Stick most classical musicians in front of a studio microphone and they will try to replicate a perfect performance under perfect concert-hall conditions. But what if they were to conceive an interpretation instead, shaping it for private rather than communal listening? Pavel Kolesnikov took this approach, winningly, with Bach’s venerable Goldberg Variations in 2020, and now applies it in his championing of the piano music of Reynaldo Hahn.
And Hahn deserves championing, as this programme of gorgeous, delicate miniatures demonstrates. Born in Caracas and raised in Paris, he moved in the leading artistic circles at the turn of the 20th century, and was Proust’s only significant lover. Today you’ll sometimes hear his songs in the recital hall, but his piano music is largely there for discovering.
Kolesnikov has chosen and ordered his selection with typically meticulous care. Nineteen of the 25 pieces are from Le Rossignol Éperdu, published in 1912, and hearing these is like paging through a book of musical fairytales. His playing puts them in a quiet, dreamy world, the colours of the sound clean but translucent, blurring into one another like watercolours.
In the midst of these, announced by a light-footed, expectant number entitled La Fête de Terpsichore, he includes half a dozen dances from Premières Valses, which form a kind of interlude that initially feels “public” and more extroverted but slips back into dreaminess, as if we’re walking away from the dancing.
As for his Goldbergs, he rejects the brightness that a “standard” Steinway would bring and instead uses a specially set up Yamaha, its quiet, almost woody tone all the more intimate for being closely miked. Throughout, he makes you feel you are being told a story – and there are moments when it feels as though he is playing the music not through speakers or headphones but from inside your head. The effect is slightly unsettling, and entirely beguiling.
This week’s other pick
Il Tenore, the second album from the new old-school tenor Freddie de Tommaso, is a calling-card recital of arias and duets from big operas. He’s impeccably Italianate in a belting Nessun Dorma and in the act one duet scene from Tosca with Lise Davidsen, no less – but he’s also stylish in French in the lovely Flower Song from Carmen. As recorded here, it’s a thrilling voice in its heft and dark, burnished tone, but a little earthbound, the topmost notes spot-on secure rather than soaring freely.