Hélène Grimaud: "Resonances" (Deutsche Grammophon)
French pianist Hélène Grimaud has released of one of her best recital discs, a mixed-composer program consisting of Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 8, K. 310, Berg's Piano Sonata, Op. 1, Liszt's Piano Sonata in B minor and Bartok's "Romanian Folk Dances." Whatever these pieces have to do with the disc's title, "Resonances," the musical sequencing has some midsize revelations.
Everything is played with Grimaud's charismatic boldness and attention to detail. Her remarkably sympathetic Mozart breathes with naturalness you wouldn't expect from a performer who rarely dips into this period. She framed Liszt with different reactions to his breakdown of tonality. The Berg sonata has an unleashed quality as it dives into a new world of expressive possibilities, while Bartok looks to some of the thornier folk music he collected as a ticket to the future.
Although you'd expect Grimaud to burn down the Liszt in virtuosic fashion, she downplays the rhetoric and uses color more as a mode of expression, in keeping with accounts of Liszt's playing. Even for those who know this piece, Grimaud is full of distinctive phrase readings that prompt return hearings.
DAVID PATRICK STEARNS, PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
TOBY TWINING: "Eurydice"; Eric Brenner, soprano; Liz Filos, alto; Steven Bradshaw, tenor; Toby Twining, alto/baritone; Mark Johnson, bass; Floreta Shapiro, cello (Cantaloupe)
One of the great surprises of Sarah Ruhl's play "Eurydice" is its incidental music score by Toby Twining, created with choirs of overdubbed voices and discreet instrumental accompaniment. The effect, both in the theater and on this new recording of the music, is beyond otherworldly and downright mind-blowing.
Since incidental music need not have any typical sense of beginning, middle and end, the music soars with a breezy sense of fantasy, occasionally waving to 1950s doo-wop and 1970s folk music, touching down in the wordless realm of Meredith Monk and going deep into the endless possibilities suggested by electronic music.
