Ekaterina Mechetina SERGEI RACHMANINOV Variations on a Theme of Corelli - Piano Transcriptions

One harrowingly difficult set of variations by Rachmaninoff and a variety of his best-known transcriptions: this is not debut material for the pianistically faint-of-heart. But then, Ekaterina Mechetina is anything but faint-hearted. This collection was shrewdly chosen to emphasize some of her more spectacular qualities, and in general, it succeeds well.

Mechetina is an aggressive player and a superb technician, facts that immediately become apparent in the Corelli Variations. She plays with complete mastery of the music at any tempo, and seems especially to relish the challenge of the faster, more complex variations—such as the furious seventh, marked vivace, with its giant bell in the bass never obscuring the theme and avalanche of figurations riding above it, or the quicksilver 10th variation, with its extremely clean and even articulation. The late Romantic rhetoric of the fourth and 15th variations find her warm and committed, with a natural rubato and long-breathed phrasing. Similarly, she doesn’t lose her way in the freer passages of the 14th, cimbalom-like variation; while the arpeggiated runs that twice erupt during its length coruscate. The way the pianist plays the opening theme demonstrates yet another useful virtue, all too rare these days: the ability to perform slowly, solemnly, without any trace of nerves or need to push ahead.

Many of the same features are shown elsewhere on this release. The Bach selections are bright and cleanly articulated, with an assertive attack that the pianist softens well. Not that this is soft playing, however, but vibrant, angular, and often rich, in keeping with the personal and deliberately non-authentic nature of these piano transcriptions. I did find a couple of passages in the Gavotte hard in tone, however. It points to the one fault in Mechetina’s rendition of this music: a certain want of color. She’s certainly not steely-fingered on this recording, but tends to deploy the panoply of techniques used to control this aspect of pianism (dynamics, fingering, pedaling, etc) far more discreetly than she does the others. As a result, the Mendelssohn and Rimsky-Korsakov lack gossamer, though they have all the point, clarity, and accuracy at caffeinated tempos one could desire. Her versions of Lilacs and the Cradle Song are persuasively lyrical, but the two Kreisler numbers are just a bit too prosaic despite their virtuosity to be completely convincing. (Barry Brenesal)