Works by Tchaikovsky & Stravinsky
Andrey Gugnin (piano)
Hyperion CDA684712 83 mins
This album of Russian ballet transcriptions sparkles like a glass bauble hanging amidst the fairy lights.
Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky wrote so colourfully for orchestra that it might seem as if the character is being drained out by transferring their scores to the piano. Not a bit of it.
Not only have the transcriptions themselves been brilliantly imagined by Mikhail Pletnev, Guido Agosti and Stravinsky himself, but Andrey Gugnin is an ideal interpreter, a performer of agility and perceptiveness.
Pletnev’s 1978 suites from Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker and The Sleeping Beauty bring 19th-century fairytale charm, and the piano becomes an orchestra in its own right. Gugnin convinces us that we are hearing, or at least not missing, a celesta here or a flute there.
Even better, he proves himself an excellent storyteller. The excitement of The Nutcracker’s opening march draws us into the ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy’, as we enter a new magical realm. The national dances are beautifully characterised, but it’s the sheer beauty of his playing in the gorgeous Intermezzo and Andante maestoso that makes this special.
The same virtues are true of The Sleeping Beauty suite, for which, as the booklet note writer Marina Frolova-Walker says, Pletnev takes ‘a freer approach’, involving ‘reshuffling and recomposition’. This piano version is a wondrous creation, and Gugnin infuses it with belief, particularly in the diaphanous moments.
Stravinsky adds 20th-century bite with three movements from Petrushka and The Firebird, although his Russian ballet heritage is never far away. Gugnin is dazzingly virtuosic – it must be quite a thing to hear these pieces in concert.
