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Tchaikovsky Fantasy Philips 442-778-2
Tchaikovsky
total time 55:57
This is an interesting and brilliantly played collection. The Labeque sisters are able to invest it with their own effervescence and the ´Tarantella´ finale certainly tests their virtuosity, just as the composer intended. The Scriabin Fantasy follows, opening nocturnally and later becoming harmonically more complex . . . Alexandra Batalini´s transcription of the Marche slave ends the recital grandiloquently - the orchestral detail is all there, particularly the effulgent twiddly bits in the treble, and it is made to sound so commandingly pianistic that one does not miss the orchestra (and that´s saying a good deal with a composer like Tchaikovsky). The coda is quite splendid and this performance, with its thrilling fireworks at the end, would deservedly bring the house down at a live recital. which is just what it sounds like, with a very real and immediate piano recording.
There´s a famous passage in George Bernard Shaw´s music criticism in which he observes that Beethoven symphonies were kept alive not by the infrequent performances by orchestras, but by the thousands of pianists banging away at them in four-hand arrangements. Tchaikovsky clearly recognized the role of those amateurs in popularizing his music: he either wrote piano arrangements virtually as he was composing his pieces, as in the case of the Capriccio italien, included here in Tchaikovsky´s own arrangement, or he commissioned others to help him, often, it would seem, persons recommended by his publisher or by friends. Alexandra Batalina was a talented friend who knew Tchaikovsky´s music intimately. According to the notes accompanying this interesting disc, it was an ex-student of Tchaikovsky´s, Alexander Ziloti, who recommended the teenaged Sergei Rachmaninov to the composer for the job of arranging The Sleeping Beauty. The revised arrangement is quite artful, its introduction conveying much of the excitement of the original, its adagio much of the mystery. The arrangements of the dances from Swan Lake by Claude Debussy, written when he was eighteen, are more modest. Within their limits, his arrangements are extraordinary. From the opening splash of color, they sound like crypto-Debussy as well as Tchaikovsky. Tchaikovsky´s own arrangement of Capriccio italien begins with a one-fingered statement of the first theme. The Scriabin is a different kettle of fish: it was written for two pianos, and it is not to be played by amateurs, given the difficulty of its virtuoso passages. It´s more directly lyrical than virtually any Scriabin I have heard, and I know of no other available recording. This disc is played with the panache and charm for which the Labeque sisters are famous. It is well recorded by Philips. It has some historical importance and interest for those who want to know something about Rachmaninov and Debussy´s apprentice work. Of course these arrangements are relics of a bygone age as well, but I find them appealing.
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