Customer Reviews

Steps

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You don't usually find this beautiful lyricism in contemporary composers.
I was extremely pleasantly surprised. Jorge Martin displays Pure genius.
This CD is highly recommended.

Clearly the most interesting thing on this CD is the last track, Debussy's piano reduction of his last orchestral score, 'Jeux,' ('Games'). 'Jeux' is treated by the musical establishment almost as a Debussy step-child. In fifty years of concert-going, I've never encountered it live. But I treasure several recordings of it and count it among my favorite Debussy works. I particularly like the Haitink/Concertgebouw recording (available here at Amazon in a budget price Philips twofer). I had never known Debussy made a piano reduction, and so I was really thrilled to get a chance to hear it. Not surprisingly, the orchestral colors are missing and missed, but one has a chance to listen more clearly to the structural and harmonic inner-workings of the piece without the 'distraction' of that inimitable Debussy color. And I quite liked Jeanne Golan's playing as well. She really has a way with the half-lights of Debussy, not only in this but in the two 'Arabesques' included in this program.

Over thirty minutes of this CD is given over to two one-movement works by Cuban-American composer Jorge Martín; Ms Golan, in her rather muzzy booklet notes, says that she has known Martín since their student days at Yale. Obviously, this recording is an act of friendship and homage to an old classmate. The first work is 'Wand'ring Steps and Slow' whose title is taken from the last two lines of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' ('They hand in hand with wand'ring steps and slow/Through Eden took their solitary ways'). It is not otherwise clear why the piece was so named, but it is an attractive 15 minute piece whose primary elements seem to quartal (both perfect and augmented [tritonal]) harmonies and melismatic melodies that includes lots (LOTS) of trills. It comes across as a slightly middle-Eastern grandchild of Scriabin's later sonatas, and although there seems to be a certain amount of noodling and meandering, it builds to several climaxes before coming to a calm, even serene, ending. The second piece, 'Piano Fantasy on Sredni Vashtar' is reported to inspired by themes from Martín's opera 'Sredni Vashtar' which is itself based on a short-story by Saki (H.H. Munro, an early 20th-c. Scottish writer). For the life of me I can't find much about this 17 minute piece that is engaging. It strikes me as self-indulgent noodling (there's word again), in a word, improvisatory and, like in 'Wand'ring Steps,' much of it seems to be vaguely Middle-Eastern melismata over either endless bass arpeggios or droning obbligato bass. This is not to say that there aren't some interesting moments, but it simply doesn't hang together for me. I'm convinced Golan gives the piece everything it requires, and indeed there are some startlingly virtuosic moments that she handles with brilliance.

So, in summary, this is a mixed program that is mostly interesting, and very well played by Ms Golan.

TT=61:48

Scott Morrison