SEPARATING THE GIFTED FROM SHOW-STOPPERS

Management is ever on the lookout for pianistic talent that can be differentiated from the vast number of gifted performers out there who merely slog along from one concert to another, gaining a sufficient number of engagements to earn a living, but failing to attract a personal following or to catch the attention of the big-city critics.

Winning a prestigious competition used to guarantee a couple of seasons of employment and, occasionally, a critical coup as well. Today it means little: a season of employment at best and no longer the guarantee of a recording contract.

Being recorded on a major label is clearly a major step to worldwide acceptance, as would seem to be the case with the Hungarian-born pianist Andras Schiff. He has been all over--well, almost all over--the place lately, with orchestra, in recital, with chamber ensembles. His is by no means a familiar face to local concert audiences, but it does peer out at us from the jackets of a dozen records on the London label.

The latest of these, a coupling of Chopin’s F-minor Concerto and the Schumann Concerto (London 411 942), confirms previous impressions: that Schiff is a young man of exceedingly refined instincts rather than a fire-breather. He plays both Romantic standards cleanly (of course), in small-scale, emotionally reticent interpretations that are hardly the stuff of legends-in-the-making or of interesting concert-going experiences. He is accompanied in casual, unincisive fashion by Antal Dorati and a less-than-usually alert Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra.

The Greek pianist Dimitris Sgouros seems a more likely candidate for adulation. A showier artist than Schiff, Sgouros plays the so-called virtuoso repertory, i.e., music with built-in applause.

Sgouros is all of 15, which one would never guess from his shapely, elegant and altogether winning performance of Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto (Angel/EMI DS38105). To be sure, Sgouros does not mask his phenomenal technique or ability to draw a vast array of tone-color from his instrument. But, overall, one senses physical power and emotions held sufficiently in reserve to project the more tender sentiments in this work. Here is, in other words, Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto as serious music, not as blatant showpiece--in which conductor Yuri Simonov’s restraining hand and the mellow warmth of the Berlin Philharmonic surely play a part.

On his own, in a Liszt program, Sgouros makes a somewhat different impression (Angel/EMI DS-38192). Again, he chooses not to whack at the music but rather to temper the virtuoso flourishes with exquisitely delicate turns of phrase. There is something that smacks of push-button sensitivity in the too-facile quietness followed by a too-precipitous thundering in, for instance, “Harmonies du Soir”; music that takes a Richter or a Michelangeli to yield up its beneath-the-surface substance.

If Sgouros’ Liszt leans toward the feathery, that of veteran Jorge Bolet might be termed leathery in three big dazzlers with orchestra: “Totentanz,” “Malediction” and Hungarian Fantasy (London 414 079). Ivan Fischer conducts the London Symphony in all three.

Bolet--like the composer in this particular music--aims straight for the gut rather than teasing us with a show of sensitivity. He does not make light, or light work, of the scores. There is in Bolet’s playing an endearingly unfashionable need, it would seem, to make the listener aware of the fact that this is virtuoso stuff and that it’s not at all easy to play, even for as commanding a technician as he--which occasions a good deal more listening excitement than would be the case with a classic rippler in charge.

There’s more Liszt from Cecile Ousset and Francoise-Rene Duchable, two youngish French pianists who have been attracting considerable attention of late. Both give us programs with the same centerpiece, the magnificent B-minor Sonata.

It takes Ousset (on Angel/EMI DS-38259) a while to settle into the Sonata; she rushes the opening pages to a couple of premature climaxes. But she delineates the long, slow middle section of the work with beautifully gauged rubato and altogether becoming low-key tension, by means of which her violent attack on the fugue that ushers in the finale becomes joltingly effective.

The overside performances of Liszt’s six Etudes after Paganini are impressive, as well, notably for the pianist’s ability to keep the filigree from overwhelming the actual musical matter.

Like Ousset, Duchable (on Erato/RCA 75177) rushes the opening pages of the Sonata. But, unlike her, he fails to reach a resting point thereafter. His interpretation fails to convince us of the formal unity of the work while, simultaneously, directing us consistently toward the element of showiness inherent, perhaps, in all Liszt works but a decidedly secondary consideration in the Sonata.

Twenty years after his triumphant first recording of Ravel’s “Gaspard de la nuit” for London, Vladimir Ashkenazy returns to that work with an equally effective performance, although one predicated less on blazing color this time around than on inner tension (London 410 255-1; compact disc 410 255-2).

The overside of this Ravel program includes an effusive whirl through the “Valses nobles et sentimentales” and “Pavane pour une infante defunte,” infinitely touching--in spite of its familiarity--in Ashkenazy’s unaffected playing.

After too long a time away from Chopin’s music (on recordings, at any rate), Murray Perahia returns with a program comprising the “Barcarolle” and “Berceuse,” two vehicles that might have been written expressly to epitomize the pianist’s intimate style; a less than usually grandiose reading of the great F-minor Fantasy, and handsome performances of four Impromptus (CBS IM 39708).

Further Chopin: Reissues of the Chopin recordings made by Artur Rubinstein during the late 1950s and early ‘60s continue apace with gorgeous sounding, remastered editions of the Ballades, Scherzos and the Second and Third Sonatas (RCA ARL3-5460, three vinyl discs; no CDs as yet). And German-based Eurodisc has transferred to compact disc Sviatoslav Richter’s monumental 1977 versions of the Four Scherzos (610128-231).