I suspect that Ruth Slenczynska is just a name (if that) to most readers of Fanfare, especially younger readers. Mentored by Schnabel, Cortot, and Rachmaninov (among others), she had a flash of notoriety as an extraordinary wunderkind starting in the late 1920s, and--after a decade's retirement motivated by the need to break away from her abusive father--she made a significant series of recordings (mostly Chopin) for American Decca in the 1950s. But she never regained (perhaps never wanted to regain) the public profile she once had had: Harold Schonberg didn't see fit to mention her in The Great Pianists, and by the mid 1970s, her recordings were out of print. The near simultaneous release of these two CDs will thus provide, for many, an introduction to her artistry.

It's a doubly welcome introduction, because the discs coincidentally represent the opposite ends of her mature career. Ivory Classics has reissued her earliest commercial recordings, made for a now-forgotten company called Music Library; this CD includes, among other things, the repertoire from a successful Bach concert at the 1951 Carmel Festival that helped give her the self-confidence to relaunch her career. The aca disc documents a live concert at Brenau College nearly 40 years later.

What's most striking about all of these performances, both early and late, is the imposing force of their personality. In her autobiography Forbidden Childhood, Slenczynska describes the "mollycoddle" and "namby-pamby" repertoire that, out of an anxious desire to "sneak back on tiptoe" (in particular, to avoid criticism for a "harsh and granitic" tone) she chose for the Carnegie Hall recital that marked her return to New York. But that was, apparently, a momentary detour. Certainly, the more or less contemporary Ivory Classics disc is both timbrally assertive and interpretively strong-minded. Even in her early years as a prodigy, Slenczynska was learning (despite the destructive pressures from her father) to merge, among other things, the intellectual rigor of Schnabel and the more improvisatory interpretive manner encouraged by Cortot; and here, it seems, she managed to forge her own style in a way that synthesizes those approaches without imitating either (and without falling into the technical approximation for which both pianists were noted). Her Chopin-Liszt is acerbic in accent, yet brightly colored (note, in particular, the control of pedaling) and molded with a rhapsodic freedom that's spellbinding. Even more striking, her high-energy Bach, with its daring fusion of textural lucidity, well-honed articulation (note, for instance, the biting trills on the Italian Concerto) and unapologetic rhythmic license, breaks away from the from the stultifying piety that marked so much Bach performance in those pre-Gould years.

Thirty-five years later, the forcefulness of the playing was even more intense. Although aca's graphics--a grand piano sprouting huge flowers--might seem to promise Chopin with fragrance, the interpretations, which take Chopin's con fuoco markings more to heart than his requests for leggiero, are anything but sweet. True, tempos are on the slow side, but the effect is hard and (to use Slenczynska's term) "granitic" rather than lyrical, much less relaxed. While her basic tone quality is fairly rich (her left hand is notably strong), her fingers can slice through the music (try op. 10/7) and her phrasing often angular, even bitterly so (listen to the Fourth Ballade); and while she certainly knows how to be gentle, you're more likely to be taken in (even taken over) by the cataracts of sound she generates in the climaxes (say, the sudden onslaught of the second theme in the Second Ballade). It's not exactly angry playing (in this regard, it's perhaps significant that Forbidden Childhood manages to describe the most chilling episodes of parental mistreatment with a surprising lack of rancor)--but as is evident, say, in her bleak reading of op. 10/9, it is the playing of someone who has come to terms with the pain of human experience.

The sound on both discs is excellent--almost startlingly so on the Ivory Classics CD, given the origins of the material. And both releases include full, and illuminating, biographical insight into the pianist. Ivory has promised further explorations of the Slenczynska discography; but while we're waiting, both of these CDs are strongly recommended.

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