Recording of the Week, Fantasie from Alexander Melnikov

Whereas many of his illustrious contemporaries enjoy monogamous relationships with a particular brand or even a specific piano (Angela Hewitt's fidelity to Fazioli being one case in point), Alexander Melnikov’s approach is rather more omnivorous: for some years now, the Russian pianist has made a point of seeking out instruments which are as historically appropriate as possible for the repertoire at hand. Back in 2018, his ear-opening programme of Schubert, Chopin, Liszt and Stravinsky (performed respectively on a Graff fortepiano, an Erard, a Bösendorfer and a Steinway Model D) was one of our Recordings of the Year, and on today’s Fantasie he casts the net still further with a programme which allows seven beautifully contrasted instruments to shine to best advantage in repertoire from JS Bach to Schnittke.

The former’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D minor (a work which inspired composers as diverse as Reger, Busoni, Kodály and Sorabji thanks to its adventurous harmonic language) opens proceedings, and acts as a lodestar for the entire programme. As Melnikov points out in his rather gnomic booklet-note, the six fantasias which follow all ‘circle back’ to Bach in some way, and his knack of subtly highlighting the music’s often startling modernity opened my ears to connections with the later works which I’d never otherwise have noticed: there’s something about the way he dwells on unexpected dissonances and underlines shifts in colour that suggests that the piece is being improvised in the moment rather than having gone through numerous painstaking redrafts (as the work’s textual history suggests).

The instrument here is a modern copy of a harpsichord by Hans Ruckers II (itself refurbished around the time Bach completed the work), and it’s uncommonly suited to the task in hand: the entire mechanism seems to have a lightly-sprung quality that lends itself well to the virtuosic passages, though there’s no lack of weight and presence in the chorale-like sections, and the middle register in particular has a distinctive, plangent timbre that falls so very easily on the ear.

Next up is CPE Bach’s Freie Fantasie fürs Clavier (composed very near the end of his life, in 1787), and the Schmahl tangent piano which Melnikov plays here is undoubtedly the star of this seven-keyboard show. Manufactured a couple of years after the piece was written and restored by Georg Ott, it’s an extraordinary instrument which can shape-shift in an instant under Melnikov’s imaginative fingers: arpeggiated flourishes in the treble have a celeste-like quality, whilst a sequence of (oddly Schubertian) repeated crotchet chords sound for all the world as if they emanate from a lute rather than a keyboard.

Two Mozart fragments introduce the first of three instruments from Melnikov’s personal collection: a 2014 copy of an Anton Walter fortepiano from the late 1790s, with a silvery-bright treble that projects with incredible clarity even when Melnikov pares the sound down to virtually nothing in the D minor Fantasia K397 and a sustaining-power that allows him to spin out long cantabile lines to perfection. It’s clear that he knows this instrument inside-out, and his quiet pride and joy in its capacities is evident in every lovingly-sculpted phrase.

Mendelssohn’s Fantasia in F sharp minor sees Melnikov returning to the Alois Graff fortepiano which he played on his recording of Beethoven piano trios with Isabelle Faust and Jean-Guihen Queyras, and here again its combination of mellowness and clarity pays huge dividends – the closing Presto is absolutely breathtaking stuff, and the ideal place to dive in via our streaming service if you want a foretaste of what this album has to offer.

Chopin’s F minor Fantasia positively glows on an 1885 Erard (the same one, I think, which Melnikov used for the Franck Sonata with Faust), whilst the craggy grandeur of an early twentieth-century Bechstein is the perfect vehicle for Busoni’s stern Fantasia in modo antico. The shift to a bright-toned Steinway Model D for Schnittke’s madcap Improvisation and Fugue feels rather akin to having the lights turned on full at the end of an intimate soirée: it’s exactly what the piece needs, though, and closes out the album in fine style. But do take Melnikov’s advice and circle back to the Bach: I promise you’ll hear it afresh after everything in between…