APRs release of a 3 CD tribute to Ann Schein is a reminder of a pianist who in her early career played with a brilliance and brio given to few. Hear her in Weber's 'Invitation to the Dance(in Tausig's spicy arrangment) and you could hardly imagine a more scintillating or seductive take; impossible to resist her invitation. In Medtner's 'Danza Festiva' her performance is as dancing as it is festive, making it not a moment too long(always a consideration in Medtner). She is delectable in Halfter's 'Danza de la Pastora', alternately vital and reflective in Bartok's 6 Rumanian Dances. Szymanowski's B flat minor Etude(made famous by Malcuzynski) and a selection of Scriabin Etudes are among other vivid successes.
But then comes if not a cold shower, a less heated one. Ann Schein's Chopin(the majority of her recordings) tells you as on so many occasions that his music is invariably the weak spot in a recital, the mix of Slavonic passion and gallic elegance (remembering Chopin's French ancestry), of formality and improvisatory genius, as elusive as ever. Not that you would call Schein's Chopin weak, far from it, yet she is somehow too relentlessly bright, too upbeat when she could be more inward and intense. Understatement plays too little part in her temperament. Her way with the Second Concerto is brilliantly and characterfully projected yet there is a tendency to force the issue, as if over-anxious to impress. She hardly evokes Chopin's description of the opening to his Second Scherzo(it must be 'like a charnel house,' a house of the dead)flipped aside with too little sense of its audacious harmony. Here and in the other Scherzi (always excepting no 4 with its major key elfin flights) there is more speed than brilliant fury(too little sense of Chopin's sardonic response to the genre 'Scherzo,' meaning a joke). Why such a limp rather than challenging and defiant opening to the Polonaise-Fantasie(where for Chopin's contemporaries he went too far) and later she is more hectoring than supple in this elusive masterpiece, one declared 'outside the realm of art' by that early Chopin scholar, Frederick Nieks. A selection of Etudes includes a superb opus 10 No 8 and a blaze of nationalist defiance in No 12, the so-called revolutionary Etude where Schein is entirely attuned to its tragic outcry.
Finally, Rachmaninov's Third Concerto which Schein first performed aged fifteen to extraordinary acclaim, later claiming it was a Concerto she played a hundred times. Here, there is all of her unflagging energy and so much more, a sheer joy in performance and a natural affinity for Rachmaninov's all-Russian poetry Here, again, you have all the quality occasionally missing in her Chopin, her ability to look inwardly as well as outwardly. Myra Hess, who Schein studied with, would not have uttered, for Schein, some devastating words after listening to her in Schubert, 'well, it wasn't quite perfect, was it?' Long used as a teenager to tumultuous applause the young Ann Schein was brought up short, the need for a greater sense of musical quality.
Ann Schein's early disappearance from the major concert halls remained a mystery to herself as to others. Serving with her twice on New York's Naumburg Competition, I found her without an answer('I don't know, it just happened') Her years as a teacher were however a rich compensation, her time attending the rehearsals of the Juilliard String Quartet, where her husband was a member, a crucial learning process. She is already much missed and APR;s volume will always tell not only of one of America's greatest talents but a pianist of rare calibre.
Bryce Morrison