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Chopin - Etudes, op.25, 4 Scherzi

£14.51

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Label: Warner

Cat No: 9029676424

Barcode: 0190296764240

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 1

Genre: Instrumental

Release Date: 24th September 2021

Works

Chopin, Frederic

Etudes (12), op.25
Scherzi (4)

Artists

Beatrice Rana (piano)

Works

Chopin, Frederic

Etudes (12), op.25
Scherzi (4)

Artists

Beatrice Rana (piano)

About

'Beatrice Rana set a new standard. She made the Chopin sound as poetic and colorful as anything he ever wrote. Her playing was refined and soft-spoken in its brilliance throughout. She had the audience rapt.' – The New York Times

Sound/Video

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12 Etudes op.25 - no.1 in A flat major 'Aeolian Harp'
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12 Etudes op.25 - no.2 in F minor
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12 Etudes op.25 - no.3 in F major
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12 Etudes op.25 - no.4 in A minor
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12 Etudes op.25 - no.5 in E minor
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12 Etudes op.25 - no.6 in G sharp minor
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12 Etudes op.25 - no.7 in C sharp minor
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12 Etudes op.25 - no.8 in D flat major
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12 Etudes op.25 - no.9 in G flat major
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12 Etudes op.25 - no.10 in B minor
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12 Etudes op.25 - no.11 in A minor 'Winter Wind'
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12 Etudes op.25 - no.12 in C minor
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Scherzo no.1 in B minor, op.20
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Scherzo no.2 in B flat minor, op.31
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Scherzo no.3 in C sharp minor, op.39
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Scherzo no.4 in E major, op.54

Europadisc Review

The Italian pianist Beatrice Rana made her first Chopin recording – the Preludes, coupled with Scriabin’s Second Sonata – in 2011 after winning the first and audience prizes at the Montreal International Musical Competition. Since 2013, when her silver medal at the Van Cliburn Competition brought her to wider attention, she has made a series of critically-acclaimed recordings, many of them under her exclusive contract to Warner Classics, ranging from concertos by Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev to solo piano works by Ravel, Stravinsky and a hugely successful account of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Now, a decade on from her first disc, she returns to Chopin with an unusual but highly effective coupling: the Op.25 Études together with the four Scherzi. This programme allows her to display her (and Chopin’s!) artistry in both smaller- and larger-scale forms, and the result is one of the most enthralling discs we’ve heard so far this year.

The Études were set down in Berlin in February 2020, just before the worldwide Coronavirus pandemic took hold of Europe. The Op.25 set is normally paired with its more popular Op.10 predecessors, but by focussing on the later works Rana focuses our attention on some of Chopin’s most demanding and absorbing ‘miniatures’. Although she came relatively late to Chopin (her teacher, Benedetto Lupo, wouldn’t introduce her to his music until her mid-teens), she has all the power, finesse and variety of touch needed for this musically and technically demanding repertoire. She also has a finely-tuned sense of underlying pulse – essential in music where the highly-variegated surface demands a higher-level control of long-term rhythm and phrasing.

From the outset, Rana’s account of these Études is very special indeed. In the A flat major opening work, she is able to bring out inner voices with complete naturalness, endowing the music with more than a hint of volatility (in tempo and dynamics) while maintaining a strong sense of flow and line. Similarly in the F minor Second Étude she reveals dark undertones while scarcely ruffling the crystalline surface of the music. There’s something dogged yet mercurial about the F major no.3 in Rana’s hands, particularly the richness she brings to the B major central section and the extra forcefulness she brings to the forzati at the F recapitulation. Don't be fooled by the initially staid tempo here – things soon heat up!

In the agitated A minor polka of no.4, Rana skilfully highlights the latent tensions (particularly the suggestive semitonal inflections) amid the music’s notorious syncopations. In no.5 (E minor) there’s something demonic about the way she spreads the left hand chords and tugs at the tempo, to further emphasise the strangeness of the dissonant outer sections of this 'wrong note' study; this contrasts with the glorious central major-mode Più lento, which rises to passionate climaxes before an impassioned return of the main idea. And how those crushed notes in the closing bars are made to tell!

No.6 in G sharp minor is the famous ‘double thirds’ study, technically among the most difficult. Like Zlata Chochieva on Piano Classics (but even more tellingly), Rana lets the opening double-trills emerge from the fading embers of the Fifth Étude; one gets the sense that something higher is at stake here, again with a distinctly demonic edge, contrasted brilliantly with the sudden crystalline purity of the leggierissimo at bar 27.

The heart of the Op.25 set is the C sharp minor Lento of no.7. Here Rana discovers a wealth of layers in the extraordinary harmonies of this movement, with its searingly intense ‘cello’ line which momentarily explodes into swirls of abandon. The sense of tonal concentration, and the levels of dynamic nuance and emotional weight, are utterly spellbinding, as is the sheer technical aplomb with which she dispatches the ‘sixths’ Étude (no.8) and a supremely confident account of the so-called ‘Butterfly’ (no.9).

Rana views the Op.25 set as an organic whole, and the last three studies in particular (all in minor keys) as constituting a trilogy. In no.10 she is completely in control of the tumbling, diabolical cascades of the B minor outer sections, but yields to the beauties of the central B major episode. After the unadorned and harmonised statements of the main theme in its opening four-bar Lento, Rana throws herself into the tempestuous main Allegro con brio of the A minor ‘Western Wind’ study, with closing bars whose weighty ferocity could summon the dead. That edge-of-seat wildness spills over thrillingly into the concluding C minor study, sometimes referred to as the 'Ocean' etude – an apt description for Rana’s toweringly elemental performance here.

The four Scherzi span Chopin’s ‘early’, ‘middle’ and ‘late’ periods (if one can append such labels to a life cut short so prematurely), and Rana clearly relishes the virtuosic challenges of the First Scherzo (in B minor, 1833) as much as she does the intense volatility and anguish of the Second and Third (the B flat minor of 1837 and C sharp minor of 1838-39) and the classical refinement of the Fourth (in E major, 1842-43). On these larger canvases, the power and variety of her playing is even more apparent, as well as her control of the music’s long-term trajectory. And it’s also possible to detect an extra level of expressive depth, perhaps the consequence (as Rana herself notes) of studying and recording these works in February 2021 amid all the uncertainties of lockdown.

The central section of the First Scherzo is achingly beautiful, while the transition back to the virtuosity of the main theme is brilliantly judged. The mercurial mood changes of the Second are handled with extraordinary assurance, the focus of her attack in the B flat minor main subject as remarkable as the seemingly infinite variety of colour, and the layers of finesse and depth she finds, in the softer-hued major-key passages. One could argue that the volatility of this and the Third Scherzo are best suited to Rana’s pianistic temperament, were it not for the fact that she turns in an account of the Fourth whose sense of balance, wholeness, radiance and charm place it on a level every bit as exalted as the rest of this outstanding album. Let us hope that we don’t have to wait another decade for Beatrice Rana’s next Chopin album!