Liszt: Sonata in B Minor / Rhapsodie Espagnole

Resenha do Álbum

The works on this disc are all from a time after Liszt decided he didn't need to use as many piano pyrotechnics in his compositions as he had when he was younger, but they still contain a lot of flashy passages. Arnaldo Cohen plays these as you would expect a nineteenth century virtuoso to play them: very fast and very energetically. What is most impressive about his playing, however, is that in addition to the speed, he is able to maintain absolute clarity during these passages. A good example of this is the ending of the Rhapsodie espagnole. You can hear every note in each run of scales; nothing is ever blurred together. Even through the densest passages in these pieces, there is no sense of heaviness or excessive strength being used to pound out the music. The expressive gestures Cohen uses are broad, but not exaggerated. The opening of Funerailles is spooky, while the second part is strictly martial. The Vallée d'Obermann has all the drama you would expect of a quintessentially Romantic novel. The Sonata is also played broadly, with exciting runs and arpeggios, extreme pianissimos contrasted with extreme fortissimos, a well-controlled ending, and a preservation of the work's overall, dual musical structure. Cohen is an extremely skillful pianist with a fine sense of translucent coloring and expression for Liszt's works.

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