Here, in what appears
to be a continuing trend with classical
music, we have the "classical concept
album" with all pieces hearkening to
a central idea evoked by the title.
I hadn’t thought of
the Pensées of Prokofiev
before in the avian realm, but alongside
its mates on this collection, it fits
nicely. Immediately on the heels of
Kate Bush’s Aerial, all of the
works here evoke the idea of birds:
flight, song, atmosphere and the environs
or time of day when birdsong is most
noted, such as sunrise and sunset. The
acoustic for the entire disc is cold
and sparse, which may turn some off
initially, but it fits the tone of the
music quite well.
Sokolov combines
the known and the new in this well-thought-out
and arranged disc of Russian piano music.
Prokofiev’s works serve as bookends,
beginning with the unfortunately not-often-heard
Pensées. Prokofiev’s tone
here is a definite change from that
of his more snide and sarcastic years
as ‘enfant terrible’ in Paris. Composed
after his return to Soviet Russia and
just as his troubles with the Stalin
régime began, these pieces show
meditation, spareness and melancholy.
The work did not meet with success upon
its publication although hindsight shows
it a work of quality. Sokolov plays
it with a thoughtful, winterlike tone.
The Wustin Lamento
has an almost Satie-like character in
its descant line, supported by quieter,
sedate left hand chords that keep it
anchored somehow to terra firma. Another
comparison would be the — and again
this adjective comes up — Musica
Callada (Cold Music) of Mompou.
Sometimes agitated, sometimes serene,
the piece evokes the sky and birdsong
in spite of its title.
The first self-penned
piece on the disc, In the Clouds,
evokes more a sense of the air and atmospherics
— storms, wind and rain — rather than
birds in its rapid arpeggios. The sustain
pedal is depressed almost throughout
the piece, and, as a surprise to many,
doffs the hat to Henry Cowell with the
soloist reaching into the piano while
playing and strumming the strings. Not
many pieces can carry this off without
seeming to copy Cowell’s The Banshee,
but this one works well, not only in
context, but also on its own.
Korndorff’s
Yarilo forms the centerpiece
to this carefully arranged disc. By
far the longest work, it evokes the
time before sunrise until the sun has
risen. Again, the music and the recording
has a frostiness about it, the spare
chords at the beginning indicating a
quiet landscape just now barely visible
to the eye. The work builds in complexity
and breadth, showing not only the increase
in light, but also the increased activity
of the birds, with trills and songs
hovering over the cold ground of the
left hand. The piece, to my ears, seems
to lose its focus toward the middle,
with its ffff climax, but regains
it with a very interesting segment filled
with treated strings, harmonics, plucked
strings, clock chimes and mechanical
rattles. The overall effect is that
of a gradual return to wakefulness as
the sun rises, including some odd harmonic
effects ostensibly done with the piano
alone, but that sound like the use of
stringed instruments as the piece fades
to silence.
The Korndorff is followed
by the longer of the Sokolov-penned
pieces, Evening Birds.
This continues the Henry Cowell effect
of the strummed strings, as well as
the widely separated left and right
hand parts — the right holding the piece
down, while the right flits through
the cold air with the other feathered
creatures that populate the piece. Here
again is the sparseness of Satie, the
nebulosity of Silvestrov. Halfway through
the piece, yet another surprise — narration
by the pianist of a poem by Zibilotsky
entitled, fittingly, ‘The Nightingale’.
The text is provided in Russian and
English translation on the first page
of the booklet. The soloist, having
finished the poem, whistles along with
the piano as the piece ends.
Wustin returns
in this symmetrically arranged collection
with Three Songs from Toropets,
a collection of three short pieces for
solo piano and fit well with Prokofiev’s
three Pensées that open
the disc. Short, sparse, and throughtful,
these pieces lead seamlessly into the
closing track, the first Fugitive
Vision of Prokofiev. And with that
enigmatic close, the disc ends.
Within the trend mentioned
earlier of "concept" albums, this disc
succeeds well. The playing is sensitive
and concise, the cold tone at first
seeming to be a shortcoming of the recording.
While it leaves the piano to sound almost
nasal, as the disc plays, this tonal
quality is an obvious choice in light
of the very carefully selected material.
A cohesive and thought-provoking program.
David Blomenberg
Ivan Sokolov (piano) 
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