Fashion
5 Classical Music Albums You Can Listen to Right Now
Ravel’s solo piano works, choral pieces by David Lang and Palestrina, and miniatures written for the pianist Adam Tendler are among the highlights.
Ravel: The Complete Solo Piano Works
Seong-Jin Cho, piano (Deutsche Grammophon)
Seong-Jin Cho’s 2017 Debussy recording was full of bold colors and sharply delineated textures, which suited that composer perfectly. So I had high hopes for this set of Ravel’s complete solo piano works. Surprisingly, it leaves a more mixed impression. As elsewhere, Cho plays with remarkable sensitivity and easily meets the music’s technical demands. Yet the high refinement of his pianism sometimes drains these works of their intensity and expressive focus.
“Jeux d’Eau,” for example, is beautifully articulated but muted in its sonority, missing the atmosphere other pianists have elicited. I loved Cho’s dignified, unsentimental approach to “Pavane pour une Infante Défante,” but that works less well in “Valses Nobles et Sentimentales.” The nightmarish atmosphere of “Gaspard de la Nuit” emerges only fitfully, though the control and dexterity are wondrous.
The five-movement “Miroirs” is a microcosm of this album’s strengths and weaknesses. The birdsong of “Oiseaux Tristes” has rarely sounded so desolate, and, with carefully layered dynamics, the bells of “La Vallée des Cloches” seem to drift in from another world. The more extroverted pieces leave less of an impression, as Cho seems determined to rein in “Une Barque sur l’Océan” and “Alborada del Gracioso.” There is so much to admire here, but I just wish Cho had found a bit more in music he plays so well. DAVID WEININGER
David Lang: ‘poor hymnal’
The Crossing; Donald Nally, conductor (Cantaloupe)
With “poor hymnal,” David Lang has written hymns for a religion that doesn’t exist. There’s no book of worship or complicated dogma. Its only document is this hymnal, which, over and over again, proclaims the virtues of charity and compassion for those less fortunate.
