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Scott Cantrell

Classical CD review: Russian piano music, well-known and not


A Moments musicaux, Op. 16; Études tableaux, Op. 33; Corelli Variations, Op. 42. Wang (Chandos)

Weinberg A- Partita, Op. 54; Sonatina, Op. 49; Sonata No. 4, Op. 56. Franzetti (Grand Piano)

Born two generations apart, Sergei Rachmaninoff and Mieczyslaw Weinberg represent two very different strands of 20th-century Russian music. The former, of course, could be called the last of the grand romantics; the latter, Polish-born but mostly resident in the Soviet Union, followed in the more modernist steps of Prokofiev and Shostakovich.

Trained at the Shanghai Conservatory and the Manhattan School of Music, Xiayin Wang seems to have Rachmaninoff’s lush, warmly expressive music in her blood. With dazzling and apparently effortless virtuosity, she has a natural feeling for the music’s ebb and flow, its great surges and longing sighs. She plays with quite generous rubato, but it seems to come out of the music itself rather than being imposed on it.

What wonderful music this is: the “character pieces” of the Moments musicaux and Études tableaux, the Corelli Variations proving that a nominally abstract form can be imbued with such charm. The recorded sound is certainly vivid, although one wishes for a bit more bass resonance.

Weinberg, who lived from 1919 to 1996, has been utterly overshadowed by the older Prokofiev and Shostakovich. The latter, by the way, was a real advocate of Weinberg, and actually helped secure Weinberg’s release when he was jailed on trumped-up “Jewish bourgeois nationalism” charges at the end of Stalin’s reign. His reputation probably hasn’t been helped by the various transliterations of his name, including Moishei Vainberg and Moyssey Vaynberg.

Recordings in recent years have revealed an appealing compositional voice. This second disc in Allison Brewster Franzetti’s survey of Weinberg’s piano music will have a ring of familiarity to anyone who knows Prokofiev’s piano sonatas and Visions fugitives.

In part reflecting shifting Soviet attitudes toward the arts, the music alternates between gentle piquancy and mordant drive. Wouldn’t it be nice if one of the Cliburn Competition contestants played some of these pieces for a change? A product of the Manhattan School and Juilliard, Franzetti plays ably and thoughtfully, in natural sonics.

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