"A magnificent interpreter of my music, one of the best pianists in the world."
                                                                     Alberto Ginastera

Summary for the Busy Executive: Stunning.
This set restores to the catalogue two important recordings (originally on Newport Classics). Pierian does heroic rescue work with taste and imagination.  All the performers are wonderful...The major heroine of the set, however, has to be Barbara Nissman, a powerful pianist and a musician of laser-like focus.  You know she has done all the head-work on the sonatas, but she comes over as a force of nature.  She not only gets the steel and rythm of the toccatas (and power without pounding), but above all she generates a wealth of color and an inexorable musical line, whether she is loud or soft.  She hasn't had the career she deserved, mainly, I believe, because she pigeonholed as a Modern "specialist" (her Prokofiev sonatas are tremendous as well).  Nevertheless, I think she can play anything.  I'd love to hear her Beethoven or her Chopin.  If she plays Brahms, I'd love to hear that.  She has the combination of ardor and intellect.  Strongly recommended.
                                                                                                    Classical.net 11/04
 

                                                                  
Ginastera: Piano & Chamber Works, Barbara Nissman, Pierian Records [2CD]

If one sees Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983) as primarily a composer full of nervous energy and brio, these performances are the ones to choose. The Nissman collection originated on two Newport CDs and is hereby released as a double. Nissman is a player of great energy. She does not lack a sense of lyricism, however, and the sound she produces is excellent…it is good to have these recordings back with us.
                                                                                        American Record Guide  Sept/Oct. 2001 

Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983)

All the piano and chamber works are on Pierian Records (2cds) in excellent performances by pianist Barbara Nissman, reissued from the decade-old Newport Classics 85510,85511. At the time of his death he had completed the first movement of a third piano sonata, written for Ms. Nissman. It is included in her set.
                                                                                              Turok's Choice, Summer 2001

Chosen one of the Best Recordings of 1989 by both     
Gramophone and American Record Guide

This is some of the most remarkable piano playing I have heard in many years.                                                                                 American Record Guide 

This disc shows off well her magnetic keyboard personality and electrifying, stunning technique: even in an age where high virtuosity is commonplace, Nissman’s playing here is extraordinary. 
                                                                                                               Gramophone 

PROKOFIEV by NISSMAN

Complete Piano Sonatas and Other Major Works

Pierian Records PIR0007/8/9 (3CD set)

Read the new interview on Prokofiev with Barbara HERE

Listen to selections from the CD set

Sonata #3, Op.28

Toccata, Op.11

Sonata #7, Op.83
Allegro inquieto
Andante caloroso
Precipitato

                      "Barbara Nissman is probably the reigning Prokofiev specialist of the day."
                                                                         The New York Post
 
The under-recorded pianist Barbara Nissman plays all nine sonatas (plus the incomplete fragment of the tenth) with a wide tonal range and sharply drawn contrasts that single her out as someone fully in command of the music's intricate detail. The energy and sense of occasion make this the best complete sonata cycle.
                                                 Jonathon Buckley, ed. "Classical Music on CD" (Penguin)

…these are strong, searching performances of marvelously varied and inventive sonatas. Nissman brings to these fascinating sonatas an all-too-rare combination of stunning technique and unmistakable thoughtfulness. A significant release and a must for anyone with an interest in Russian piano music, 20th century piano music, or just great piano playing.
                                                                                                American Record Guide

These recordings have been available before and are welcome back. A true virtuoso of 20th century music, Barbara Nissman serves all this music extremely well and is especially impressive in the cat-on-a-hot-tin roof hyperactivity much of it generates. The playing I enjoy most is in Sarcasms and Sonata No.7, but she has plenty of personal insights to communicate elsewhere, having evidently long pondered this music's differing impulses...Miss Nissman's playing is full of wit and bite, of dramatic shadings and crisp characterisations, not least in her splendidly relentless account of the Toccata (1912), a true conflagration between hands and keys....Sufficient to say that her interpretations of these larger works are replete with atmosphere and imagination, of astringency, brittleness, and extreme digital clarity. Melody has its claim too, yet much of this playing, like much of the music, has a sinister edge.
                                                                             Rachmaninoff Society Newsletter, July 2004

Barbara Nissman's admired recordings of the sonatas, together with the delectable Visions Fugitives and other pieces, have been re-issued by Pierian Recording Society as a boxed set for the 50th anniversary of the composer's death. They are released as Women in Music Volume Three - interesting that this should still be thought necessary in the 21st Century? Nissman has all the power required for Prokofiev, but she moderates the brutality in which some pianists revel and perhaps brings a certain femininity to relishing Prokofiev's lyricism, but free of sentimentalism. The sound quality as recorded in the RCA studio 1988 is ideal for home listening and Barbara Nissman's own extensive notes about the project are illuminating, as are her analyses of each of the nine-plus completed sonatas (two versions of No 5 and a fragment of the incomplete No 10) Unreservedly recommended; I loved them and they sent me back to the scores and to the keyboard to renew the sound and feelings under the fingers of the easier movements!
                                                                                                Musical Pointers 5/9/04 

Barbara Nissman’s cycle (Pierian:0007/8/9) is positively sensational, and might in many respects have been designed to vindicate Poulenc’s description of Prokofiev as “The Russian Liszt.” This is big, luscious, rhapsodic and often electrifying playing in the great Romantic tradition of Liszt, Rubinstein (both of them), Carreño, Horowitz and Argerich. The instrumentalism alone is quite stunning, and absolutely worthy of comparison with everyone in that list. Within seconds of Nissman’s volcanic opening of the First Sonata you half expect your equipment to go up in smoke. But it’s never instrumentalism alone. This is not only a truly great virtuoso but a deeply intelligent and thinking one. Her ability to unfurl long phrases with a panoramically epic reach is something most pianists would hardly be able to approximate, much less achieve. The lightly sprung rhythms, the propulsive and aerating articulation, the mastery of fluctuating tempos and the fantastic range of dynamic and rhythmic inflections proclaim her a Prokofiev interpreter to the manner born. A truly great recording.
                                                                                                                 PIANO   March/April 2003

Overview: Prokofiev Piano Sonatas
…recommends Barbara Nissman’s as the most consistently satisfying set: an all-too-rare combination of stunning technique and unmistakable thoughtfulness. Among other rarities she includes both versions of Sonata 5 (they are different enough to deserve the two separate opus numbers assigned to them) and all 43 seconds of the unfinished 10^th.
                                                                      American Record Guide March/April 2003

The virtues of Nissman’s Prokofiev, now available again, becomes more apparent with time. Her intellectually rigorous focus allows few interpretive eccentricities, and the technical command is formidable…the wilder the explosive force the more thankful one is for Nissman’s lucidity. There is one truly great performance of the Seventh Sonata; not even Pollini has a stronger grip on its unquiet spirit. The shorter pieces on the third disc emphasize a time when the young Prokofiev was merely playing at nastiness and morbidity; again Nissman pulls it all together.
                                                                                                                  BBC Music Magazine/ July, 2002

It once seemed unlikely that anyone would manage this horrifyingly demanding movement (finale of Seventh Sonata) as well as Pollini in his classic performance, but Barbara Nissman is if anything even stronger and more exhilarating. The Seventh as a whole is the finest thing in her complete cycle, now reissued by Pierian (0007-09) as part of its ‘Women in Music’ series. Her intellectual grip on the difficult structures lets us follow her into the labyrinth with confidence… her Eighth Sonata is a fascinating alternative to the somber introspection of Richter.
                                                                                                                  Three Oranges Journal/ November, 2002

Barbara Nissman’s beautifully-focused and intense performances of Prokofiev’s complete piano sonatas, along with several sets of shorter pieces (op. 17, 22) originally released on the Newport label, have been reissued… Nissman’s performances are still the most satisfying of the several “completes” TC has experienced (Bronfman, Chiu).
                                                                                                               Turok’s Choice 5/02

 

Prokofiev: Complete Piano Sonatas, Four Pieces Op 4, Toccata Op 11, Sarcasms Op 17, Visions Fugitives Op 22.  Pianist Barbara Nissman. Pierian 0007/8/9. Box set of 3 CDs with booklet. 

Before reviewing this set, I found out two things about Barbara Nissman. She is a recognised world expert on Prokofiev’s piano works. In 1989 she made history in being the first to perform the complete sonatas in a set of three recitals (New York and London) and to record them all on cd. What amazes me is, why did the sonatas have to wait so long for this honour? They are not obscurities. They are perfectly accessible masterpieces from the twentieth century’s most fecund melodist and one of its greatest piano writers.
     Nissman’s “first” originally recorded on Newport then transferred to Sony Classics, finally ends up safely archived on Pierian label which dedicates itself to “preservation of historic performances”.  Scrape the fungus off that designation and give them their true status “ahistoric”, as these are performances that transcend history and will never date.  Nissman’s spontaneity and exuberance ensure that. Nothing is stale or over-rehearsed. She plays them with a freshness and enthusiasm as though she had just discovered them yesterday. Hear her heady joie de vivre in the finale of No 4 and you’d swear she had swallowed a whole bottle of pep pills an hour beforehand.
     Her impassioned playing which always puts heart first, is nevertheless underpinned by a sharp intellect. Her perceptive booklet notes are a fascinating read. It shows the mind of a critical Prokofiev lover, not a blind sycophant. Read her provocatively honest comments on No 5 for instance. I totally agree with her view that Prokofiev was a fish out of water trying to cope with fashionable Stravinskyan neo-classicism in 1920s Paris when he wrote this work.
     Any fool can deduce similarities. It takes an expert to discern differences. Nissman never gives you peas out of the same pod. She enhances each sonata with its distinct individual personality exactly as in her written notes.  This is quite marked in her accounts of the three wartime sonatas (6, 7 and 8) which belong among the greatest of the twentieth century.  Her stinging performance of the abrasive opening movement of No 6 (possibly his finest sonata movement) is in sharp contrast to her warm and sinuously rubatoed account of the lyrically rich opening of No 8. Its length makes it the most problematic of all Prokofiev’s movements. Under lesser hands it collapses into wayward custard. Nissman’s structural insight into these sonatas enables her to give this discursive movement clear direction and shape. 
     Virtuosic pianism is a prerequisite for nearly all Prokofiev. Here Nissman’s heady exuberance easily gives the impression of living dangerously which adds to the frisson in such sections as the final pages of the famous toccata movement in No 7 where chords leap helter-skelter across the keyboard. In the horrendously difficult Toccata Op 11 and Suggestion diabolique from the Op 4 set, she seems to take risk to the wires but her safety net is always her bravura technique. Even today when bravura pianists are a dime a dozen, Nissman’s virtuosity stands out.
     Angularity, acrobatics, muscularity, jest and scherzo-ness comprise much of the fresh unpredictability in Prokofiev’s writing and this is where Nissman’s sparing use of pedal is her potent weapon in giving the required crispness for these moods. I bet she didn’t touch the damper pedal once in the allegro inquieto sections which dominate the opening movement of No 7.  For all the wide range of mood in Prokofiev, melodic richness is what Nissman clearly sees uppermost. Her poetic phrase shaping is everywhere apparent from the poignant beauty of those quietly spoken aphorisms in Visions Fugitives to those long spun melodies twisted in the middle of complex outer lines in the slow movements of Sonatas 4 and 8.
      This box set economically compresses all that’s important in Prokofiev’s solo piano music on three well-filled CDs with clean and vibrant sound quality to match. It should be a core of any pianist’s and piano lover’s CD collection. I note Pierian labels this “Women in Music Volume Three. When you get Prokofiev playing of this level, gender is irrelevant. Simply call it “Great Performances".     
                                       - Ian Dando, Music Critic, Christchurch Star, New Zealand Listener 1/6/02

Valuable Document

…a broad and valuable overview of an important part of Prokofiev’s works…she makes this document a musical feast.
                                                                                                        Algemeen Dagblad, The Netherlands
 

Nissman’s playing is full of energy and color, and she tends to focus on the music’s passion and virtuosity rather than its steeliness.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   Pulse!
 

More Comments About Pierian’s New Releases!

Barbara Nissman’s classic accounts of the complete Ginastera piano music and chamber music with piano (Pierian 0005/6-two CDs) and the complete Prokofiev sonatas with both versions of the Fifth Sonata, and the Four Pieces, Op.4, Toccata, Sarcasms, and Visions Fugitives thrown in for good measure (Pierian 0007/8/9- three CDs):
These are phenomenal performances, blazing with energy and powered by an extraordinary rhythmic tension— you’ll have to go a long way to hear either set of sonatas done with this exhilarating blend of sweep and pungent detail.
                                                                                                                                                                                                International Piano July/August 2002

 

LISZT by NISSMAN

Sonata in B Minor, Paganini Etudes, Rhapsodie Espagnole,Consolation#3
Pierian Records PIR0015
 
 

Nissman enjoys a great reputation in America, both as pianist and scholar. Born in Philadelphia, she is particularly renowned for her studies and performances of the great romantics- Liszt especially. Her performance of Liszt’s Sonata in B minor is sensitive and far removed from the barnstorming approach adopted by those lacking in her perception. She rightly treats the work as a study in psychology and philosophy She never overplays the second theme and treats its wide-ranging thematic activity as the discourse of a great mind expounding in terms of a marriage between music and literature. The lesser pieces are all played with superb clarity and sensitivity. Here is a Liszt player of superior gifts. Let us hear more of her. 
                                                                                                                                       Musical Opinion   June/2003

A Liszt disc by pianist Barbara Nissman shows her at the height of her interpretive powers. The massive Sonata receives a strong and supple reading, beautifully shaped and exceptionally sonorous, due to masterful use of the pedal. Above all, it is full of feeling, as is the Consolation No. 3. In the Rhapsodie Espagnole and Paganini Etudes she brings out the lyrical impulses underlying the composer’s elaborate treatment of very lovely melodies.Highly recommended.
                                                                                                                              Turok’s Choice  April, 2003

Everywhere within Nissman’s reading, there are individual nuances of rhythm, dynamics, and phrasing that make the familiar score astoundingly fresh. She knows and feels the music from the inside; it belongs to her. This, I realized is one of the truly great recordings of the Liszt Sonata.The rest of the Liszt CD turned out to be of similar quality. The Rhapsodie Espagnole dazzles (the fiery technique is breathtaking). The “Paganini Etudes” (which Nissman plays in their later revision, the Grandes Etudes de Paganini) are not only dazzling but -good  heavens!- wonderfully rich as music. And there is a heartbreakingly tender performance of the Consolation No. 3, Liszt’s intentional imitation of the Chopin D-flat Nocturne (and in the same key).
                                                                                                                            San Diego Reader 3/7/03

Nissman whose new Bartok book emphasizes ability to analyze structure as an essential priority for playing Bartok, would be the first to agree that a performer who ignores form and structure in a work is flying blind. Do that in the Liszt Sonata and you won’t even get off the runway. No chance of that with Nissman. The way Nissman uses differentiated touch to highlight Liszt’s thematic intricacy would indicate she has put every bar of the work under the microscope. This lady has brains. An enormous range of tone colours is put to the service of guiding the listener through Liszt’s web of thematic subtlety. Her fugato third movement shows this potently. How well she highlights its contrapuntal sinews.
     This Sonata an old friend of Nissman’s. If anything, this new take on it shows Nissman taking tempo contrast and rubato to extremes. Her andante second movement typifies this. I have heard lesser pianists try this with devastating results on the work’s continuity. The reason why it never falls to pieces under Nissman is that she knows precisely when to stretch tempo like India rubber or to have a melodic line heavily rubatoed. If anything, it helps Nissman penetrate its poetry and enter the work’s spiritual realm. The outer movements need bravura technique put to the service of dramatic power. No problem there. Bravura technique is a given with Nissman. The Sonata demands so much. It needs intellect, poetic intimacy, dramatic power, bravura, an immense range of keyboard colouring for its kaleidoscopic spectrum of moods and all these put to the service of entering its spiritual domain. In short, it’s a manysided work. Few pianists encompass all this within one rendition. Nissman is one of the few who does.
     In the other major work, the six Grandes Études de Paganini, Nissman delivers such clean and elegantly wrought performances that you almost forget the fiercely difficult technical demands these pieces pose. That’s transcendental technique in its most musical sense. That is borne out by how sharply she delineates melodic foreground from bravura background. In the taxing tremolo background of No 1, her finely contoured melody remains supreme. Again the melodic breadth in No 2 never gets lost in the rapid scalic background. Her no 3 La Campanella, is a gem of refinement and clear detail.
     Nissman’s improvisatory approach is exactly right for the free fantasy style of Rhapsody Espagnole. Again foreground and background are in perfect perspective. Even in the dense bravura near the end which almost sounds four –handed pianism, her sense of perspective retains perfect composure. Liszt’s Consolation No 3 is virtually a Chopin nocturne. Nissman nurses it with intimately contoured melodic line and fine pedalling.
     All up, this is such a deeply absorbing Liszt recital, I only wish Nissman could follow up with a second CD – maybe the Transcendental Studies coupled with Liszt’s deeply spiritual Bénédiction de Dieu dans la Solitude.
                                                                                                           Ian Dando, New Zealand Listener

BARTÓK by NISSMAN
First recording of 1898 Sonata; Rhapsody, Op. 1; Improvisations; Two Elegies; Four Dirges  Pierian Records PIR0016
 

Unpublished it may be, yet this Sonata of 1897 or 1898 is safe in NY’s Morgan Library and Barbara Nissman, besides devoting eight pages, including music examples to it in her book, Bartok and the Piano, has now recorded it for the first time. …in the four ambitious movements we are reminded of Schubert, Brahms, Wagner, and above all of Liszt; for the young man was already a most capable pianist. So is Barbara Nissman and her performance is quite persuasive enough to convince us that the man who wrote this 25-minute piece will soon have important things to tell us. Not that the Opus 1 Rhapsody of 1904 is the piece one would choose to prove it, for this is Bartok still very much in Liszt’s shadow. It is in effect a Hungarian Rhapsody with a strong emphasis on 19^th-century keyboard virtuosity and Nissman proves herself extremely capable in such playing. This CD’s main interest , however, lies in the rest of the music which is real Bartok. The  Two Elegies  of 1908-9 are indeed cries of agony; the first arising after Stefi Geyer terminated their relationship. In the second, the experience is more contained, yet the music is more original. The Four Dirges of 1909-10 are romantic and impressionistic at the same time but the Improvisations of 1920 are overwhelmingly the most important work on the CD, this being highly characteristic expression from a fully mature composer. Barbara Nissman’s playing is superlative, above all in its rhythmic acuity, and especially here. Indeed in the Elegies and Dirges, as well as the  Improvisations, she illustrates precisely the exhortations in her book’s numerous Suggestions for Performance.

                                                                               Musical Opinion, September/October 2003

She also offers a Bartók disc, containing the first recording of a large-scaled Sonata he wrote in 1898 (at the age of 17), along with Elegies, Op. 8b; Dirges, Op. 9a; Rhapsody, Op.1; and the Improvisations, Op.20. The sonata, which takes up a third of the 75-minute disc, is- except for its biographical interest- not very impressive music. It sounds like everyone else but its actual composer, and is neither particularly attractive nor well written. Nissman presents it forcefully, and its presence gives this release discographic value beyond that generated by her excellent performances of the other pieces. The 17-minute Rhapsody represents Bartók’s starting out where Liszt left off, and her performance is brilliantly convincing. Although it has little of the composer’s later style in it, and in lesser interpretive hands can prove thickish, the piano writing has a Bartókian “feel” to it. The masterpiece on the disc is Op. 20, a reflection (like most of his mature works) of the composer’s exhaustive researches into Hungarian folk music. Nissman’s performance of it, and the Op. 8 and 9 combine thoroughly thought out interpretations with feelingful and near-improvisational freedom in the actual playing.
Nissman’s insights into Bartók’s music have undoubtedly been sharpened by the research and experimentation that went into her book, Bartók and the Piano: A Performer’s View…
                                                                                                   Turok’s Choice  April, 2003

This new CD offers the first recording of Bartók’s every early and unpublished Piano Sonata of 1898, Rhapsody Op 1 (1904) Two Elegies Op 8b, (1908-1909), Four Dirges Op 9a (1909-1910), and one work from his maturity – the Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs Op 20 (1920). The unpublished Piano Sonata reveals the 17-year-old student Bartók working Germanic romantics such as Schubert, Brahms and Wagner out of his system.  It is repetitious, over-written and completely without personality. Give it a curious hearing or two and move on quickly to his first published work, Rhapsody Op 1. Although this is still highly derivative (a quasi Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody), it’s got a few teeth to it. At least he’s getting to grips with his home country’s tradition. His thematic transformations are clever, the Lisztian bravura pianism is idiomatic and the cimbalom imitations and gypsy fiddling gestures are evocative. As a true Liszt fan, Nissman relishes anything Lisztian. She lays into the difficult Lisztian bravura with passion and shapes the work uninhibitedly with the free flowing fantasy that the work essentially is.
      By the time we reach his Two Elegies Op 8b Bartók has shed the overpowering Richard Strauss influence as in his orchestral work Kossuth. He now has a foot in each century. The flowery decoration is Lisztian, but his lean economy of thematic development and his near atonal writing in No 2 belong to the 20^th century. He has also fully discovered Debussy. With Four Dirges finished in 1910, he has realised that the gypsy elements in Liszt and Brahms are the stuff of urban dilettanti and not true aboriginal music. These dirges are essentially Hungarian folk laments. They are only a hair’s breadth away from his mature style. These are profound miniatures with a sparse simplicity akin to late period Liszt in mood. Nissman shapes and pedals them with great care.With the eight Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs you are now in the familiar territory of Bartók’s maturity. He transposes the folksongs direct. What makes them original composition are his variations on each one. The impulsive changes of tempo and accelerandi in these Magyar tunes give many of them a witty and capricious flavour which Nissman captures particularly well. 
      Within the limitations of brevity in sleeve booklets, Nissman’s notes on each work are very precise and focused. If you want more detail, I suggest you delve into her new book Bartók and the Piano where you will find full coverage and analysis of all these works. This CD collection is not a ragbag of juvenilia. I sense that Nissman has planned the content judiciously to outline the genesis of a great composer’s style, especially if you listen to the tracks in chronological order at first.  In that sense, this little journey of discovery to maturity is every bit as fascinating as following Schönberg’s evolution to his first totally atonal work – the Drei Klavierstücke of 1909, and Stravinsky from his 1902 Scherzo via his Rimskyan Firebird Suite to his completely original Petrushka of 1911. 
                                                                                      Ian Dando   New Zealand Listener
 

Those who go for flashy brilliance in Chopin need not read the rest of this review. Barbara Nissman plays with poetry and restraint, combining romantic sensibility with contemporary clarity. No moment stands out; everything has an organic logic. The melodic line and its subtle rise and fall are what Nissman emphasizes in the ‘Harp’, ‘Revolutionary’, and E-major Etudes. These are thoughtful ways of working out problems of technique and balance.
        Nissman plays with old-fashioned rhythmic elasticity; it is impossible to guess when she will slow down or speed up, but she is never wayward or arbitrary. The opening of the F-minor Fantasy and the rolled chords in the chorale of Scherzo 3 have an authentic 19^th century  feeling, but her crisp tone often seems modern. Lacking perfume, her nocturnes are gentle late-night contemplations. The Waltz in A-flat dances freely, with lots of rubato; the Fantasy-Impromptu is fluid and understated.  Some will want more brio in the Polonaise in A-flat and Polonaise Fantasy, but I find the charm and lack of banging refreshing.
        Nissman writes her own notes; like her playing, they are probing and cliché-free. Perahia and Ax reign supreme among more restrained Chopin players, but this album is worth hearing. The recording is aptly unostentatious.
                                                                                                                                    American Record Guide  May/June 2004

The more I hear this pianist the more I greatly admire how fingers, intellect and feeling are so perfectly integrated and all working at such high level. Fingers govern her outstanding bravura technique. As a proven Liszt and Prokofiev pianist one naturally expects this and gets it in full measure in her virtuosic Polonaise in A flat and those delicately rippling passages decorating the broad hymn in the Scherzo In C sharp minor Op 39. What pushes Barbara Nissman's bravura on to cloud nine is her high degree of clarity. Even in the most emotive virtuosic passages such as those powerful double octaves in the above Scherzo, not one note is fogged. In her Etude in A flat Op 25 No 1 with its wealth of wide feathery arpeggios, which Schumann likened to a richly vibrating Aeolian harp, every note of those background arpeggios is impeccable. Class, poise, elegance, call it what you will. This is technique of an aristocratic level. Nissman's recent book Bartok and the Piano reveals a keen analytic mind. She makes a strong point that a pianist who doesn't first look at intellectual matters of structure and style is flying blind. Such a pianist would put the Polonaise-Fantasy Op 61 into a tailspin. Structurally it is an elusive work to cohere because its many diverse fragments are difficult to unify. Here Nissman's sharp intellect stands her in good stead. She shapes it into the anguished late period masterpiece that it truly is. Ideal differentiation of mood in each of the three sections of the equally long and masterly Fantasy in F minor Op 49 adds strength to her structural sense. It is a particular favourite of mine and I relished Nissman's poetic insight into it. The third masterpiece which shapes the framework of this recital of 12 works is the Nocturne in D flat Op 27 No 1. There is some validity in Nissman's claim that this is the greatest of his 21 nocturnes because of its poetic melodic line and filigree decoration. However the Op 48 No 1 in C minor (on the preceding track) is also up there among his top nocturnes because of its range of dramatic breadth. Here Nissman's heart and brain fuse at high level. Her poetic intensity in the D flat Nocturne says all. Intellectually she knows exactly that rubato and ability to make the piano sing are central to Chopin's style. Tempo rubato, that ability to stretch the basic pulse of a piece in and out like a rubber band to increase expressive intensity, is intuitively in your emotional make-up. Either you have it or you don't. If the latter, bad luck. Having to teach rubato is as artificial as teaching someone to fall in love. Here Nissman is the perfect lover! She doesn't even have to think rubato. It spills out naturally according to the points of harmonic tension in each piece. In the centre of the Etude in E Op. 10 No. 3 (the “So Deep Is the Night” one to give it its Tin Pan Alley name), her wide rubato would cause the uncharitable to call it loose-girt. Not so. In the centre, the rapid gyrations of chromatic modulations almost spin the work out of control. This generates tremendous harmonic tension so that a natural rubato-ist like Nissman will intuitively widen the range of her “tempo stretching.” Any sleeve note written with enough perception to teach me something new and widen my viewpoint is Danegeld to me. I quote Nissman in her first paragraph: “This recording will underscore the dichotomy that exists within Chopin's beloved piano repertoire – the emotional complexity of its interior world lies hidden behind the lyrical simplicity of its outer layers.” Food for thought. What's more she puts it into practice. The dichotomy is palpable, especially the simmering emotional unrest she injects just under the surface of some of the larger masterpieces such as the Polonaise- Fantasy and the F minor Fantasy. To have that rarity today of fine Chopin playing is recommendation in itself. Add to that an innovative interpretation from a deep thinking pianist and you have a real gem.
                                                                                               Ian Dando New Zealand Listener

Barbara Nissman’s recital discs of Chopin (0019) and Beethoven (0020) have a unique quality of intimacy, the ambience of a private performance for a small group of listeners gathered around the piano. This is assuredly different from the false intimacy cultivated by some in order to hide their technical deficiencies. Nissman plays two demanding programs: Beethoven’s Waldstein,Moonlight,Appassionata sonatas and Rondo à Capriccio, Op. 129 and Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantasy Op. 61, Fantasy in f minor, OP. 49, the Third Scherzo plus other well-known selections with her great facility and extraordinary musicianship. Part of the particular aura of these discs may stem from their having been recorded in the same venue in three consecutive days. Unusual, and recommended.
                                                                                                 Turok’s Choice   October, 2004

Although Barbara Nissman presents the three most popular sonatas, her own brand of vitality and originality will prevent you yawning, “No, not another Moonlight .” Her very different treatment of the latter's opening movement will make you sit up. She wipes off the sludge of past over-romantic and over-pedalled interpretations to present a crisply restored version with little if any rubato, but with just enough sensitive una corda pedalling to have those moonbeams gliding across the lake for those romanticists who like the work to live up to its title (which Beethoven didn't invent and hated). Not many are aware that within its persistent unified triple figuration this movement is a true sonata form with second subject in a related key. Nissman's clear playing makes you aware of this subtlety. The Minuet, played almost senza pedale , comes through crisp and fresh while the finale is propelled with aptly turbulent momentum. Although Beethoven anticipated some aspects of the romantic era, Nissman correctly sees him as a classicist where form always controls feeling. The volatile feeling in his ideas often threatens to smash classical structure to smithereens, but doesn't quite. Even his most revolutionary works never abandon the classicist's motive development flowing through a planned architecture of formally proportioned key centres. This friction between idea and structure is the very thing that makes Beethoven's music so dramatic. These points are worth bearing in mind when you hear Nissman's stunning pianistic turbulence in evoking the Beethovenian fire in the belly of the Waldstein and Appassionata Sonatas. But she always keeps her aggression within a finely articulated structural sense. Like her Chopin CD, her fingering in the Beethoven is remarkably clear in detail. Where many pianists hit those angry fortissimo outbursts in the opening idea of the Appassionata with too much hysteria, Nissman's clarity with those heavy chords is pin sharp. The way Beethoven threatens the stability of the tonic key in the first page of the Waldstein always reminds me that great art is subversive. Here the ominous mood of Nissman's playing underpins this...Finally, as an encore, she chooses the six-minute Rondo a Capriccio Op 129. Despite its late opus number, it's a very early work which she dates as 1795- 8. True to its sub-title Rage over the Lost Penny, Nissman has it chasing its own tail furiously with gruff Beetovenian humour. .. 
                                                                                                   Ian Dando   New Zealand Listener