(+++) UNIFYING FACTORS

Khachaturian: Gayane (excerpts); Spartacus (excerpts); Masquerade Suite. Mikael Ayrapetyan, piano. Grand Piano. $19.99.

Chopin: Études, Op. 10; Stravinsky: The Firebird (excerpts); Antonio Molina: Malikmata; Ramon Tapales: Mindanao Orchids; Lucio San Pedro: Salamisim (Remembrance). Ross Salvosa, piano. MSR Classics. $14.95.

     The thinking that unites a concert or recital, whether live or recorded, is far more obvious in some cases than in others. Mikael Ayrapetyan is well-known for performing piano works reflecting his Armenian heritage, having explored the music of many Armenian composers. So it makes sense for him to offer an entire Grand Piano CD devoted to works by Aram Khachaturian (1903-1978) – and, for the sake of novelty and exploration of material in a form in which it is not well-known, to devote most of the recording to world premières. Thus, the excerpts from the 1942 ballet Gayane and the 1954 Spartacus are heard here for the first time in recorded form. The original versions of these works are well-known (at least in excerpted form), but not so the piano arrangements: Gayane was arranged by A. Tseitlin (1962) and Vily Sargsyan (2005), while Spartacus was arranged by Emin Khachaturian, the composer’s brother (1975), and Sargsyan (2005). Ayrapetyan is a strong and willing advocate for this music, playing it sure-handedly and with sensitivity to its cultural and folk-music roots as well as its drama and theatricality. But unfortunately, the piano can only go so far with material that is distinguished in part by the composer’s idiomatic and highly engaging orchestrations. Gayane is one of the “Socialist realism” scores so beloved of the rulers of the USSR, with the titular heroine standing up to her lazy and criminally inclined husband and eventually finding happiness with the commander of the local Soviet frontier guard. The extremely familiar Sabre Dance is but a small part of the ballet, although it has become ubiquitous in multiple media; other numbers show Khachaturian’s impressive command of mood-setting and rhythmic variety. The multiplicity of emotions comes through even more clearly in Spartacus, with the extended and highly emotive Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia being a high point of the work and unsurprisingly being exceptionally well-known. Indeed, there is so much effective music in Spartacus that the composer was able to create no fewer than three suites from the ballet – with the arrangement performed by Ayrapetyan being, in effect, a fourth. But for both Gayane and Spartacus, the piano arrangements simply pale when compared with the orchestral ones: Khachaturian was so adept at assigning evocative instrumental lines appropriately than the comparatively monochromatic sound of the piano, no matter how well played, never really does justice to the quality and theatricality of the material. This is apparent as well in the Masquerade Suite (1944), arranged for piano in 1946 by Alexander Dolukhanian. This is the one work on this CD that has been recorded before, but it is easy to hear why the piano version has never caught on as the orchestral one has. The sway, elegance, rhythmic effectiveness and sectional balance that are everywhere present in the original become coloristically diminished, even unidimensional, on the piano – again, no matter how well they are played. Ayrapetyan’s piano sound also suffers to some extent from his use of a Fazioli instrument: these are very fine pianos with unique sonic capabilities that set them apart from the much-more-common Steinways, but the Fazioli does not fit the aural palette of Khachaturian particularly well, taking these arrangements even further from the originals than their performance on any piano already does. Listeners who are assembling a collection of Armenian piano works in suitably authentic and sensitive performances will gravitate to this disc for the excellence of the pianism, but the music itself is unified as much by its less-than-exemplary reflection of the original orchestral material as by its national origin.

     The foundational “glue” of an MSR Classics CD featuring pianist Ross Salvosa is much less apparent and much less relevant to the material on the disc. This is one of those “personal expression” CDs, with Salvosa selecting otherwise unrelated music because, to him, all the works express some sort of societal thoughts or feelings that parallel his own sociopolitical beliefs and stances. Unless a listener chooses to read about Salvosa’s non-musical thinking and try to hear these works in the context in which he mentally places them, there is really nothing here to explain why these specific pieces are juxtaposed with each other. Therefore, the CD becomes one to hear simply on the basis of Salvosa’s pianism – and his skill at interpreting, in particular, Chopin’s Op. 10 set of Études, which takes up 30 of the disc’s modest 52 minutes. Like some individual Khachaturian pieces, several of these études have become hyper-popular and have emerged in multiple guises beyond the concert hall and recording studio. A  challenge for pianists, then, is to keep the very-well-known works fresh while providing an integrated view of the set of études as a whole – even though they were in fact composed during a multi-year period. The underlying technical challenges of these works, which after all are labeled as “studies,” ideally take a back seat to the pieces’ expressiveness, which is what made Chopin’s Op. 10 revelatory and near-revolutionary in its time. Salvosa certainly has no apparent trouble with even the most-difficult technical elements of the material, but he tends to fall somewhat short in the more-emotive pieces, including No. 3 (known as “Tristesse,” although not so named by Chopin) and No. 6, both of which are on the perfunctory side emotionally. The faster études tend to come across better – No. 8 is particularly well-handled – and the concluding No. 12 (“Revolutionary”) is delivered with considerable flair. These études are followed on the CD by three excerpts from Stravinsky’s The Firebird, arranged for piano by Guido Agosti. Like the Khachaturian arrangements played by Ayrapetyan, these Stravinsky versions are reductions, not only in literal sonic terms but also in impact. Taken at face value, though, they are well-handled by Salvosa and are rhythmically effective, especially the opening Danse infernale du roi Kastchei. The disc also includes three encore-like brief works that, however, are placed at the start of the CD rather than the end. Malikmata by Antonio Molina (1894-1980) contrasts a gently nocturne-like scene with more-intense material; Mindanao Orchids by Ramon Tapales (1906-1995) is a mixture of ostinato and crescendo; and Salamisim (Remembrance) by Lucio San Pedro (1913-2002) is a pleasant, mostly gentle, largely arpeggiated, dancelike piece. The musical associations of these short 20^th-century works with the Stravinsky and Chopin material are by no means apparent, and the inclusion of these comparative trifles with Chopin’s études may have meaning for the pianist but makes no identifiable connection from a listener’s standpoint. The disc as a whole is clearly a personal statement and is certainly well-played, but will be of interest primarily to anyone who finds the juxtaposition of material as personally meaningful as it appears to be to the performer.