liner
notes at www.zupiano.com
Throughout the accompanying
documentation the pianist’s name appears
as ZEYNEP Ucbasaran, which I take to
mean that she wishes to be known, when
not referred to by her name in full,
as just Zeynep – which is certainly
easier to remember! Accordingly, I shall
do so, while offering my apologies for
the undue familiarity if this is not
what was intended.
I have already reviewed
three discs by Zeynep, a Turkish pianist
who studied in Budapest, Freiburg and
Los Angeles and has been living at Santa
Barbara, California, since 1996, and
have much appreciated her unselfed,
very musical playing. So far
she has concentrated on larger-scale
works, with two CDs dedicated to Liszt
– including the Sonata – and one to
Schubert, with the Wanderer Fantasy
as its centrepiece. Now she presents
a series of very brief pieces, showing
a completely different side of her musicianship.
In Scarlatti she seems
to take her pleasures rather seriously,
with three minor-key works and the middle
two in slow tempi – a rather different
aspect of Scarlatti from that chosen
by most pianists. However, in the better-known
K.146 I do feel that she is a little
sober compared with Craig Sheppard,
who seems to be delighting rather more
in his own legerdemain. What
a reflection on today’s recording world,
by the way, that we are able to compare
these two pianists by courtesy of tiny
companies which appear to exist solely
for the purpose of promoting their art
– details of the Sheppard disc are contained
in my review.
I have no reservations
at all about the Beethoven – the playing
offers elegance, boisterousness and
gravity as required, together with a
scrupulous observance of every marking
in the score. In some ways the Bagatelles
are harder to get right than the Sonatas,
where a wider interpretative range is
possible. Here, if one thing jars the
whole effect is lost, and nothing jarred
at all for me.
Zeynep’s notes, which
are as unobtrusively to the point as
her playing, tell us that Saygun was
"the most prominent member of the
group that came to be called the Turkish
Five". Quite frankly, I think this
is an area of Western music which remains
virtually unknown outside Turkey, and
if Zeynep wishes to hold the torch for
her countrymen, I for one am willing
to listen. "Inci’s Book" seems
to me to be a distinguished addition
to the repertoire of pieces illustrating
the children’s world, somewhere between
Bartók (with whom Saygun toured
Anatolia collecting folk songs) and
Villa-Lobos. The same manner seems to
have dried out by the time of the Preludes
on Aksak Rhythms, yet the example of
mid-20th Century Turkish
art given on the booklet cover, by Halil
Dikmen (and how many of us outside Turkey
know anything about Turkish painting
either?), with its sad, lonely reminiscences
of the post-Impressionist world of Chaim
Soutine, possibly provides a key to
its understanding. In any case, if Zeynep
is convinced that Saygun continued to
mature with the years, perhaps she will
give us a monographic disc based around
the late Sonata (1990)?
Certainly, the pared-down
writing of late Saygun is suggestive
of substance in a way Bernstein’s mindless
doodlings are not. I may be a hopeless
case, but I have yet to hear any evidence
that Bernstein wrote anything worth
hearing except for "West Side Story".
Still, as there are lots of things by
him that I don’t know, I always go to
a new piece hoping to be proved wrong.
This one was new to me and left me feeling
as before. As far as I can tell without
a score or a comparative version, its
failure to impress is in no way due
to any failure by Zeynep to argue the
case.
Seven minutes of music
are hardly sufficient to assess Zeynep’s
claim that Muczynski is "one of
the most distinguished of contemporary
American composers"; again, the
music of this composer of Polish-Slovak
descent doesn’t seem to have crossed
the Atlantic yet. Certainly, the Preludes
here are resourceful, varied and generally
communicative – the sort of music to
be seized on gratefully by a pianist
who wants something that sounds genuinely
contemporary without requiring him or
her to pluck the strings or bang on
the lid. Since he has written three
Sonatas (1957, 1966 and 1974), maybe
in this case, too, Zeynep might care
to take her evident admiration for Muczynski’s
music a stage further in the future?
The mixed programme
will probably make this a disc mainly
for those who have been following Zeynep’s
career – no bad thing to do – but others
will find a very fine performance of
the Beethoven Bagatelles and some interesting
excursions into contemporary byways.
Christopher Howell
Zeynep Ucbasaran (piano) 
