Sleeping beauty

Description

Locking “The Sleeping Beauty” or “The Nutcracker” inside a piano? Mikhail Pletnev did so, with real artistry, creating these transcriptions for his own use. Magnificently pianistic, they make both the dance and the pantomime in “The Sleeping Beauty” visible, which Claire Huangci plays in a very grand style, performing entrechats and setting the scenery. Her fantasy is undeniable, her skill unquestionable; there is a real giocoso in her playing that seems to mock the final Mazurka, and which we find again in the counted steps, the slightly mechanical rotation of the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” taken from “The Nutcracker,” which she adds as a bonus. Already a little Prokofiev? Yes, because the real subject of her album is indeed the ten pieces from “Romeo and Juliet” that the composer transcribed for piano, a brilliant writing that forgets none of the details of the orchestra, which the young American pianist brings out without overloading everything with the effects one is tempted to use. In the clarity of her playing, one can follow the ballet’s action, for Prokofiev has placed pantomime everywhere here, with the result of turning the piano into theater. A lovely, unpretentious record, which I believe was this artist’s first album for Berlin Classics. I’ll come back to the others afterward. (Discophilia - Artalinna.com) (Jean-Charles Hoffelé)