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Bach: The Six Partitas for Harpsichord from the “Clavier-Übung” I, BWV 825-830. Francesco Tristano, piano. Naïve. $19.99 (2 CDs).

Chopin: 24 Preludes, Op. 28; Scriabin: Preludes, Op. 11. Fanny Azzuro, piano. Naïve. $16.99.

Liszt: Piano Sonata in B minor; Traditional Romani, Bosnian, Macedonian and Montenegrin folk songs. Vedrana Subotić, piano. Blue Griffin Recordings. $15.99.

     Traditional repertoire looked at with some new insights, or coupled with some unexpected material – piano recordings pursue both approaches with varying degrees of success. The pianism itself is very rarely an issue nowadays: there has never been such a crop of proficient, committed and thoughtful piano performers as there is today. It is something of an embarrassment of riches: the quality of playing is almost always at a very high level, which means listeners can pretty much take it for granted and can decide on purchases based entirely on the repertoire and their own predilections for how particular pieces should sound. Certainly that is the case with the many piano versions of Bach’s harpsichord music: every one of them is inauthentic, but performers opt for handling them in varying ways – some, for instance, use the full resources of a modern piano to expand the emotional range and impact of the music, while others opt for downplaying pianistic capabilities (deep key travel, sustaining pedal and the like) in favor of a sound approximating that of a plucked-key instrument rather than one whose keys are hammered. That is “hammered” in a strictly descriptive sense, not a pejorative one: certainly fine performers such as Francesco Tristano would never overplay the inherently percussive elements of the piano. Tristano’s approach to Bach’s familiar Partitas, BWV 825-830, is smooth and controlled. Pedal is scarcely absent but is generally used moderately, and Tristano is careful to articulate trills, grace notes and other ornamentation with admirable precision. Pacing is well-considered, and Tristano by and large eschews inappropriate crescendos and decrescendos, although in some movements, such as the Ouverture to BWV 828, he gives the music a bit too much proto-Romantic flair. The speedier dance movements, such as the Gigue in BWV 827 and the jaunty Tempo di Gavotta in BWV 830, come across particularly well here. The slower and more-emotive movements, such as the Sarabande in BWV 829, are as a whole somewhat less successful, with Tristano tending to overdo the expressiveness to a noticeable degree – although listeners who prefer these works on the piano are unlikely to object to this. Indeed, one’s preference for piano will largely be the determining factor as to whether this two-CD Naïve set will be enjoyable for long-term and repeated listening. Tristano is certainly sensitive in his readings, and his pianism is quite fine technically; the issue for lovers of this music will, as always, be about whether the material is better heard as Bach intended or as modern instruments make it possible to experience it.

     The pianism is equally fine on another Naïve release, this one featuring Fanny Azzuro; the question for listeners here involves the juxtaposition of repertoire. The concept is interesting on its face: both Chopin and Scriabin created sets of 24 Preludes (Op. 28 and Op. 11, respectively), so pairing them on a CD has a certain inherent logic. Indeed, Scriabin’s set was loosely modeled on Chopin’s, so hearing one grouping followed by the other invites discovery of numerous parallels and differences (although the Scriabin is placed first on this disc – not the best decision). The Chopin set (1839) significantly predates that of Scriabin (1888-1896), but the harmonic language of the two sequences is not significantly different: this is very early Scriabin, after all. Azzuro does not go overboard in searching for any specific relationship between the two sequences, performing each of the 48 miniatures as an independent work and exploring both the technical demands of each one and the emotional communicativeness underlying the pieces individually and collectively. Notable in the Chopin cycle are her approaches to the strongly contrasting tempos and moods of the Molto agitato (No. 8) and Largo (No. 9), and the differentiation of the delicate Sostenuto (No. 15) from the fantasia-like Presto con fuoco (No. 16). The dramatic concluding Allegro appassionato in D minor (No. 24) is also very fine, its emotional intensity and technical complexity kept well in balance. In the Scriabin set, Azzuro does a particularly nice job with the opening Vivace (No. 1), which is very Chopinesque indeed, with the gentleness of the Andante cantabile (No. 5), and with the contrast between the Lento (No. 13) and following Presto (No. 14). She is somewhat less effective with the moods of the Allegro agitato (No. 8) and Misterioso (No. 16), playing well but not exploring the emotional underpinnings to any great degree. The bottom line for this recording is that it offers first-rate pianism juxtaposing and to some extent contrasting two works that share many similarities as well as a number of stylistic differences. It will be appealing to listeners who may not have realized in how many ways these two sets of miniatures relate to each other, and who would like a chance to hear and re-hear the cycles one after the other with the same pianist’s interpretative nuances brought to bear on both.

     A new Blue Griffin Recordings release featuring pianist Vedrana Subotić is an even more personalized recital that deliberately mixes a large and well-known work with much smaller pieces that will almost certainly be unknown to most listeners. That leaves it up to the audience to decide whether Liszt’s B minor sonata bears any significant relationship to the five folk songs whose arrangements were commissioned by Subotić for this recording, or whether the CD simply gives the pianist a chance to display her own considerable performance abilities while showcasing some music that, she says, represents fond memories from her own childhood. Still, on the face of it, this is really a curious compilation. The piano arrangements of the songs, by Igor Iachimciuc and Christopher O’Riley, are certainly well done in terms of how they lie on the instrument, and the five songs – two from Bosnia and one apiece from Macedonia, Montenegro and the Romani (Gypsy) people – are pleasant, with surface-level charms and superficial but effective emotional components. Interestingly, these are not typical two-minute-or-so folk songs: the shortest runs four-and-a-half minutes, the longest seven-and-a-half. But that does not mean the pieces include substantial musical development or multiple moods – instead, they mostly strike a particular stance at the beginning and then spin it out at length. So the quiet melancholy of I Went, I Went (titles are translations) is as persistent as the crepuscular berceuse-like feeling of When I Went to Bambaša. Other features and foundational elements produce the ostinato-dominated Macedonian Girl, the contrasting slower and more-rapid sections of Crimson Dawn Has Not Yet Broken, and the darkly atmospheric Mujo Shoes His Horse under the Moonlight. As pleasant as all the folk material is, and as meaningful to Subotić (who is Croatian-American) and likely to others familiar with the region from which the music comes, it is unlikely that many listeners will want this disc solely for the arrangements of traditional melodies. It is Subotić’s handling of the Liszt sonata that really shows off both her technique and her sensitivity to Central and Eastern European music. She is fully conversant with the grand style and somewhat grandiose presentation of the sonata, has no apparent difficulty with its manifest technical complexity, and clearly understands its structural intricacies well. She tends to play the many sections – not only the four-movements-in-one overall form but also the sections within each section – in a straightforward manner that makes them seem to be small, self-contained elements that emerge only over time as portions of a larger whole. She is especially adept in the somewhat lighter elements of the work and its contrapuntal material, handling the fugato late in the work with particular skill. The performance is, as a whole, a first-rate one, convincing both in its details and in its overarching approach. The CD will therefore be attractive for listeners who are interested not only in a top-notch reading of the sonata but also in some more-or-less-contextual material that is of considerably less musical appeal but that does expand the focus of Liszt’s Hungary to the music of other places in the same geographical region.