Bach, Debussy, Mathias, Albéniz, Falla & Smetana

Although she has only just completed formal harp studies, Catrin Finch has already made a name for herself in the harp world with competition successes, and beyond the confines of the harp community through her appointment as harpist to the Prince of Wales. This is a CD to celebrate the range of her considerable performance skills, but actually contains only one original composition; the rest of the disc is made up of transcriptions and arrangements.

Our rating

4

Published: January 20, 2012 at 3:21 pm

COMPOSERS: Albeniz,Bach,Debussy,Falla & Smetana,Mathias
LABELS: Kissan Productions
ALBUM TITLE: Collection: From Coast to Coast
WORKS: Works by Bach, Debussy, Mathias, Albéniz, Falla & Smetana
PERFORMER: Catrin Finch (harp)
CATALOGUE NO: KISSAN 001 (distr. Codaex)

Although she has only just completed formal harp studies, Catrin Finch has already made a name for herself in the harp world with competition successes, and beyond the confines of the harp community through her appointment as harpist to the Prince of Wales. This is a CD to celebrate the range of her considerable performance skills, but actually contains only one original composition; the rest of the disc is made up of transcriptions and arrangements. The recording lacks a certain lusciousness and radiant halo around the sound found on other modern harp recordings, but Finch’s playing comes across as very clean. Although all the repertoire is taken from the classical canon, the image that Finch appears to be seeking is one more associated with pop music and the design of the CD, portrait and artwork reflects this. Her style is one of virtuosity and display and this makes for a rather uncomfortably fast and un-Romantic Valse romantique by Debussy, with internal tempo relationships unbalanced and depth of tone for supporting bass lines sacrificed to velocity. That apart, the faster-moving repertoire on this disc is very exciting, especially the arrangement of Falla’s Spanish Dance No. 1.

Danielle Perrett

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