Rachmaninov: Piano Sonata No.2, Balakirev: Islamey

Rachmaninov: Piano Sonata No.2, Balakirev: Islamey

This is a fascinating, unusual collection of Russian piano music. Kern, a gold medal winner at the 2001 Cliburn Competition, mixes familiar music with novelties in an intelligently programmed recital. We get Rachmaninov's over-familiar Prelude in C Sharp Minor in the context of the otherwise unfamiliar Morceaux de fantaisie, Op. 3, of which it is the second piece. Balakirev's notorious fingerbuster Islamey is preceded by his rarely-heard In the Garden. Most unusually, Kern includes the Prelude and Fugue in G Sharp Minor by Sergei Taneyev, pupil of Tchaikovsky and teacher of Rachmaninov, considered one of Russia's most important composers by Russians and mostly unknown elsewhere. Kern's playing is colorful, fluent, and convincing throughout most of the recital, and she makes Rachmaninov's Second Piano Sonata less bombastic and more attractive than usual. She rather falls apart in Islamey, though, introducing strange pauses at the ends of phrases and generally showing the strain of the murderous writing. Up to that point, the disc has more than an hour of excellent playing, and thus it's still very much worth hearing. --Leslie Gerber

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