert's C major incomplete Sonata D.840(here completed by Krenek) that outwardly incompatible idioms become, if not compatible, in some way related, and neve more so than in Krenek's loving backward glances at Schubert.
Once more, Cakmur, hardly a pianist given to easy sentiment, takes a stern view of Schubert's lyricism, recreating a Sonata which suggests an ultimate prophet, music to join even the more extreme later experiments of Schumann, Chopin and Liszt.Cakmur's dedication and mastery are overwhelming and Krenek's completion makes his performance a special alternative to all others, notably to Richter who stops the finale in mid-air as it were, leaving you suspended in limbo. Th effect is as dramatic as it is shocking, yet even Richter at his most driven and fiercely charged sounds less uncompromising than Cakmur.
This is an extraordinary disc, superbly recorded, by an extraordinary pianist, a stunning salute to enterprise and musical high seriousness.
Bryce Morrison