Chopin: Cello Sonata in G Minor, op. 65; Polonaise brillante, op. 3. Franck: Violin Sonata in A Major (arr. cello). Debussy: Cello Sonata in D Minor
Mischa Maisky, cello; Martha Argerich, piano.
Deutsche Grammophon 471 346–2. Recorded live, November 2000, Kyoto. Compact disc, 79:48.
The disc opens with twenty-one seconds of applause. Separately tracked. Think about that for a moment—someone in the control room decided this warranted its own index point, as though we needed a sonic amuse-bouche before the real meal. It’s the first clue that something has gone badly wrong here.
I’ve spent four decades listening to Argerich, admiring her mercurial intelligence even when it leads her astray. And Maisky, for all his limitations, has made some respectable recordings. But this Kyoto concert from November 2000 represents collaborative music-making at its most self-indulgent, a master class in how two strong personalities can demolish three great works through sheer willfulness.
The Chopin G Minor Sonata—that austere, autumnal work from 1846–47, one of the composer’s last major statements—requires above all else a sense of architecture. Chopin was dying when he wrote it, and you hear in its pages a kind of hard-won classicism, emotions held in check by formal rigor. What Maisky and Argerich give us instead is chaos masquerading as spontaneity. The opening "Allegro" moderato lurches from phrase to phrase like a drunk navigating cobblestones. Tempo fluctuations that might pass for rubato in a nocturne here simply destroy the movement’s structural integrity. At 13:20, Maisky attempts some sort of heightened expressivity—a swelling of tone, a slight portamento—but it sounds calculated, the musical equivalent of crocodile tears.
His sound itself troubles me. There’s a generic quality to it, an all-purpose melancholy that he applies indiscriminately. The "Largo" should sing with that peculiar mixture of resignation and tenderness Chopin achieved in his late works. Instead it congeals. That’s the word. The music doesn’t flow; it thickens into something glutinous and self-regarding.
The Franck presents different problems, though the results are equally dispiriting. Yes, the Sonata was written for violin—for Ysaÿe, in 1886—and yes, cellists have every right to play it. But the transcription demands certain adjustments, an understanding that what works in the violin’s upper register requires rethinking an octave lower. Maisky seems oblivious to these niceties.
The opening movement, already rhapsodic in conception, becomes positively molten under his hands. Too slow by half, and not in that luxurious way that can sometimes reveal hidden depths. No, this is just slack. Argerich begins the "Allegro" with accents so heavy-handed they border on parodic—she’s attacking the keys rather than playing them. By 7:40, they’ve accelerated to a tempo so fast that all clarity of articulation vanishes. You can hear Argerich’s fingers scrambling to keep up with her own momentum. The Allegretto suffers from abysmal balance—the cello dominates to such an extent that you lose the essential dialogue between the instruments. And the movement’s ending? Approximate, to put it kindly. They’re in the same neighborhood of the final cadence but haven’t quite arrived at the same address.
I’ve saved the Debussy for last because it pains me most. The Sonata in D Minor, from 1915, represents Debussy’s late manner at its most concentrated—spare, epigrammatic, shot through with that peculiar mixture of irony and tenderness that marks his final works. It requires flexibility, certainly, but flexibility within a firmly maintained structural frame.
Maisky’s handling of the pizzicato passage in the second movement constitutes a kind of musical vandalism. He bends the strings outrageously, abandons any pretense of maintaining the bar lines, turns what should be witty and precise into something bloated and self-conscious. I reached for my old release by Maurice Maréchal and Robert Casadesus, from 1930. Yes, they’re more than two minutes faster—under ten minutes total—but that’s not really the point. What matters is that tempo relationships are properly maintained, that phrasing remains flexible but controlled, that expressive pointing serves the music rather than the performers’ egos.
The comparison proves devastating. Maréchal and Casadesus understand that Debussy’s late style, for all its apparent freedom, rests on classical foundations. They honor both the letter and the spirit. Maisky and Argerich honor neither.
Deutsche Grammophon has packaged this disaster with a booklet note written by Maisky’s wife. I’m not making this up. It reads like the kind of puff piece you’d find in an airline magazine—lots of talk about the artists’ “unique chemistry” and “spontaneous musical communication.” Not a word about, say, the implications of performing the Franck on cello rather than violin. Nothing about the historical context of these works, or what makes them notable. Just celebrity worship masquerading as program notes.
The sad thing is that both these artists possess formidable artistry and, on their better days, genuine musical insight. Argerich’s 1965 Chopin Competition performances remain thrilling. Maisky’s Bach Suites, for all their idiosyncrasies, show moments of real understanding. But this collaboration brings out the worst in both: Argerich’s tendency toward overaccenting, Maisky’s addiction to arbitrary tempo shifts and generic expressivity.
Live recordings always involve compromises, and I’m generally forgiving of the occasional slip or moment of roughness. What I cannot forgive is the systematic destruction of three masterworks through narcissistic self-indulgence. This disc represents everything wrong with the cult of personality in classical music—the elevation of “temperament” over structure, of spontaneity over preparation, of ego over art.
Save your money. Or better yet, spend it on that Maréchal-Casadesus Debussy, if you can find it. Now there was music-making.
