Shehori Plays Russian Music
Sergei PROKOFIEV (1891-1953)
Sonata No. 7 in B flat major, Op. 83 (1939-42) [18.24]
Mikhail GLINKA (1804-1857) - Mily BALAKIREV (1837-1910)
The Skylark (L‘Alouette) [6:06]
Mily BALAKIREV (1837-1910)
Islamey - Oriental Fantasy (1869) [9:04]
Pyotr Ilyich TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893)
The March from The Seasons Op.37 [2:02]
Romance in F minor Op.5 [6:08]
Dumka Op.59 [8:33]
Pyotr Ilyich TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893) - Pavel PABST
(1854-1897)
A Paraphrase after the opera Eugene Onegin [14:59]
Mordecai Shehori (piano)
rec. August 2002, New York (Prokofiev); June 2009, Las Vagas (Glinka-Balakirev,
Tchaikovsky); August 1999, New York (Balakirev); February 2009, Las Vegas
(Tchaikovsky-Pabst)
CEMBAL D’AMOUR CD143 [65:09]
Mordecai Shehori’s Russian album starts the hard way, with a commanding, fluent
and utterly authoritative performance of Prokofiev’s Seventh Sonata. One can
programme things any way one wants but artists and companies make statements
in the way they line up a miscellaneous programme. In this case, we go straight
for the emotive jugular, and allow the Old School virtuosity of Islamey
and the colouristic charm of the Tchaikovsky triptych to follow.
The bright recording quality suits Shehori’s sense of projection very appropriately.
He is a master of the sonata’s quixotic moods, its splenetic moments as well
as its more sanguine-melancholic ones. He avoids the assault course mentality
prevalent in some circles, and also takes a different and fruitfully divergent
approach to that of, say, Richter whose more militant, militaristic vision
is powerfully probing in its own right: I’m citing Parnassus PACD 96-001/2,
a 1958 recording. Shehori is more intent on exploring the stases and tentative
measures inherent in the moment, taking a structurally cohesive, wide-spanning
control. The central movement is striking for its reserve and song-without-words
quality in its opening paragraphs, and also in the slow build-up to its more
chiselled aural profile. The return to the opening feeling is affectingly
accomplished. Unleashed and duly replenished, the finale emerges as a pent
up outburst of brilliantly alive pianism. It ends a performance of excellence.
Lyric but intensely virtuosic Shehori dispatches The Skylark with an
acute ear for the tensions embodied in this vortex pull between emotive states;
marvellous theatrical projection without any corresponding fakery. The three
Tchaikovsky pieces are examples of refined and indeed refulgent lyric poetry
– the Lark (another one) – as well as the more burnished warmth of
the Romance in F minor. The last of the three serves in fact as an ‘encore’
to the preceding two; the Dumka, with its sense of rolling tristesse, has
ebullience and style but also a melancholic trajectory that Shehori never
fails to locate but never objectifies.
Islamey receives a traversal of fiery and evocative concentration,
the virtuoso demands co-existing with the alluring colouration that lend the
work so formidable a construction. And then there is the far more unusual,
discographically rare Tchaikovsky-Pabst Paraphrase after the opera ‘Eugene
Onegin’. Laced with refined tracery, delicate trills and also graced by
a tumult of virtuoso apparatus, and colour, this work demands the absolute
in rhythmic control as much as anything. Shehori brings an immense sense of
weight and dynamism to bear and he copes with some of its more unremitting
challenges with tremendous eloquence. There’s a noticeable edit along the
way: listen from 3:40 on.
In any case the Russian album establishes a repertoire-rich undertaking from
Shehori. The recording dates and locations vary – between Las Vegas and New
York – but the performance level and values never dip.
Jonathan Woolf