Lazar Berman - The 1988 Tokio recital (2008) [DVD9 NTSC]


#   Lazar Berman
# Format: AC-3,  Color, Dolby,  Widescreen, NTSC
# Language: English
# Aspect Ratio: 1.77:1
# Number of discs: 1
# Studio: Dynamic Italy
# DVD Release Date: October 28, 2008
# Run Time: 100 minutes


.: Tracklist :


Lazar Berman, a Russian pianist with a huge, thunderous technique that made him a thrilling interpreter of Liszt and Rachmaninoff and a representative of the grand school of Russian Romantic pianism, died on Sunday at his home in Florence, Italy. He was 74.

The cause was a heart attack, said Leonid Fleishaker, a friend and manager of Mr. Berman.

A pianist with a bearlike build, a shock of sandy hair and a disarming smile, Mr. Berman had a gentle manner that seemed at odds with his often-muscular approach to the piano. His repertory, though, was broader than his reputation would gest. It ran from Bach and Handel, through Mozart, Clementi and Beethoven, to Scriabin and Shostakovich. Although Mr. Berman was best known for the grandeur of his Liszt, Chopin, Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff playing, he played Mozart and early Beethoven, for example, with a light touch that could surprise listeners who had typecast him as a firebrand.

He also proved a supportive and deferential chamber music collaborator in recitals with his son, the violinist Pavel Berman, in the early 1990's. His son survives him, as does his wife, Valentina Berman, who is also a pianist.

Lazar Naumovich Berman was born in Leningrad on Feb. 26, 1930. His mother, Anna Makhover, began teaching him to play the piano when he was 2. After a year, he became a student at the Leningrad Conservatory, and when the family moved to Moscow in 1939, he enrolled at the Central Children's Music School, where he studied with Alexander Goldenweiser, a renowned Russian pianist who remained Mr. Berman's teacher at the Moscow Conservatory in the 1940's and 1950's.

Mr. Berman made his professional debut at age 10, playing a Mozart concerto with the Moscow Philharmonic. By the mid-1950's, he had won several competitions in the Soviet Union, as well as prizes at the Queen Elisabeth Competition and at the Franz Liszt competition. A European tour and a legendary recording of Liszt's "Transcendental …tudes" for the Melodiya label, in 1959, helped solidify his reputation as a virtuoso player. So did a glowing report from Emil Gilels, one of the greatest Russian pianists of the time, who called Mr. Berman "the phenomenon of the music world."

When Harold C. Schonberg, then the chief music critic of The New York Times, heard Mr. Berman in Moscow in 1961, he wrote that the pianist had 20 fingers and breathed fire.

Soviet authorities, however, prevented Mr. Berman from traveling to the United States until 1976, when he was 45. When he made his New York debut, playing the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 with Lukas Foss and the Brooklyn Philharmonic, Schonberg wrote that "he may be that rarest of musicians - a real, true blue Romantic, one who understands the conventions and has the ability to put them into effect."

Still, Mr. Berman left the piano world deeply divided. Just as he was idolized by fans of titanic Romanticism, other listeners faulted him for perceived deficits in subtlety or stylistic variety. At any rate, his American career was short-lived. After a flurry of performances between 1976 and 1979, he was again prevented from touring by the Soviet authorities after American books were discovered in his luggage.

By the time he could travel again in 1990, Mr. Berman had largely tired of the concert stage, preferring to devote himself to teaching and to judging competitions, with occasional performances on his own or with his son. He moved to Florence in August 1990 and was granted Italian citizenship in 1994.


Works Summary

Lazar Berman: piano
Bunka Kaikan, Tokyo, 1988

Schumann, Robert : Sonata for Piano no 1 in F sharp minor, Op. 11
Liszt, Franz : Annees de pelerinage, deuxieme annee, S 161 "Italie"
Liszt, Franz : Sposalizio
Schubert, Franz : Ave Maria - F. Schubert
Wagner, Richard : Tristan und Isolde
Rachmaninov, Sergei : Moments musicaux (6), Op. 16
Performer

   * Lazar Berman (Piano)

Composers

   * Franz Schubert (1797 - 1828)
   * Richard Wagner (1813 - 1883)
   * Robert Schumann (1810 - 1856)
   * Sergei Rachmaninov (1873 - 1943)
   * Franz Liszt (1811 - 1886)


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