Georges Cziffra: Message to the Pianists
MESSAGE A TOUS LES PIANISTES: GEORGES CZIFFRA
EMI Classics CDM5 66162-2 [68'54"]
Georges CZIFFRA (1921-1994)
Paraphrase on The Flight of the Bumblebee (Rimsky-Korsakov)
Paraphrase on Tritsch-Tratsch Polka (J Strauss)
Fantaisie roumaine: improvisation dans le style tzigane
Paraphrase on Valse Triste (Vecsey)
BRAHMS trans. CZIFFRA 15 Hungarian Dances (transcribed for piano 2 hands)
BRAHMS trans. CZIFFRA Danse hongroise (Hungarian Dance) No.5
Georges Cziffra piano
Recorded at the Auditorium Franz Liszt de la Fondation Cziffra at Senlis in 1982 & 1983 (Brahms) and at Salle Wagram, Paris, 1957. Liner notes by Georges Cziffra.
elcome, ladies and gentlemen! Get ready to be dazzled out of your senses, for here is none other than the virtuoso showman at the keyboard!
Just as Liszt swooned audiences with his lustful passion and inimitable improvisations, and Paganini stunned all with his demonic violin playing, carrying on the tradition of pianists like Carl Tausig, Ferruccio Busoni, Leopold Godowsky and Vladimir Horowitz — who were familiarly disposed towards flights of fancy at the keyboard — here we have a taste of the superlative dramatic flair of Georges Cziffra.
Let’s take a breather to pre-oxygenate our lungs. Before proceeding to listen to Cziffra’s transcription of Brahms’s Hungarian Dances, it would do good to know what they sound like in their “original” form. A good budget-disc introduction to the orchestral version of this collection of darkly brooding yet wildly passionate Hungarian folk-melodies is available on Naxos (NAXOS 8.550110), played by the Budapest Symphony Orchestra under Istvan Bogar. Alright, so you’ve heard them. Or so you think. Ready for the ride? Let’s go!
Brahms’s Hungarian Dance No.1 opens with a suitably demure statement of the dark dance theme; at the second line however, when the theme comes back, Cziffra launches into his own improvisatory world proper, and there is no stopping him.
The first steps into Cziffra’s world is so fraught with dazzling colours that the unwary listener may be disoriented for a while. Do not worry, it’s a normal reaction. Just like Dorothy in Wizard of Oz, the listener is caught up by a whirlwind into another world: one where technicalities have long been transcended and the artiste’s imagination is limited only by the confines of the 88 ivories.
These Dances have a feet-tapping thrust and rhythmic cohesion that make you want to get up and go! Yet the sizzling minor-key gypsy tunes bring a melancholic darkness to the otherwise flighty dance rhythm. Originally written for piano duet, the Hungarian Dances have variously been orchestrated and transcribed for solo piano as well.
Compared to the vast proliferation of available arrangements, Cziffra remains remarkably original in his transcriptions. Not one single moment is he resting nor boring — spontaneity being the key element in improvisation. Repeats are always taken with a different twist. Stomping chords chomp down hard on the keyboard over the entire range, endless chromatic elaborations fly over and in between the main melody, and various other pyrotechnical inventions elevate the richness of colour and frantic idiosyncracy above even the possibilities of the orchestra.
In between stormy episodes, Cziffra can also be tender and enchanting with simple sweet melodies, but mushy interludes are fleeting; soon the pianist starts to pull out the stops again.
In spite of all the convulsing trills and tinkling grace-notes, Cziffra never loses the thrust of the innate rhythm, and the melodic line is always evident above the unbelievable earthquakes and volcanoes that he commands from the instrument. Here then is one of the differences between an impressive improvisation (which Cziffra pulls off effortlessly) and a helpless runwaway fantasy: being able to shape and structure the course of the impromptu according to the vision of the original theme, and not smother it with overflowing passion, nor cram it full of finger technique and lose the melodic thought altogether.
In his “message to the pianists”, Cziffra has managed to let us, armchair pianists who like to doodle in vain on the keyboard (both types), hear the realisation of a dream: to be able to enjoy endless original improvisation, surrendering our fingers to the imagination that runs deliciously amok, hoping to move sky and earth with that bright momentous spark of inspiration.
