Search - Bela Bartok, Fryderyk Chopin, Antonin Dvorak :: Romantic Piano Favourites Vol.1

Excellent sound, uneven program

Leslie Richford | Selsingen, Lower Saxony | 08/22/2004

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Recorded 1987 at the famous Italian Institute in Budapest, this CD certainly has the advantage of good sound: Balàzs Szokolay's concert piano is very realistic, and occasionally I thought I could even hear him breathing! As for the skill of the pianist: unless you happen to live in a great metropolis, you are unlikely to be able to hear piano playing like this live. Szokolay is especially good on the fast pieces: Weber's "Invitation to the Dance", Mendelssohn's "Hunting Song", Chopin's "Fantasie-Impromptu" all sound tremendous, and the close of the CD (Gershwin's 1938 preludes, Bartók's "Romanian Folkdances") show Szokolay at his best. The slower pieces are also well-played, but here I detected a lack of real emotion: Tchaikovsky's "Barcarolle", for example, can be really moving when played by someone like Mikhail Pletnev, but here it is just a pleasant piece of entertainment. The same could be said of some of the other slower pieces, including Liszt's "Liebestraum [Dream of Love] Nr. 3".



Piano music from 1780 (Mozart) to 1938 (Gershwin), 15 pieces by 14 composers, and apparently no uniting theme: the original title of this CD had nothing to do with "romantic", and I suppose the CD is really meant just to show what the piano (and the pianist) can achieve, but I found the programme very uneven."