<< -- 2 -- John Bell Young INCOMPARABLE PERFORMANCES
Nor is Ms Baytelman afraid of taking her time as she finds the subtlest
variance within the course or a single phrase. Witness her exceptionally
poetic reading of the migratory Albaicín [listen
-- track 7], to which she lends its immanent harmonic wanderlust just
the right touch of sadness. Few pianists have delivered the divine El
Polo, a passionate lament in the orbit of a dance of seductive syncopes,
as gloriously as Ms Baytelman [listen -- track 8].
And who could fail to imagine Madrid's famous bohemian district, Lavapiés,
its narrow streets awash in the aromatic breezes of an urban summer, when
portrayed as intensely as it is in this vivacious reading [listen
-- track 9]?
In some ways, Ms Baytelman puts me in mind of Elizabeth Schwarzkopf;
not only for the unimpeachable technique, but for an interpretive savoir-faire
the principal capital of which is its grasp, on the minutest level, of inflection.
For this pianist, every compositional event is a change of climate, an occasion
to be explored and illuminated from innumerable perspectives. Where less
skilled pianists would just assume stomp their feet at every syncope, grounding
the music mercilessly into the dust with the fervor of a bullfighter, Ms
Baytelman gives way to the rarefied refinements of metaphor and concept.
Her tone is rich and seductive, drawing as it does the listener into its
orbit with extraordinary discretion, but also with a kind of measured abandon
that allows the music to speak as well as dance. Indeed, I would be hard
put to identify any pianist, save Michel Block, who navigates the central
arabesque of the Moorish Jérez so profoundly and with
such exquisite, contained fervor [listen -- track 11].
Here, Ms Baytelman's refined music making, informed by her meticulous
study of Albéniz's manuscripts, melts any resistance to its
charm, and is, to put it mildly, sublime.
Continue >>
Copyright © 7 July 2001
John Bell Young, Tampa, Florida, USA
CD INFORMATION - ELAN 82288
PURCHASE THIS SET FROM ELAN RECORDINGS
VISIT POLA BAYTELMAN'S WEBSITE
<< Music
& Vision home Recent reviews
Malcolm Arnold >>
|