Monday, 11 November 2013 15:08

Artur Pizarro - Maurice Ravel - Linn Records - Record Review

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The Portuguese-born pianist Artur Pizarro is not a new artist at Linn Records, with his beautiful and lively interpretations of Bethoven's piano sonatas and Chopin`s reminisanser and sonatas. These are divided into four SACD discs, all of which are hybrid multi-channel records.
Now it is the turn of impressionist composers, and first out is this album with compositions by Ravel. It is the first in a series of two, to form the complete piano works of Maurice Ravel.

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Posted by Karl Erik Sylthe, on 15 March 2007

Music *****
Sound *****
Label: Linn Records  

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No surprise that Pizarro demonstrates passionate interpretations also by Ravel, and that he is just as much at home in a musical material that is far more modern than in the previous releases.

Already at first brief listening I attached myself especially to two pieces that are my clear favorites. The first is part 2 of Gaspard de la Nuit, called Le Gibet . In addition to imagining hearing kinship to the much younger French composer Olivier Messiaen, there are obvious lines of Claude Debussy's tones in this artful composition.

Far more radical is the last piece of the disc - La Valse. A reckless "comments" to the Viennese waltz, which in its ferocity almost expresses a kind of desperation and despair.

Neither this time buckets Linn Records, which eventually has a long tradition of coming with multi-channel publishing with creative but accurate approach to sound mix for many channels. Yet it is sonically some surprises compared to the previous releases with Artur Pizarro. For this time recording room's acoustics had a far more dominant role than in the previous four releases. And at this point Linn Records balances on an edge, cause it is not to be denied that this is a bit on the price of the conveyance of the precision of Pizarro's feasting of keys, a precision which of course is present in full measure.

It's kind of like this option focuses more on the mood of the music than nuance and precision of the individual tones. And so one might say that this is precisely in line with Impressionism, therefore it is an impressionistic sound mix? I think it is also interesting to notice that this recording sonically works better in multi channel than in stereo.

 

I have chosen to give the disc top marks also for audio performance, despite the fact that there is made a choice that has side effects. And it is because Linn Records have completed this option with very high quality.

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Karl Erik Sylthe

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