(+++) KEYBOARD CONNECTIONS

Janáček: Sonata 1.X.1905; Josef Suk: Jaro (Spring), Op. 22a—No. 5; Things Lived and Dreamt, Op. 30; Dvořák: Humoresques, Op. 101—Nos. 4, 7 and 8; Vítězslava Kaprálová: April Preludes, Op. 13; Smetana: Czech Dances—Polka No. 2. Francine Kay, piano. Analekta. $18.99.

Dvořák: Slavonic Dances—Op. 46, No. 8 and Op. 72, No. 2; Mozart: Andante and Five Variations in G; Wang Jianzhong: Colorful Clouds Chasing the Moon; Gong Huahua: Mountain Harvest; Manuel de Falla: La Vida Breve—Two Spanish Dances; Amy Beach: Summer Dreams, Op. 47; Florence Price: Three Negro Spirituals; Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue (arranged by Henry Levine). Deborah Moriarty and Zhihuang Tang, piano four hands. Blue Griffin Recordings. $15.99.

     We live in an age when fine pianism is virtually a given: interpretations and reactions to them will always vary, but the underlying quality of piano performances today is almost uniformly high – so high that what differentiates one reading from another is usually just a matter of emphasis or nuance. With pianists playing so well and so consistently, the selection of repertoire that they offer becomes ever more important for audiences to determine which recitals to attend and which recorded music to own. So when well-performed, well-recorded CDs like two recent ones from Analekta and Blue Griffin, respectively, are released, a listener’s decision-making about ownership will depend to a large extent on whether the specific works offered by the performers add up, in their totality, to a satisfying aural experience. The quality of the playing can be assumed to be very high – as indeed it is for both these offerings.

     The primary piece on Francine Kay’s new disc is Josef Suk’s 35-minute, 10-movement suite whose title translates from Czech as Things Lived and Dreamt. Dating to 1909, this is an Impressionistic work with considerable personal content and a smattering of nationalistic material: Suk quotes from some of his other pieces, employs attractive coloristic effects here and there, and uses rhythms and accents in interesting ways. Kay clearly enjoys the many and variegated elements of this suite, treating each piece as its own small-but-complete element of the whole while still fitting all the movements into a larger picture that provides an attractive view of Suk as a composer. The placement of Things Lived and Dreamt midway through the CD does create some awkwardness, though, and indeed is rather hard to understand. The disc opens with Janáček’s dramatic and tragic two-movement Sonata 1.X.1905, prompted by the composer witnessing the killing of an unarmed protester in a demonstration in the city of Brno. Kay plumbs the dramatic tension of this work effectively, bringing out the strong emotion that the composer put into it. After this, though, matters become a touch strange. The next work on the disc is a piece by Suk that dates to 1902 and is quite different from Things Lived and Dreamt and from Janáček’s sonata. It is the fifth and last number from Jaro (Spring), and is pleasantly lyrical in salon mode. It sounds more than a bit like the music of Suk’s father-in-law, Dvořák, three of whose Op. 101 Humoresques (1894) are presented next. These are small gems, especially the justly famous No. 7, but they bring an overall lightness to the disc that somewhat undermines the strength and vigor with which Janáček’s sonata opens the recording. After the Dvořák material comes Things Lived and Dreamt – and then a real shifting of gears to the four-movement April Preludes by Vítězslava Kaprálová (1915-1940), a student of Martinů whose death at age 25 (probably from typhoid fever or tuberculosis) was a genuine tragedy: she had already accomplished far more as both composer and conductor than was usual for women (or most men) at the time. April Preludes is Kaprálová’s best-known piano work: it was composed in 1937 for Rudolf Firkušný, who played it often. And certainly this is more than an occasional piece: in many ways it strives to go beyond typical slice-of-life-in-springtime music, mixing its Impressionism with considerable dissonance, strong rhythmic emphases, and even some bitonality. Listeners hearing the piece for the first time will likely want to experience more of this composer’s music – yet hearing April Preludes immediately after Suk’s Things Lived and Dreamt is a bit odd, producing a somewhat emotionally dislocated feeling. And then the CD concludes with an outright encore that dates back to a much earlier time, 1877: Smetana’s Polka No. 2 from his Czech Dances. This is a slight and pleasant two-minute work that in certain ways is foundational to the music of Dvořák and Suk; but it fits somewhat uneasily here, as the earliest work on the disc. Certainly Kay’s performances of all these pieces are worth hearing for their sensitivity and adept handling of varied repertoire; but the disc as a whole has a somewhat disconnected feeling about it, as if it lacks any underlying theme beyond geography – it would likely have been more effective if presented chronologically, starting with Smetana’s little dance and ending with Kaprálová’s April Preludes.

     If Kay’s geographical reach is limited by design, that of Deborah Moriarty and Zhihua Tang is very widespread, also by design. Dvořák, interestingly enough, appears here as well, with two of his Slavonic Dances (one from each of the two sets) opening the disc. Then, however, we are suddenly in a very different world, that of Mozart’s Andante and Five Variations in G, K. 501 – a lovely and too-infrequently-heard piece, and one that Moriarty and Tang present with bounce and upbeat enthusiasm throughout. The contrast with Dvořák is so marked that listeners will wonder just where this recital could go next. The answer is to somewhere very, very different: Colorful Clouds Chasing the Moon by Wang Jianzhong (1933-2016). Filled with trills and arpeggios designed to approximate the sound of Chinese instruments on the piano, this is an interestingly atmospheric setting of a traditional Chinese folk song. It actually sounds more Western than Oriental in everything but the theme itself – although its juxtaposition with the music of Mozart remains puzzling. Having established a Chinese element on this CD, the performers then offer another one, Mountain Harvest by Gong Huahua (born 1978). Twice the length of Colorful Clouds Chasing the Moon and considerably more dissonant and rhythmically irregular, the piece contrasts interestingly with the one that it follows, but just what it is doing after the Dvořák and Mozart works is not entirely clear. And after this work, the pianists bring us back to Western music, with two dances from Manuel de Falla’s La Vida Breve, arranged for piano four hands by Gustave Samazeuilh. These are ebullient, even effervescent pieces, strongly redolent of Spanish rhythms – perhaps the reason for offering them after the two Chinese-inflected works. After this, we get to something closer to an American sound, to the extent that the varied and polyglot influences on American music may be said to have a single “sound.” This is Amy Beach’s six-movement Summer Dreams, an Impressionistic work from 1901that paints a series of very brief and focused pictures, with the fourth and fifth, Katy-dids and Elfin Tarantelle, being especially evocative. After this foray into Americana – Beach’s work actually bespeaks multiple musical influences, but then so does much American music of its time – Moriarty and Tang present Three Negro Spirituals by Florence Price, in the composer’s own arrangement. These are pleasant pieces that, to some extent, mirror the interpretation-of-earlier-material approach of Colorful Clouds Chasing the Moon, although this is scarcely a significant parallel. The comparative rhythmic intricacy of Price’s third piece, Ev’ry Time I Feel the Spirit, is especially attractive in this performance. And then, at the very end of the CD, the longest piece on the disc is presented: Henry Levine’s arrangement of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, a work of Americana that is quite different from the pieces by Beach and Price, although related to them in certain distinctive ways. Levine’s piano-four-hands version of Rhapsody in Blue is workmanlike and careful, translating the material well enough but certainly not enhancing it in any way. The coloristic elements of Gershwin’s music, so apparent in its band and orchestral versions, seem somewhat faded here; and while the performance is certainly effective enough, it is hard not to think of this as a kind of rhapsody in very pale blue indeed. There is considerable intriguing music on this disc, and the pianists work quite well together and are attentive to the unique elements of each piece they play. But the recital as a whole, despite its overall title of “Connecting Cultures,” has an arbitrary feeling about it: the connections, to the extent that they exist, are on the forced side, and the disc will be most enjoyable only for listeners whose musical interests happen to match those of Moriarty and Tang particularly closely.