Ivan Moravec is among the most serious pianists of our time. Sufficiently personal and intense to invite controversy, he has always been celebrated by a small but loyal following. And here, in these live performances, recorded in Dallas’s superb Meyerson Symphony Center in 1992-93 he once again prompts ample debate and discussion. In Brahms’s First Concerto, Moravec’s major offering, you may quibble over this or that detail, wondering why his first entry is so oddly unmemorable – even when he compensates with a quick if over-elaborate gesture for such initial plainness – or why the first movement’s colossal octave outburst is less grandly inflected than from other celebrated Brahmsians. Yet the Adagio is unforgettable in its sense of elegy – its evocation of the composer’s grief on hearing of Schumann’s attempted suicide – and the finale rises to find exultancy that must have sent the Dallas audience out into the night aware of a special sense of occasion.
The Schumann Concerto is less successful on all accounts and is freely expressive in a style that must have been trying for an orchestra and conductor never quite sure whether they are going to slip behind or forge ahead of their mercurial soloist. Alternately excessive and perfunctory, Moravec’s principle theme is hardly espressivo, his octaves at 6'38'' are rhythmically slack and the return to the Intermezzo’s opening theme, after its central dream, is oddly disengaged. The finale, too, is hard-pressed, missing its combination of grace and strength and, overall, one is left wondering whether such a reading, whatever its initial fascination, will survive repeated hearings. The recordings are too recessed and the orchestral partnership is less than distinguished. Uneven if intriguing, Moravec’s Schumann, in particular, suggests an overworked interpretation, one that fails to resolve experiment and self-consciousness into a more satisfactory stream of spontaneous music-making.'