★★★★★
In the days when records had two sides and plane tickets were paper booklets, the Grieg piano concerto would get paired with the Schumann on new releases and the Ravel G major with his own left-hander. These twins sat together on LP like Cav and Pag at La Scala, a reassurance of balance and normality.
Nowadays, two concertos would be considered short measure. Digital albums have room for more. So the Ukrainian pianist Anna Fedorova has twinned the Ravel concerto with George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and has filled the space in between with a cornucopia of surprises under a libertarian title. Her portfolio contains three miniatures by the Parisian composer Germaine Taillferre, a partita by the Ukrainian Myroslav Skoryk, a peace prayer by an American, Andrew Blickernderfer, and — to my astonishment and delight — piano paraphrases of French songs by Barbara and her sometime lover Georges Moustaki, the latter (‘Ma liberté’) giving the album its title. The running order looks almost reckless. The rest is a matter of personal taste and perspective.
I was unsure about the Ravel concerto on first hearing. The Orquesta Sinfonica de Castilla and Leon, conducted by Pablo Gonzalez, are not always in the same zone as the soloist, who slows things down to near-stasis to provoke them. In the Gershwin they eventually agree on a beat after a bit of a battle. Second time round, I didn’t mind these conflicts at all. These are exploratory interpretations rather than commanding performances.
Fedorova has a mind of her own and it is her picture on the cover, after all. What happens between the concertos is much more tightly controlled. The meditations of Tailleferre are quite aptly counter-balanced by Gershwin’s introspective Three Preludes. And the Barbara and Moustaki improvisations are very pleasing to this fan of mid-century French chanson. This may not be a perfect record, but it’s one I’ll listen to many times again. Someone in your family’s going to love it.
