As a birthday tribute to 90-year-old Malcom Binns few celebrations could be more apt than APR's 4 CD issue. It is also a reminder that while several mediocre pianists enjoy high-flying, international careers others, less skilled in 'savoir-faire,' can be forgotten and eclipsed. Regarding Malcolm Binns, this is all the more distressing when you consider the sheer quality of his playing, and also a career starred by major events. A favourite of the Proms he performed at the Royal Albert Hal seventeen times, including three or four last nights, often with a Rawsthorne Concerto rather than more customary Grieg or Tchaikovsky, evidence of his vast and enterprising repertoire. His 1961 debut at the Royal Festival Hall was no less surprising, when he gave the first British performance of Prokofiev's Fourth Piano Concerto for left hand.
Perhaps the problem lay in Binn's genial and relaxed personality. As APR's discs amply convey, he was to intent and absorbed in his love of music and its performance to cultivate publicity or play the prima donna. There were also management issues. Like many other pianists he belonged to Emmie Tillett's stable, were paid small fees (so that they knew their place and didn't get above themselves) and with restricted opportunities. Later there was disappointment when his annual appearances at the Proms were cancelled by John Drummond, a difficult and pompous BBC controller ('can I borrow your comb, I left at Buckingham Palace last night').
More generally and reading the outstanding accompanying essay, spiced with many quotations by the pianist—alert, revealing and occasionally mischievous-- I was sent spinning down memory lane. These were the war years and the market was flooded with British or British- based pianists. Pianists blessed with exotic names such as Witold Malcuzynski came later. Cyril Smith, Phyllis Sellick, Denis Matthews, Eileen Joyce, Moura Lympany(formerly Mary Johnson), Cyril Preedy, Nina Milkina etc, I remember and heard them all. Listening as a teenager on my portable Robertson's radio I tuned in to the early Monday morning piano recitals given in a drafty, often freezing studio (wartime economics); Iris Loveridge, Valerie Tryon, Cecelia Arieli These were a few of the names I noted and listened to in a state of teenage wonder. How amazing, too, to find Leslie Moorhouse mentioned. I recall being taken to a dusty Bradford school room to hear him in a recital which included Schumann;s 'Carnaval,' set dancing in all its kaleidoscopic magic.
Malcolm Binns played within this setting, and APR give us one wonder after another. He could hardly be more vivacious or relish more fully Beethoven early brio in his Second Concerto, where he is partnered by Malcolm Sargent. Then there is Liszt's Second Concerto and more importantly Prokofiev's Fourth Concerto This may be the least approachable of the five Piano Concertos, but given with Binn's eloquence and mastery its often dour poetry comes brilliantly alive.
In Lyapunov's First Concerto Binns shows a born feel for florid Russian romanticism, and never more so than in the 'Adagio' where he achieves a poetic empathy given to few pianists.
On the solo front, Anton Rubinstein's Six Etudes may tell you that if he was a pianist of legendary status, he was also a mediocre composer, though the ultra-virtuoso ' staccato' etude (no 2) is an exception. Its difficulties are enough to give the pianist St Vitus's Dance and it is thrown off with an aplomb that challenges Earl Wild's legendary recording. Then there is Alkan, and a performance of the finale from the Concerto for Solo Piano that Is wholly novel and arresting. Here, all high-octane virtuosity is replaced with restraint and lyricism, a radical difference from Ronald Smith's, Marc-Andre Hamelin's or Paul Wee's recordings. At the same time, it is difficult not to add that Alkan, who was a stickler for strict tempo, would have been started by Binn's freedom. He captures all of the dark poetry at the heart of 'Capriccio alla soldatesca and 'Le tambour bat aux champs,' sinister fantasies evoking the battle- field.
Again, Binns could hardly be more eloquent in his Medtner selection, making a case for a composer before he became better known. Whether in the expanding elaboration of the Sonatas or in the more cogently argued Fairy Tales it would be difficult to imagine playing of greater warmth and flexibility.
Which bring me to Binn's crowning achievement on record, the complete Chopin Etudes. Here, once more there is no desire to dazzle at Chopin's expense, but rather to find the poetry beneath the composer's forever demanding surface. What dignity, what sheerly musical quality in No 1(the so-called 'runaway chorale’) to take a key example. Invariably winning and gentle rather than blustering or assertive, his natural quality shines through, the polar opposite of, to take an ultimate example, Gyorgy Cziffra's celebrated/infamous recording alive with what a former colleague called 'massive pianistic gym cracks'.
Binns ends with the Trois Nouvelles etudes' where Chopin's former drama and elaboration is changed int a greater poetic reticence. The A flat Etude caused Liszt to catch his breath in wonder, a valediction of infinite and consoling beauty.
APR's lavish presentation includes seven photographs of the pianist, and no praise could be high enough for this invaluable reminder of a rare musical quality.
Bryce Morrison