Rimsky-Korsakov: Piano Duos

Albumbeschreibung

There is a lot of Rimsky-Korsakov on the books that has never seen the inside of a recording studio outside of Russia. That would include the majority of his chamber and piano music, of which no less a Rimsky expert such as Gerald Abraham once said was "of negligible value." For a long time established in his homeland as the greatest composer of her opera, in the West Rimsky-Korsakov was largely restricted to two very well-known orchestral pieces -- Scheherazade, Op. 35, and Capriccio Espagnol, Op. 34 -- and demonized to some extent for his interventions on Mussorgsky's behalf. Now, with its tastes shifting toward nearly anything that smacks of the Oriental, the West is catching up to Rimsky-Korsakov, so it is only natural that something of his piano music should be explored. Pianists Artur Pizarro and Vita Panomariovaite do so with eloquence on Linn's disc Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov: Piano Duos. This contains the four-hand piano versions Rimsky-Korsakov made himself of the two famous orchestral works made above and a four-hand version of his early symphonic poem, Sadko, Op. 5 -- not the opera -- by his wife, pianist and composer Nadezhda Nikolayevna Purgold. Rimsky-Korsakov studied the piano in childhood, but never played it well; his "instrument" was the orchestra. The four-hand transcriptions that he made of Scheherazade and Capriccio Espagnol are beautiful, and played here by Pizarro and Vita Panomariovaite with great charm and rhythmic verve, though that is because the music itself is beautiful. From a purely pianistic standpoint, Rimsky-Korsakov's arrangements are a little clunky. The designation "Piano Duos" is a little misleading, as these pieces are played by Pizarro and Panomariovaite at one keyboard, usually identified as a "piano duet" rather than "duo," which generally signifies a two-piano performance. As the left hand of the Primo and the right of the Secondo tend to occupy the same area on the keyboard, the middle register is very prominent here, a little too prominent. Purgold's arrangement comes off very differently; she was by all accounts an excellent pianist and her transcription of Sadko demonstrates not only was she a highly skilled arranger that she understood the mechanics of the four-hand medium a bit more than Rimsky. That does not mean Rimsky-Korsakov's own transcriptions are of wholly "negligible value"; once in awhile there are surprises, such as a tremolo played on a low pitch on the piano replacing the sound of a snare drum roll in the Capriccio Espagnol. It is unlikely that these one-piano, four-hand versions represent a threat to the always-popular orchestral originals, although this is certainly not the case in Sadko, where the introduction of the four-hand version may actually help the source work's chances to some extent. Yet these arrangements are fresh sounding enough that it may also serve as an antidote for a case of burnout regarding the more famous pieces. The only complaint here is that Linn Records' sound is a little narrower and further away than its usual wont, even though the sound on this Super Audio CD is still very lifelike. It should not prove a hindrance to anyone who wants to hear Rimsky-Korsakov's first-tier orchestral music clothed in the sound of the piano rather than that of the orchestra.
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