Volume 23 Issue 9 - June / July / August 2018

Orion Weiss adds a new release to his
current handful of recordings with
Presentiment (orionwiess.com). Weiss’s
program captures the foreboding felt
in the years before the First World War.
This anxiety is only subtly present in the
Granados Goyescas, but Weiss finds it in the
music’s shadows and teases it out into the
open. He’s a seductive performer; a charmer
of sorts. Only in the final two movements does he fully explore what
Granados has only been hinting in his earlier pages. Weiss plays
Goyescas with an easy lightness that makes many of its phrases pure
dance. The best I’ve heard in a long time.
Progressively, more of the early-20th century’s angst reveals itself in
Janáček’s In the Mists. Weiss uses the deep melancholy of this work’s
plaintive melodies to lead up to the disc’s final piece, Scriabin’s Sonata
No.9 Op.68 “Black Mass.” Here there’s no longer any doubt about
what the world is about to experience. Weiss portrays it all with a
mature and measured confidence.
Monica Chew is a gifted player with an
affinity for deeply sensitive expression. Her
debut recording Tender & Strange – A Piano
Recital: Bartok, Janáček, Takemitsu,
Messiaen, Scriabin (Chronicalicious CHR
170001 monicachew.com) conveys this in a
powerful way and her program title aptly
reflects her recital’s intentions. Each of her
chosen pieces has some passages where this
inner search is evident, but she makes the deepest impression with the
Messiaen Le baiser de l’enfant-Jesus. Here she speaks the composer’s
language fluently. Similarly, both of Takemitsu’s Rain Tree Sketches
capture a contemplative other-worldliness. No.2 in particular, In
Memoriam Olivier Messiaen, holds the listener in suspense through its
numerous sustained chordal clusters that fade over extended fermatas,
each followed by total silence before the next notes sound. Chew plays
these final pages of the piece with impeccable timing and musicality.
Michael Korstick has several dozen recordings
to his credit and his latest is Dmitri
Kabalevsky – Complete Piano Sonatas (CPO
555 163-2 naxosdirect.com/labels/cpo).
Kabalevsky’s piano music suffers the fate of
being overshadowed by that of other
Russian contemporaries like Prokofiev and
Rachmaninoff, but the artistic commitment
of performers like Korstick and labels like
CPO make this music both available and worth hearing. Kabalevsky’s
three sonatas are his only efforts for solo piano in a large form. The
What we're listening to this month:
first dates from 1927 and the other two from 1945 and 1946 respectively.
Kabalevsky wrote the Sonata No.2 Op.45 for Emil Gilels, who
premiered it in the Soviet Union in 1945. Vladimir Horowitz
performed the American premiere at Carnegie Hall in 1947. It’s the
most engaging of the three sonatas, with some devilishly difficult
passages in the final movement. On the whole, it’s a beautifully
written piece and offers so much that repeated plays are a necessity.
Korstick does a fabulous job performing it.
Organist and composer Zvonimir Nagy has a
new recording of his recent works. Angelus
– Music for Organ (Ravello Records RR7987
ravellorecords.com) begins with the title
track Angelus, and establishes the profoundly
meditative nature of this disc’s program. The
recording was made on the four-division
pipe organ in the Chapel of the Holy Spirit
at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, where
Nagy is associate professor of music. It’s a modestly sized instrument
and well-balanced for the acoustic space the chapel offers.
There is a marked minimalism in Nagy’s writing. He uses the instrument’s
broad dynamic range and colourful stop list to create some
very beautiful moments. Even while he concentrates on form, writing
movements that are inversions and retrogrades of each other, he is
always focused on creating the meditative atmosphere he wants for
works like Litanies of the Soul and Preludes for a Prayer.
Alexander Melnikov is a graduate of the
Moscow Conservatory. His new recording
Claude Debussy – Préludes du 2e Livre,
La Mer (Debussy version for four-hand
piano) (Harmonia Mundi HMM 902302
harmoniamundi.com) includes pianist Olga
Pashchenko in the transcription of La Mer.
Debussy accepted his publisher’s request
to write the transcription, and created a
work that blends an astonishing amount of orchestral colour into
the capabilities of a single keyboard with two players. Melnikov and
Pashchenko are wonderful partners in this recording. They play with
a deeply shared artistic sensibility and deliver both the power and rich
palette of the orchestral score.
Melnikov plays the Préludes Book II leaving the impression that he
understands exactly what Debussy intended to convey. His technique
is impressively clean and crisp, and his interpretations are completely
convincing. He plays with great attention to colour and emotion, and
takes advantage of Debussy’s frequent harmonic densities and other
devices to make this a completely captivating disc. Melnikov favours
authenticity in performance and has chosen to play an Érard in this
recording.
thewholenote.com/listening
Vivaldi:Recorder Concertos
Vincent Lauzer is featured in this
new album devoted to Vivaldi
recorder concertos, accompanied
by Arion Baroque Orchestra
under the direction of Alexander
Weimann.
Schubert:
Piano Trios D. 929 and 897
Trio Vitruvi
Trio Vitruvi returns to Schubert's
gem, giving us the original
(longer) version of the score in an
impassioned reading.
Emergence Trilogy, vol. 1 – Chambers
Kenneth Newby with the Flicker
String Quartet and Chamber
Ensemble
The Emergence Trilogy – vol. 1:
Chambers; vol. 2: Elegeia; and vol. 3:
spectral (golden) lyric – are available
at iTunes, Amazon, cdbaby, etc.
RASP
Stephen Altoft
Microtonal Projects is delighted
to announce the release of RASP -
Stephen Altoft’s second solo CD on
which he exclusively plays music
written for his unique 19-division or
19 note-per-octave trumpet.
thewholenote.com June | July | August 2018 | 77