Pianist Nicholas Angelich, even more admired in Europe than in his native U.S., passed away tragically early in 2022 at the age of 51. One way to look at this Hommage is to note that it took quite a bit of research power, much of it apparently donated, to put together this massive seven-volume tribute, assembled from live performances and radio broadcasts between 1995 and 2019. That is a lot of Angelich, but fans here will find much that sheds new light on his genius. Consider the Brahms Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Haydn, Op. 24, which Angelich rarely played in concert. It receives a wonderfully controlled performance in which the tricky architecture of this work comes to the surface. Angelich was a fine virtuoso, and the Liszt Transcendental Etudes and the big Russian works generally have a layer of excitement added by the live performance. However, Angelich is equally effective in subtler pieces, thoughtful in the likes of Zemlinsky and the Bach Goldberg Variations, BWV 988, where the sequence of events feels somewhat different from in the pianist's 2011 studio recording even as the über-Romantic slow tempos are retained. His opening aria is even slower than on the studio version. The mastering of these immensely diverse sound sources from Erato is as good as such a thing can be, and physical album buyers get some fine reflections on the pianist's work. This is, in short, an effective tribute to a pianist whose life and work were brutally cut short.© James Manheim /TiVo

From one recording to the next, French pianist Claire Désert continues her exploration of Schumann’s piano works with a new album focussed on the variation genre. She explores the manifold, elusive moods found in the “Symphonic Studies”, the “Etudes in Variation form on a Theme of Beethoven” and the “Geistervariationen” (Ghost Variations), like a diary of the composer. From a tribute to Beethoven to the ultimate variations composed right before sinking into the Rhine, it is all Romanticism that is sung by Schumann's piano, with its breaks and ideals. © Mirare

These string quartets by Nicolas Bacri, who has written eleven quartets to this day, are at the heart of the composer’s thought process and illustrate perfectly his 2009 statement: "Why not see contemporary creation as the recreation of a modernity whose origins should be re-interpreted each time, re-played, looked at from the angle of an ‘original trauma’, a new outpouring from the traditional core, an aesthetic tension that is sometimes heightened and sometimes eased, that reinvents the nature of its rupture with tradition each time, whilst simultaneously building upon it? From this point of view, Tippett, Shostakovich, Britten, Dutilleux, Weinberg, Simpson, Fricker, Mennin, Kalabis or Leighton, to cite but a few of the most brilliant composers of the second half of the 20th century who did not participate in the Darmstadt avant-garde, but who integrated into their language certain elements from the Viennese school, appear as major figures of contemporary modernity. It is in this vein that I place myself; it is in this vision of equilibrium within disruption and of disruption within equilibrium that I work; I resign myself to this permanent lack of tranquility". © Klarthe Records

The selections on Luiza Borac's second volume of George Enescu's piano music show how versatile a composer he was. Like many of his contemporaries, such as Ravel and Stravinsky, he absorbed and adapted a variety of traditional forms and of compositional styles to create a diverse, if small, body of works that deserves greater attention outside of his homeland. The Prelude and Fugue are neo-Baroque in form and even in articulation, but translucent harmonies suffuse the music. In the Prelude this is done mainly through the use of long, sustained pedal tones over which the hands play repetitive figures in scalar motion. The Fugue's legato subject gently swings and almost sings, like a Bach Sicilienne. The Nocturne has the ABA structure of most traditional nocturnes, but it is a 20-minute behemoth with a stormy central section that calls for strength and virtuosity in between outer sections made up of improvisation-like, meditative ideas that send ripples into the ether. The Scherzo's humor is even more devilishly Lisztian in its outer sections than the Nocturne's middle, whereas its middle is more light-filled. The brief Pièce sur le nom de Fauré has a novel origin, explained in the notes, but even though it is based on a specific series of notes repeated several times, it also has those translucent colors of the Prelude and the Nocturne. The Piano Sonatas No. 1 and No. 3 (there never was a Sonata No. 2), are where Enescu's love of Romanian folk music is most evident, and yet it is so carefully blended in that it is only revealed by the occasional skipping rhythm or an ornament or snippet of song-like melody. The sonatas are very similar in nature to the Nocturne: meandering in tonality, musing, and seemingly improvised. Sonata No. 1 is unsettled and atmospheric, using the different tonalities as much as tempo and articulation to generate emotion. The movements of Sonata No. 3 seem to be an inversion of those of No. 1. The outer movements are animated, while the middle movement is meditative. It also has a brighter outlook, with fanciful, little ornaments that suggest bird song and a glorious finale. In all of these Borac sounds completely at ease with the music, no matter how technically challenging it can be. She is attuned to all the variations of its changeability, no matter how small, never forceably or artifically applying the minutest alterations of colors and dynamics. There does, however, seem to be a little more room in Enescu's music to play with rubato without losing momentum or emoting too much. What's missing from the recording is a warmer or less flattened sound, which would make Borac's performance in the grander moments of Enescu's writing more spellbinding to hear. © TiVo