This CD album offers some of the most magnificent piano compositions of the Romantic Era, each a masterpiece in itself yet superseding the one before.
Label: Centaur Records | Catalog: 3427
Global Music Awards Winner for the Outstanding Achievement and Listener Impact
Live Concert at The Greene Space on WQXR – Ballade No. 3 in A-flat Major
Live performance of all the pieces in the album – Concert in Vienna
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Reviews of this Album
“Her range is enormous, whether we are speaking of color or dynamics, but where she differs from so many improvisatory pianists is in her ability to appear to be making it up as she goes along while never losing the sense of overall architecture.
Agranovich is a Ukrainian artist who studied at Juilliard with Sascha Gorodnitzki and Nadia Reisenberg. That is a terrific pedigree, but many students don’t really blossom into fully formed artists even with good teaching. Agranovich has. There are many great recordings of the Wanderer and the Ballades, and it would be preposterous to say that Agranovich is better than all of them. But what can be said is that she can take her respectable place alongside Curzon, Richter, Pollini, and even Edwin Fischer in the Schubert, and Moravec, Cortot, Rubinstein, Gornostaeva, and a few others as well in the Chopin.”
– Henry Fogel, Fanfare Read full review
“Like such Eastern European pianists as Lipatti, Fischer, Cziffra and, yes, Reisenberg, her Chopin is more muscular and less soft-grained than we are normally used to. (The only Western European pianist whose Chopin is equally wide-awake was Alfred Cortot, whose 1929 recordings of the Ballades compare favorably to Agranovich’s.) …In Agranovich’s skilled hands, these passages emerge as sturdy pieces of the overall structure, necessary transitions that bind the music together rather than simply rolling along. Such an approach makes all the difference in the world between glorified mood music and music that engages the mind as well as the emotions….
It makes perfect sense to me that it was written in November 1822 while Schubert took a break from writing his “Unfinished” Symphony—the music is of the same style, tragic in mood while employing strong counterpoint and inner voices to bring the feeling out. The pianist who approaches this work needs be mindful of this underlying structure, as it is imperative that everything be clear and all strands held together. Agranovich does this magnificently in addition to imparting more warmth to the work than young Brendel did.
This, then, is a disc of high intrinsic worth as well as another feather in the cap of this superb pianist. I highly recommend it.”
– Lynn René Bayley, The Art Music Lounge
“Agranovich avoids anything resembling a modified Russian approach, striking out to find her own Chopin, which turns out to be unusually tender, gentle, and entranced. Even more than in the Schubert her gift for lyrical phrasing comes to the fore. The highlight is her reading of Ballade No. 4 in F minor, a work that instantly separates the poets from the poseurs. Her poetry is undeniable, and she brings out the element of fantasy in captivating fashion.”
“She exhibits power and depth of tone, yet these qualities are subordinated to a natural lyrical gift of the kind that makes Schubert’s melodies float aloft.”
– Huntley Dent, Fanfare Read full review
“Starting with the four magnificent Ballades, Ukrainian-born Agranovich chooses to emphasize Chopin’s lyrical side, rather than the dramatic. She has her own sound and is definitely different from most of the other recordings.
Ballade 1 is executed with a delicacy and poetic vision like no other I am aware of. Climaxes are refined, the line is often reduced to a bare wisp of sound, and phrasing, articulated with great feeling, has its share of hesitations, awkwardness, and frequent disruption of the music’s natural flow. It is all very interesting. Ballade 2 finds things a little more traditional. The initial theme is gentle, and the second theme bursts in. All goes very well. Ballade 3 returns. Yes, it brought a smile to my face. Ballade 4, the longest, greatest, and most complex of the set, has its expression lathered on with a large trowel. It does have its share of beautiful effects… Her tone is lovely.”
– Alan Becker, American Record Guide
“Agranovich’s technical address is never in question, but what I really like about her performance is that it strikes me as combining the best of both Brendel and Kempff. It’s as if she has absorbed from Brendel his organizational skill to bind the piece together and reveal its unifying formal principles; while from Kempff, she has absorbed the sense of philosophical and spiritual probing. Of course, Agranovich is her own and artist and brings to the score both commanding technique and poetic expression; but it’s the ideal balance she achieves between the intellectual and the emotional that makes Agranovich’s reading of Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy so satisfying.”
– Jerry Dubins, Fanfare Read full review
Album Liner Notes – by Sophia Agranovich