Barbara Nissman
" ...one of the last pianists in the grand romantic tradition of Liszt, Rachmaninoff, and Rubinstein "
COMING SOON!
RECITAL FAVORITES
VOLUMES IX & X.
RECITAL FAVORITES by NISSMAN VOLUME VIII
Pierian 0046
Barbara Nissman has completed the eighth disc in her series of Recital Favorites. These discs have not been compressed; Nissman is available in all her glory (0046). Her program is Prokofiev's First Sonata, a lovely piece, Schumann's First Sonata, Op. 11, a welter of notes she plays expertly and Chopin's Fourth Ballade played with great technique and feeling. Lee's Visage is a very effective, sad piece; Albeniz's Navarra, is full of emotion. Ginastera's First Sonata (Nissman is a Ginastera expert) sparkles brilliantly. The concluding selection is Gershwin's Prelude No. 2 in which she has an unbelievable lilt. In all an impressive recital.
pturok.webs.com 12/2011
RECITAL FAVORITES by NISSMAN VOLUME VII
Pierian 0044
Barbara Nissman’s seventh volume of Recital Favorites, includes Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations and lesser works of other composers (0044). She plays Beethoven's masterpiece with humor and great skill. (Nissman is a great pianist who has the equipment to play anything she chooses.) The other works are Bartok’s Two Roumanian Dances, Liszt’s “Ricordanza”, Prokofiev’s Prelude, Op.12, No.7 and the Marche from the “Love of Three Oranges.”
pturok.webs.com 11/13/2011
RECITAL FAVORITES by NISSMAN VOLUME VI
Pierian 0043
Click here to read a review from classical.net
Barbara Nissman, after a long and distinguished concert career, is recording her recital favorites. Volume 6 offers works by Chopin (Ballade No.1), Ravel (Gaspard de la Nuit), Buxtehude (Organ Prelude, arr. Prokofiev), Prokofiev (Old Grandmother’s Tales, Op.31), Scriabin (Sonata No.5), Mendelssohn (Etude, Op.104, No.2), Schumann (Piano Sonata No.2, Op.22) and Rachmaninov (Prelude, Op.23, No.10) (0043). No compression was used in making this recording; consequently it sounds completely natural. There are two great performances on this cd, the Chopin and the Schumann. Nissman phrases the Chopin (a most familiar piece) very intelligently, making something more of it than in most performances. In the first movement of the Schumann, she gets through the welter of notes to clarify the structure. The rest of the sonata is beautifully played.
Turok's Choice June 2011
CD Front & Back - Click to enlarge.
Listen to highlighted samples.
RECITAL FAVORITES by NISSMAN VOLUME V
Pierian 0041
Click here to read review from musicalpointers.co.uk
Volume 5 of Barbara Nissman’s “Recital Favorites” contains Chopin’s Andante Spianato & Grande Polonaise Brilliant, Prokofiev’s Sixth Sonata, Liszt’s Three Concert Etudes (Il lamento, La leggierezza, Un Sospiro) and Liebestraum No. 3, Bartok’s Allegro Barbaro and Benjamin Lees' Odyssey No. 1 (0041). Her playing is crisp, technically superb and suffused with feeling. The “classical” pieces (Chopin, Liszt) are virtuosically played. Nissman recorded her fine set of the complete Prokofiev Piano Sonatas in 1989 (Sony, reissued on Pierian). Although she takes only two seconds longer on the Sixth in the 2010 performance, it is much more expansive and playful. The Bartok is short and very effective. Lees' dry piece has its moments, but is hardly in a class with the Prokofiev and Bartok musically. Fine piano sound.
Turok's Choice December, 2010
RECITAL FAVOURITES by NISSMAN VOLUME 5.
Go direct to the opening bar of Prokofiev’s wartime Sonata No 6, specifically beat two of its 4/4 metre. That bass D sharp clashing against the treble E has the sting of a wasp. In fact Prokofiev bombards your ear with a swarm of them. Barbara Nissman’s playing of this movement is certainly not pretty. It is plain brutal, exactly what Russia was like in 1940 when Prokofiev wrote it. There is a gut honesty about Nissman’s intensely dramatic playing. In the finale the wasps start creeping back to give you their final death sting in the last five bars. Ives once said, "Beauty in music is often conceived as something that lets the ears lie back in an easy chair." When need be, Prokofiev’s armchairs are a bed of thorns. Elsewhere in this presto toccata movement Nissman chooses to underpedal which makes her rapid fingerwork all the more crisp in clarity. In the inner movements Prokofiev gives our ears a rest from invasion. The nostalgia in the slow movement is rich in counter- melody which Nissman’s awareness of inner detail articulates very expressively. The second movement is Prokofiev’s humour at its most droll. The sections starting at pages 2 and 3 with melody in thick staccato chords pianissimo against a contrary motion in arpeggio quintuplets is wonderfully dry humour and Nissman’s neatness with detail never lets you forget that. This, Prokofiev’s longest piano sonata receives an immensely fulfilling performance from the lively Nissman who always was, and still is, one of the world’s top Prokofiev pianists. The Chopin shows up her natural rubato, clarity with thick texture in the polonaise and rippling virtuosity in the effusively decorated melodic lines, all enhanced by her forthright dramatic honesty. Allegro Barbaro is exactly what it implies, a reaction against the piano as warm singing tone as per romantic era towards a dry percussive sound where expressions such as secco and martellato (dry and hammered) adorn Bartok’s piano scores. Nissman gets this style perfectly. She espouses American composer Benjamin Lees’ work, written in 1970 for pianist John Ogden. His bleak landscape and pessimistic view of humans expressed through volatile contrasts from violence to serenity are tightly contained within a plausible thematic unity shown up well by Nissman. Of the remainder –four Liszt works, the first two in the Three Etudes are long- winded for their slender ideas. In the two more popular ones: –Un sospiro and Liebestraum No 3, the tasteful Nissman steers a fine line between sentiment and sentimentality. For the term “Recital Favourites” this is a very meaty selection rather because I feel Nissman chooses works that are her favourites rather than pander to audiences by overloading them with warhorses. The stand-out for me is her brilliantly thought-out interpretation of the Prokofiev Sonata which shows such passion and humaneness in her playing.
Ian Dando New Zealand Listener 12/10
RECITAL FAVORITES by NISSMAN VOLUME IV
Pierian 0038
One of the most curious disclaimers I've read lately occurs on both the tray liner and booklet of Barbara Nissman's Recital Favorites IV: Please note: No compression has been used in this recording. Therefore, to capture the full frequency range one must listen at a higher than normal dynamic level. Really? You couldn't tell it by me. At my customary listening level, this recording comes right out and occupies all the available listening space, such are the remarkable presence, spatial depth and ambience of the sonics and the marvelous performances by Ms. Nissman. The same might be said of all the releases in this artist's Recital Favorites series on Pierian. This concept is at the farthest remove from the notion of wallpaper: I challenge the serious listener to try and do anything else but attend when he has this generous helping of Barbara Nissman on his sound system. The program features the Concerto in the Italian Style by J.S. Bach, Sonatine by Ravel, the great Sonata in B Minor by Franz Liszt, four pieces by Alexander Scriabin, and Mily Balikirev's formidable fantasie orientale Islamey. It's a daunting program for the hardiest of pianists, but Nissman is up to the task. Her Bach is a joy to listen to, with its sprightly rhythms and stunning dynamic contrasts in the outer movement and its serene melody over a slow-moving, measured bass in the central Andante. The Sonatine has never been a Ravel favorite of mine until just now, no thanks to the vapid accounts I'd heard of it previously. That's no problem for Nissman, who invests her Ravel with a welcome plasticity and depth of compass, without neglecting any of its intimacy or its finely delineated features. The Liszt Sonata has long been a favorite of Nissman's. I like the present performance marginally better than her 2002 recording that was released previously in an all-Liszt recital (Pierian 0015). The tension between control and romantic abandon is superb here, as is the unhurried pacing within a taught framework in which even the smallest element has a vital role to play. We learn more about this incredible work from repeated auditions of a performance such as this, since great musical ideas grow out of the most seemingly insignificant acorns. The Scriabin pieces include three Etudes: the youthful, melancholy Op. 2, No. 1 in c-sharp minor, the mercurial, virtuosic Op. 8, No. 10 in D-flat major, and the dazzling and rhapsodic Op. 42, No. 5 in c-sharp minor. The Nocturne, Op. 9, No. 2 for the left hand alone leaves an indelible impression in this performance as it weaves its Chopinesque magic. That leaves Islamey, that beguiling fantasia of seemingly endless harmonic richness based on the contrast of tumbling, whirling dervish rhythms and the heart-stopping beauty of its gorgeous central melody. Balakirev's 8-minute pianistic minefield has long been regarded as one of the pianist's supreme challenges (Scriabin ruined his right hand by obsessively practicing it), but the explanations usually given do not often include the obvious fact that the executant is constantly required to shift hand positions, and then fire successive, overlapping salvoes in the build-up to the grand smashing finale. As with all minefields, there is more than one way to get through safely; Nissman eschews the easier alternatives to the most difficult passages that have been printed in many editions and goes right to the heart of the matter. It is a rare instance in which surmounting the greatest technical challenges results in a supreme payback for both performer and listener.
Audio Video Club of Atlanta, June 2010
Again this is the programme of a true bravura pianist as per the Liszt, Scriabin and Balikirev. Also it shows how she centres it on one great masterpiece (the Liszt) surrounded by very interesting foothills. Indeed, this is her third crack at the Liszt which indicates that she has a new interpretative concept not present in the other two. Her answer to my question confirms that. "I tried to capture in this recording the spiritual dimension of the work and the man. I believe this work represents Liszt's spiritual journey between life and the hereafter and hopefully that comes through in this recording. This is a work that keeps changing as I keep developing." Schönberg once said in quoting Stefan George for his first official venture into atonal writing in 1907 with his second string quartet, "I feel air from another planet." That is exactly the feeling I got when hearing this new version of the Liszt. Nissman has arrived at that exalted state- a true transcendental performance. Rather than being a body with a soul I am a soul with a body, we all think, when we reach that stage of spiritual awareness in our lives, Nissman included, as one cannot inject into a performance something one hasn't got. In her journey to the spiritual, technique, intellectual structure and dramatic structure have all been transcended. But this in itself has influenced the other three levels. For instance Nissman's intuitive rubatos and tempo judgment of each section have that feeling of rightness. This opens the door to clear paragraphing and therefore a deeper insight into its structure. This version articulates the work's remarkable thematic transformation more lucidly and its broad structure of a cleverly disguised work of three movements. A former well known pianist/composer who also had the Liszt in his repertoire once told me, "It's a wonder composers didn't give up writing piano sonatas after the Liszt." Nissman's deep insights reinforce that. This is her most profound version yet. The foothills? Nissman's elegant dynamic shading on the soft side gives us an intimately scaled back Ravel Sonatina just as it should be. Once you transfer Bach's popular Concerto in the Italian Style to piano, you lose the rationale as to why Bach titled it as a concerto. His terraced dynamics clearly audible on a two manual harpsichord give it that clear solo/tutti baroque concerto feel. Piano often smudges that difference by bringing on the later development of continuum dynamics of crescendo. However Nissman's crisp fingerwork and assertive playing made it a fine piano rendition. The swine among the Scriabin études is the D flat one. As if right hand thirds at this speed are not enough, he makes the pianist really sweat when he brings in the left hand in syncopated accents later on. Nissman's bravura gave it a smooth ride, as did her Balikirev with the right hand rondo idea in perpetual double notes, mostly thirds and octaves. Its fearsome virtuosity is still a reality, but it has become something of a dated bravura warhorse. However Nissman's refreshing playing and clarity gave the old nag a new set of clothes. Directness and freshness are Nissman's two predominant qualities in making these foothills such flavoursome hors d'oevres to her unforgettable Liszt sonata a landmark.
Ian Dando, New Z e aland Listener 1/10
RECITAL FAVORITES by NISSMAN VOLUME III
Pierian 0037
Click here to read reviews from musicalpointers.co.uk
Barbara Nissman has chosen difficult programs for her latest discs on this label (Pierian): Bach's Prelude & Fugue in A minor (BWV 543) transcribed for piano (from the original organ) by Liszt, Beethoven's Hammerklavier Sonata, Op. 106, three Liszt Transcendental Etudes (Harmonies du Soir, Feux follets, Chasse-neige), his Consolation No. 3 and Prokofiev's Suggestion Diabolique (0037), Bach's Italian Concerto, Ravel's Sonatine, three etudes by Scriabin and Balikirev's Islamey (0038). The greatest challenges are the Beethoven and Liszt sonatas, both musically and in terms of recorded competition. She plays both with a striking combination of urgency and repose. There is something very personal in her interpretations, which manifests itself strongly in the great slow movement of the Beethoven and in the phrasing of the Liszt Sonata, especially in the slower, more pensive passages. The familiar Italian Concerto is played with considerable feeling, unusual for this piece. Islamey is given an amazingly clear performance, with every note in the complex textures heard to maximum effect. Nissman is engaged in an impressive series that will cover her favorite pieces in the entire piano repertory (earlier volumes were reviewed in Issue 208, Pierian); the first four discs have been brilliant, technically and musically. Lifelike sound and totally satisfying discs.
Turok's Choice May, 2010
RECITAL FAVORITES by NISSMAN VOLUME II
Pierian 0036
Click here for a review from classical.net
A note printed on both the booklet and the back of the inlay panel for Recital Favorites II by Barbara Nissman cautions the listener that "No compression has been used in this recording. Therefore, to capture the full frequency range one must listen at a higher than normal dynamic level." That caveat was completely unnecessary. Auditing this CD at my customary level, I found my listening area filled with an abundance of gorgeous sound. Nissman's full tone, her keen sensitivity to rhythm, and her penchant for using the full compass of the keyboard speak for themselves. She doesn't know any other way to make music (thank goodness). And the program she has chosen is calculated to explore every resource of a grand piano, even the Steinway D she plays here. It begins with Ferruccio Busoni's superb transcription of J. S. Bach's organ Toccata, Adagio & Fugue in C, BWV 564, a work that partakes of both the Baroque and the Romantic eras and does credit to both. Here, a lyrical cantilena over a constantly moving pedal accompaniment is the centerpiece, flanked by the energetic Toccata and the brilliantly animated Fugue. Cesar Franck's Prelude, Chorale & Fugue, combining rich chromatic harmonies and a spiritually transcendent mood, provides the other bookend for the first part of the recital. In between, as Nissman describes it, a "sorbet" between two main courses, is Samuel Barber's slender, lovely Nocturne, Op. 33, delicately colored by the composer's distinctive sense of harmony. Beethoven's great Sonata No. 21 in C, Op. 53, the "Waldstein," follows, and Nissman makes much in the opening Allegro con brio of its driving motor rhythms, the chorale as a strongly contrasted second subject, and the brilliant coda. And she revels in the moment when the quiet, pensive Andante leads without a break into the bravura finale, a Rondo marked Allegretto moderato, which she takes in moderate time as indicated, so as to take it big in the final section, a whirlwind that ends the work in a blaze of glory. And that's not all. The last pieces in the program, Granados' "Maiden and the Nightingale" from Goyescas, two beautifully contrasted dances, one sad and sentimental, the other as energetic as they come, from Ginastera's Danzas Argentinas, and Debussy's enduring Clair de Lune, finish the program in a poetic and evocative vein. Solid 24bit recorded sound by producer/recording engineer Bill Purse does an optimal job of capturing a whale of a recital.
Audio-Video Club of Atlanta 11/09
BARBARA NISSMAN RECITAL FAVOURITES
Volume 2. Pierian 0036.
Like its Volume 1 predecessor, there are few if any warhorses amongst this enterprising 75-minute compilation. Granados' The Maiden and the Nightingale and Debussy's Clair de Lune are, but Nissman's freshness prevents them becoming chestnuts. Her two of the three Ginastera Danzas Argentinas are welcome as she worked with this Argentine composer while recording his complete piano works, She evokes his personality and the ethos of Argentina so well.The sinuous zamba sway in Dance of the gracious maiden on track 10 pulls the heartstrings of those of us who have seen a lot of Argentina and how it expresses the essence of being Argentinian. In the other short work, Samuel Barber's elegantly underwritten dissonant piquancy in his Nocturne Op. 33, serves as a sorbet between the two richly written works by Busoni and Franck just in case his greasy and overwritten chromaticism at the end of the fugal movement in his Prelude, Chorale and Fugue causes you to throw up. How Nissman avoids slipping over in the mud negotiating Franck's dense jungle of effusive chromaticism beats me, especially that clumsy shotgun wedding where he tries to marry the lovely chorale as countersubject to the fugue. My love-hate relationship with this work has enough love to make me glad Nissman included it, especially the Chorale with that wonderfully written thrice repeated melody in spaciously spread out arpeggios, quite the most moving and dignified Franck I have ever heard. That and the first half of the fugue are the essence of the best Franck. Nissman's structural sense in everything she plays gives firm poetic shape to the wayward sections of the Franck. I admire her honesty with the Bach/Busoni Prelude, Adagio and Fugue in C in relating to this as a metamorphosis of Bach in romantic era terms, especially the way she brings out Busoni's large range of piano tone colours in each fugal entry. Don Juan Fantasy is no longer Mozart. It is Liszt. The same with the Busoni. That's exactly the way Nissman sees it. The outer movements of Nissman's other major work, Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata, I find a bit too fast and headlong. The finale's elegantly poised opening theme is a beautiful woman emerging from a mist in dignified leisure of a moderato rather than allegro to my ears. However Nissman disagrees strongly and feels her tempi are totally true to her interpretative concept. In her favour I must say neither clarity of detail nor mood suffer. So the best advice is try these tracks and if you are happy with her tempi, buy, as it is in general, fine repertoire, fine playing and vividly realistic sound engineering free of dynamic compression, that bête noire of modern CD sound.
Ian Dando, New Zealand Listener January, 2009
RECITAL FAVORITES by NISSMAN VOLUME I
Pierian 0035
Recital Favourites Vol. 1, Vol. 2
Listening to these recitals (with more promised later in the year) is to be reminded of what is now generally held to be a bygone era. With so many young musicians focusing on the notes rather than what actually lies behind them, Barbara Nissman gives an object lesson in musical semantics. Time and time again she finds a way of subtly articulating important musical events in a way that illuminates the music that surrounds them. Even in such familiar territory as Beethoven's Pathétique Sonata, I found myself listening with renewed concentration. So often one hears the rapid scale descents of the introduction dispatched as though they were exercises in machinegun accuracy, whereas Nissman insinuates them into the textures with a glissandolike, will-o-the-wisp, sleight of hand nonchalance that grips the imagination. One can hear a similar effect in the tricky upward arpeggiations that litter the opening of Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy, where Nissman focuses on the music's thematic and harmonic exhilaration (and its essentially cantabile character) by integrating the flourishes naturally into the onward flow. Her Prokofiev (four Visions fugitives and the Third Sonata) lacks nothing in power and forward momentum, yet even when the composer is at his most vehement, Nissman exhilarates beguilingly in the music's motoric energy rather than merely thrashing it into submission. She also demonstrates an unusual flair for the Hispanic muse in Granados's Quejas o la Maya (from Goyescas) and Argentinean Alberto Ginastera's Danza de la mosa donosa and Danza del gaucho matrero. Yet perhaps the most revelatory playing of all is reserved for Franck's Prelude, chorale et fugue, a work that in the wrong hands can seem interminable. The inner glow that is a feature of all of Nissman's playing warms Franck's neogothic textures to create a magical world of affectionate splendor.
International Piano March-April 2009
On two discs offering her favorite recital pieces, Barbara Nissman plays superbly (Pierian:Vol.I,0035, Vol.II,0036). The repertory consists of large works as well as encores: two Beethoven sonatas (Op. 13-Vol.I, Op. 53-Vol.II), Schubert's Wanderer Fantasy,(Vol.I), Liszt's Mephisto Waltz No. 1(Vol.I), Bach's Toccata, Adagio and Fugue arranged by Busoni and Franck's Prelude, Chorale and Fugue (Vol.II). With the exception of Debussy's Clair de Lune and Chopin's D-flat Nocturne, the encore-type pieces, rather off the beaten path, are by Prokofiev, Barber, Ginastera and Granados. Nissman plays with technical assurance but also with distinct personalization of the various pieces.
Turok's Choice March 2009
BARBARA NISSMAN Recital Favourites Volume 1
If favourites conjure up a CD full of warhorses, they are almost conspicuous by their absence here. Beethoven's Sonate Pathétique could almost be one but not the way Nissman refreshes it. Her fast finale ripples spontaneously. The heavy tread of the introduction gives way to a menacing first movement full of urgency and forward momentum. Nearly all the rest are anything but chestnuts. The rarely heard Prokofiev Visions Fugitives Op. 22 serve as poetic hors d'oevres to the even rarer Prokofiev Sonata No. 3. Nissman dispatches its athletic vitality with exhilarating energy. Her Lisztian bravura playing is still as grand manner as ever in her Mephisto Waltz No. 1 where she shows up its modernism of quartal harmonies in the driving opening and the Scriabinesque harmonies in the poetic middle section. It is refreshing too to hear the neglected Liszt transcription of Isolde's Liebestod from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. Nissman shapes Wagner's mouth-watering rhetoric leading to its immense climax of undisguised orgasm with such inexorability. Her Chopin Nocturne in D flat Op. 27 No. 2 has refined rubato playing and gracefulness with the decorative writing. To me Nissman's great performance on this CD is her Schubert Wanderer Fantasia. She once said that a pianist playing a work without analysing its structure is flying blind. No road map is needed to follow her performance. Her navigation skill guides you faultlessly through its non-stop four movements of opening march, adagio with variations (8.40) bravura waltz (12.0) and a thumping fugato (16.51) changing to a virtuosic return of the opening march. As music history's first cyclic work where a non-stop multi-movement work is thematically governed by variations of one motif (and culminating in Liszt's B minor Sonata- the Romantic era's great cyclic masterpiece), Nissman's unfailing insight shows how the Schubert opening Wanderer motif in the first few bars keeps reinventing itself. Structurally it is the most clearly articulated Wanderer performance I have heard yet and all propelled by Nissman's exciting involvement as though she loves every bar of it. As an added bonus this CD uses no compression of dynamics. Turn the sound up to concert hall level and aurally you are sitting on Nissman's own piano stool.
Ian Dando, New Zealand Listener
RACHMANINOFF by NISSMAN Volume 2: The Etudes
Complete Etudes-Tableaux Op. 33 and Op. 39 plus 3 transcriptions
Pierian Records (PIR 0031)
Click here to read Musicweb International Review
RACHMANINOV Vol. 1 (6 stars- highest rating)
Vol. 2 (6 stars-highest rating)
Pierian is a small, independent, non-profit US label specialising in historical recordings (they have Albéniz, Debussy, Ravel and Respighi on their roster of artists), in rare repertoire and in female musicians. The gem in their crown is the American pianist Barbara Nissman, who has already recorded Bartók, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Liszt, Prokofiev and Schumann for Pierian (a CD apiece); they have also re-released a double album of her performances of Ginastera- all outstanding releases in highly competitive markets. The first two releases in what I hope will be a complete Rachmaninov cycle outclass even these previous discs. What you have here is an ideal balance of brain and heart: Nissman has a powerful virtuoso technique and has plainly thought long and hard about the music. So she is constantly revealing details that you hadn't really noticed before: she makes these teeming textures buzz with life. At the same time there's such spontaneity in the playing that the music seems to leap straight off the page, supercharged with energy. A word of warning about the recorded sound: at first, the piano tone struck me as a little wooden. But then I noticed the warning on the back of the CD box: No compression has been used in this recording. Therefore, to capture the full frequency range one must listen at a higher than normal dynamic level. So I turned up the volume and what had seemed cramped turned into a fabulously natural piano sound almost as if the instrument was sitting next to me as I listened. In short, this is just about the best Rachmaninov playing I've come across in quite a while.
Klassisk (Norway) March 2008
This is Volume 2 of Nissman's Rachmaninoff project. I liked her Preludes last year. The recorded sound is exceptionally good, with notes about the recording equipment and software used. The packaging is also well above average, with Nissman's own perceptive booklet notes, and the opening part of Op. 39, #7 silk-screened on the CD itself. Technically secure, Nissman makes some unusual, even quirky musical choices. Her performances are never run-of-the-mill and almost always interesting and thought-provoking. I would not learn any of these without reviewing her interpretation. For instance the E-flat major Etude of Op. 33, one that I have performed, Nissman made me think that's exactly the way I wished I could have played it.
American Record Guide May/June 2008
Barbara Nissman continues her traversal of the romantic giants- Rachmaninoff literally, with enormous hands and superhuman stretches (Cyril Smith). Those hold no terrors for Nissman, who sounds completely comfortable and at home with this composer, as with the others in her ongoing Pierian series. There is no feeling that she is trying to impress with her virtuosity; she lives in the music of her chosen composers year by year, and conveys what Rachmaninoff himself hoped, that his music would express what is in his heart when composing, be it "love or bitterness; sadness or religion". The "encores" are well chosen, with Rachmaninoff's arrangements of Kreisler and Rimsky (the Bumble Bee is in stinging mode!) and the Vocalise sounding as mellifluous on piano in Earl Wild's transcription as from any wordless voice. I have found Barbara Nissman a good companion with whom to revisit her favourite composers. She confirmed my impression that her latest, recorded at a Pittsburgh University, sound s particularly felicitous, attributing that to her new producer, Bill Purse. As always with Pierian, there is no compression and high level listening is recommended.
www.musicalpointers.co.uk January, 2008
The eight Études-tableaux Op. 33 are a natural extension of the Preludes in Barbara Nissman's recently released Rachmaninoff Volume 1. Nissman's own written profile on them is precise. One mood usually predominates with one technical problem motivically exploited within a short time frame and moulded into a concise three-part form. They are shorter too- about 2 to 3 minutes. Nissman wastes no time etching the individuality of each with her wide range of colour especially in the mercurial changes of No 6, the humour in the marchlike No 1, and her wide range of simulated orchestral colours in the heavily scored funeral dirge of No 8. The nine Études-tableaux Op. 39 leave the prelude model behind and become tone-poems in their greater length, an average of about four minutes. Nissman's turbulent playing of No. 1 and No. 3 is a forceful reminder that Rachmaninoff's technical model has now shifted from Chopin to Liszt Études. They are more outgoing. Their extended range of colour and structure can be heard clearly in Nissman's fine range of colour and dramatic shaping of the lengthy seven-minute funeral ode of No 7. In the dense chords of No. 5, the tricky part playing in No. 4 and the No. 9 with chords flying up and down the keyboard, Nissman shows how articulate and clear she is in coping with thick complex textures, and this with a fairly modest female hand span compared with Rachmaninoff's huge hands - 8ve and a fifth left hand and 8ve and third right hand. She never smudges. At the end are three virtuosic transcriptions as fillers. Nissman's bravura technique eats them for breakfast. She has Pierian labels Karl Miller and Bill Purse to thank for recording all her work with uncompressed dynamics. For optimum benefit increase your volume. The Steinway's bass sounds amazingly rich. Instead of ear fatigue from tinny hollow sound you will enjoy Nissman's lively colours produced with honest and spacious sound as though hearing it from her piano stool.
Ian Dando, New Zealand Listener 1/08
RACHMANINOFF by NISSMAN Volume 1: The Preludes
Pierian Records (PIR 0028)
Barbara Nissman and Rachmaninov's Preludes constitute a good match. . . . the pianist's formidable projection, stamina and full-bodied sonority do full justice to the music's swirling display passages and quasi-orchestral textures. She proves strong in the ubiquitous C# minor, Op. 3 No. 2 where the intricate central episode builds to a radiant climax, as do the thick and rapid chords near the B-flat (Op. 23 No. 2) Prelude's conclusion. Nissman manages to imbue the composer's marcato demands in the third and fourth Op. 32 selections with impressive concentration and sustaining power. The same holds true for contrasting works such as the brooding B minor Prelude (Op. 32 No. 10) where the pianist imprints a welcome lilt to the Lento that too many pianists drag out....one must grant Nissman's ease and fluidity over the E flat minor Op. 23 No. 9 Prelude's treacherous double notes.
Gramophone November, 2007
Rachmaninov's complete Preludes are commandingly played by Barbara Nissman (Pierian 0028). With superb technique, Nissman expertly separates the ubiquitous figurations and filigrees from the essential musical matter they surround, giving her playing of these pieces an unusual sense of shape. The performances are feelingful, but the feeling seems to emerge from within the music rather than the sentimental heart-on-the-sleeve aspects so often emphasized. Luminous, ear-opening performances, in very natural sound.
Turok's Choice 10/07
Nissman has all of the technique, musical sensibilities and intelligence to do real justice to Rachmaninoff's music. Listen to the Prelude in G (Op. 32:5) to hear how she can float one of the most beautiful melodies. She does more with the less well-known Ab (Op. 23:8) than I am used to. The most difficult ones (B-flat, E minor, D-flat) are all handled with flair, but nicely balanced by sensitivity. She also seems more keenly aware than most of Rachmaninoff's quotations of the most famous C-sharp minor motive in the final D-flat major. I could nit-pick and find moments when her playing gets too notey, which is very easy in the dense writing of Rachmaninoff. The benefit is that you get to hear some things that may be new to your ears. I will listen to this many more times.
American Record Guide November, 2007
Nissman plays firm, persuasive Preludes
The latest release in Barbara Nissman's series of first-rate piano recitals for the non-profit Pierian Recording Society is this fine account of Rachmaninoff's Complete Preludes, recorded July 5-7, 2006 at Duquesne University. Here we have the complete Op. 23 and Op. 32 sets, plus the early (and universally acclaimed) Prelude in C# Minor. By all odds, this program should push the limit of an 80-minute compact disc. That it clocks in at 74:01 is a measure of the firm tempi Ms. Nissman selects and her no-nonsense approach to the music in general. That is particularly welcome in the much-abused C# Minor. Nissman gives it a persuasive performance that establishes its specific weight among the family of Preludes without making you feel a dreadful premonition that the world is about to end imminently. In Nissman's performance, one of my favorite Preludes from Op. 23 is No. 2 in B-flat Major with its flamboyant, fanfare-like opening and jubilant coda, with cascading double notes from the right hand and its mellow inner voices in the left in the middle section. Nobility plus tender intimacy. No. 5 in G Minor is warlike, martial, a Cossack parade as it sometimes been described, with the uneasy melancholy of its middle section for contrast. No. 6 in E-flat major conveys a mood of tranquility reminiscent of Chopin. The nocturnal No. 10 in G-flat Major makes much of the alternation of two notes, D-flat and G-flat, accompanied by soft chords in the right hand, becoming wider spaced near the end a miracle of utter simplicity and charm. In Op. 32 Nissman makes a fine impression with No. 3 in E Major, a processional with pomp and fireworks, clattering away in staccato passages down to the bottom of the keyboard at the end. No. 6 in F Minor is short, stormy and turbulent, while No. 7 in F Major is delicate, wistful with impassioned moments, rather like an impromptu. No. 10 in B Minor captures the joyous sound of Moscow bells, a fountain of notes sinking into darkness, a tribute in passing to Scriabin's Fifth Sonata. No. 12 in
G# Minor also evokes bells- tolling bells this time with a whirlpool of downward four-note figures, a fortissimo climax, and then final phrases scampering away into oblivion. Wonderful.
New Classik Reviews, Atlanta Audio Society,12/07
Playing of this standard lavished on these fine preludes will hopefully snuff that patronising put down that Rachmaninoff is a Sunday afternoon composer. Such critics also look down on that Prelude in C sharp minor as hackneyed. To me it's popular for the right reasons. It is a great prelude. Barbara Nissman's analytic remarks are very pertinent such as the three-note motive appearing near end of the 24th prelude to give unity to the set. Sharper still is her analysis that the final chords of that prelude are a retrograde of the chord progressions which open Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto. Her technique as a bravura pianist is still there in full measure. The thick Op. 32 No.3 in E has her carving through the thick and fast chordal masses with cutting clarity. Her chording always was very clean, full and rich. Listen to her quadruple fortes when the main theme returns in four stave format in the C sharp minor prelude. How well Pierian label's uncompressed sound makes these fat chords billow out so lustrously too. Nissman puts her bravura technique to work by encompassing even the most difficult of these preludes such as the one in double sixths, Op. 23 No. 9 with such a sweep of bravura playing. Her approach and quitting of climaxes is intensified by placing the flux of her rubatos right on the nerve of the climax of the phrase. This is Nissman's supreme strength. In her very poetic phrasing of the Chopin nocturne-type Op. 23 No. 4 in D, the rubato climax hits the nerve right on that upward thrusting key change at 2.78. In those endless melody ones which was Rachmaninoff's strength, Nissman has its rubatoed climax perfectly placed at 1.05. Her CD gets to the heart of the technical demands- expressivity through liberal rubato. This above all enables her to convey that essential Russian flavour of Rachmaninoff's style. This is deeply satisfying playing.
Ian Dando, New Zealand Listener, December '07
CD Front & Back - Click to enlarge
BRAHMS by NISSMAN
