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CD Feature/ Alina Kabanova: "Piano Recital"

  Tobias

Alina Kabanova is not one of those premature superstars that claim to know it all once their braces are taken out. Acknowledging the fact that you need an experienced pair of ears to support you in your early career stages should be self-evident, but this mostly goes unnoticed in those picture-perfect record-company fact sheets. It is therefore both understood and sympathetic that she thanks her teachers from college in the introductory paragraph of the booklet. On the other hand, as she rightly pointed out in a recent interview, there comes a moment in every artist’s life that one feels the strong will to play a piece in a personal fashion – and then take the necessary action.

She has certainly done so on this, her debut recording. Even though there is a lot to discuss or even to disagree with, it portraits a pianist who is not afraid of showing her true face – which is to say a lot, when most players seem content to indulge in technical warfare or to rattle off some famous blueprint. It all starts right at the very beginning, with the program for this recital: How refreshing to hear Bach’s Chaconne in Busoni’s transcription again, an arrangement all too often overlooked, and Schumann’s “Symphonische Etuden” are also not exactly every-day affairs, without actually being complete surprises. Rachmaninov was to be expexcted, but then his fourth “Musical Moment” is Kabanova’s trademark track, which feels like a second skin to her. Throughout the album, there is a fine balance between the popular and the slightly leftfield and the same fine balance applies to the interpretational approach. There is a tragic tone, but it never becomes self-destructive, there is sweet melancholy, but no drunken sadness and experimentation is never allowed to distract from a piece’s initial intentions. Which is why the swinging middle part of the second movement of Beethoven’s “Sonata in C minor”, does not result in a full-blown jazz-session, but gives way to a dimmed, subdued finale.

While this may seem organic to some, others may find it overstretched. And what’s to make of the highly striking “Etude No. 2” by Rubinstein or the somewhat detached recording? Well, it only goes to show that there is still a lot of room for debate. Also, the album never argues that this is the only way to play these compositions. Merely, that this is the way Alina Kabanova wants to play them. We don’t claim to know it all, but isn't that one of the most important things a debut CD should offer?

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