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Quietude Gabriel FAURÉ (1845-1924) Improvisation Op.84 No.5 Johann Sebastian BACH (1685-1750) Preludium No.VIII from The Well Tempered Klavier Vol.1 Adolf WIKLUND (1879-1950) Ein liten roddtur from Från mitt fönster Mot kväll from Från mitt fönster Sergei PROKOFIEV (1891-1953) Lento irrealmente No.XX of Visions Fugitives Arnold SCHOENBERG (1874-1951) Op.19 No.6 of Sechs kleine Klavierstücke Op.19 No.2 of Sechs kleine Klavierstücke Claude DEBUSSY (1862-1918) Clair de lune from Suite Bergamasque Erik SATIE (1866-1925) Gnossienne No.2 Gymnopédie No.3 Maurice RAVEL (1875-1937) La vallée des Cloches from Miroirs Oiseaux tristes from Miroirs TRADITIONAL MELODIES Som sjärnan Limu Limu Lima Lars KARLSSON Romance from Fem aforismer Jean SIBELIUS (1865-1957) Berceuse Op.40 No.5 from Pensées Lyriques Alberto GINASTERA (1916-1983) Sadness from 12 American preludes Emil SJÖGREN (1853-1918) Reverie from Bilder och utkast Maurice KARKOFF Oasen Kerstin JEPPSSON En dröm – Music for piano Rolf Lindbloom (piano) Rec. Great Hall of the Royal Academy of Music, Stockholm December 1985 PROPRIUS PRCD 9052 [67.54]

Rolf Lindbloom was born in 1944 and made this recording in 1985. Beginning his professional career as a jazz pianist he later studied at the Stockholm College of Music and has now made a number of recordings for Proprius, taking in repertoire from Gershwin to Tubin. This disc unashamedly embraces stillness – there’s even an injunction to listen to it at a low volume – and delves into unusual and often welcome waters to make its case. The obvious limitations of lack of variety and somnambulism have been well met by Lindbloom and if I’m not always convinced by his playing I admire his scope. Lindbloom is rather high-handed and overemphatic with the Bach and his dynamics are constricted but he compensates with a very romantic Wiklund (the first of two by the composer that he essays). The Satie Gnossienne is nicely inward but, again, his Debussy is rather undifferentiated. In the main his playing of Ravel and Debussy is significantly less convincing than his more overtly romantic playing – where his tracery and imagination are their fullest. I wonder whether in some way the disc’s avowed "function" has limited a more visceral response from him to these works. La valée des Cloches from Miroirs, for example, is very deliberate and slow, quite lacking drama and the dynamics are very muted (it’s unfair to invoke Gieseking perhaps but their conceptions could not be more markedly distinct). Elsewhere he catches something of the unease in Schoenberg’s Op 19 No 2 of Sechs kleine Klavierstücke – and full marks to him for including Op 19 No 6 as well – as indeed he does the stasis at the musical heart of Kerstin Jeppsson’s En dröm. His playing of the traditional song Limu Limu Lima is delightful. An uneven recital then in many ways - and that goes for the recording as well which is inclined to be a little recessed and to have too much bloom around the tone. But there are some nice touches, imaginative choices and one feels Lindbloom is a thoughtful musician. Jonathan Woolf     Error processing SSI file

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