Packed with fifty-four tracks across five CDs, and featuring numerous top performers (including Elizabeth Leonskaja, Boris Berezovsky and Monique Haas), the Warner Classics' set, Piano Dreams has much in common with another of its August releases, Adagios.
But whilst Adagios focuses solely on the music of Albinoni, Bach and Beethoven, Piano Dreams covers sixteen composers from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. It contrasts the ways in which composers from Bach to Joseph Guy Ropartz have put the piano to good use, and, to its credit, steers away from presenting "the great warhorses of the repertoire". Instead, it concentrates on showing how the instrument's peculiar sonorities have conjured up particular thoughts and emotions in various composers.
Consisting both of complete pieces (like Mozart's Fantasia in D minor, K397) and excerpts (such as Poulenc's Allegretto from his Piano Concerto), the performances are frequently spellbinding. Elisabeth Leonskaja's performance of Chopin's Nocturne in B flat minor, op.9 no.1 combines a keen sense of rhythm with an elegant clarity, whilst there is a beautiful flowing quality to Boris Berezovsky's performance of the composer's Etude in E major, op.10 no.3. Another highlight is hearing Guher and Suher Pekinel play Mozart's Sonata for two pianos, K448 so beautifully together.
Ironically, though, the CDs occasionally fall down where such first rate pianists become overindulgent. When Monique Haas plays Debussy's Children's Corner too much of her own breathtaking style is apparent to convey the childlike intimacy required of Jimbo's Lullaby or Serenade for a Doll. Similarly, Michel Legrand plays Satie's Trois Gymnopedies just too slowly for my liking. Staggering though the accomplishment of playing effectively at such a pace is, the piece is not merely a platform for showing off the skills of the pianist.
But overall these are rather minor criticisms. Indeed, whilst possessing a few more obvious weak moments than Adagios, Piano Dreams would appear to have been a degree more thoughtfully compiled.
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