Search - Chopin, Ginastera, Gomez-Tagle :: Dos Continentes

An Interesting Programming Idea but ...

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 02/26/2010

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Leticia Gómez-Tagle is a youngish Mexican pianist who lives and teaches in Linz, Austria. I had never heard of her before but I was intrigued by the program: the four Chopin scherzi and a collection of miscellaneous Latin American piano pieces. As Amazon does not, as of this review, list the Latin American works, I shall list them here:



Alberto Ginastera: Danza del viejo Boyero (Dance of the Old Cowboy); Danza de la moza donosa (Dance of Delightful Young Girl); Danza del gaucho matrero (Dance of the Sly Gaucho)

Astor Piazzolla: Invierno porteño (Buenos Aires Winter)

Jacob Gade: Celos (Jalousie; Jealousy) (Gade was Danish, not Latin American, and it is not clear why this was included except the piece is a tango)

Ernesto Nazareth: Odéon

Angel Estevez Loyola: El Tecolote (he was the pianist's teacher in Mexico)

Orlando Otey: Arabesque (a Mexican who lives in Philadelphia)

Hugo Gómez Tagle y del Valle: No me dejes jamás (Never Leave Me), (the composer is the pianist's father)



It is clear that Gómez-Tagle is a good pianist with fairly adequate technical skills. However, her Chopin Scherzi are rather mechanical in their impact. As well, there is some rather glaring smudging in spots and some tempo irregularity (as in the last two pages of the B Flat Minor Scherzo) that have more to do with technical difficulty than with musical interpretation. There certainly are more satisfying recordings of the scherzi available.



As for the Latin American pieces, they are by and large pretty satisfying. The Ginastera Danzas are fairly well-known and have been better played by others, most recently by Gabriela Montero Gabriela Montero plays Chopin, Falla, Ginestera, etc. [Includes Bonus CD]. I did not realize that Gade's 'Celos' was simply his famous 'Jalousie' until it started playing. Talk about a one-hit composer! The Piazzolla 'Invierno porteño' is vintage Piazzolla, and it is played well. Nazareth's 'Odéon' is a tango named for the movie theater for which the composer played piano back in the silent movie days. Loyola's 'El Tecolote' is a rondo and is actually the third movement of a piano sonata by the composer. It is based on a Mexican folksong and sounds for all the world like a mariachi dance. It's fairly virtuosic and Gómez-Tagle plays it beautifully. Otey's 'Arabesque' is a pensive work that the pianist's rather hard tone does some disservice to. The pianist's father's bolero 'Never Leave Me', written while he was in his teens, is dedicated to the pianist's mother and is sinuously lovely.



Scott Morrison"