This extraordinary performance uses the simple idea of dance to link music from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, from eastern and western Europe, from the Old and New Worlds. British pianist
Kathryn Stott selects music by composers usually classified as modern (
Stravinsky,
Bartók), as late Romantic (Brahms, Tchaikovsky), as nationalist (Dvorák, Albéniz,
Villa-Lobos), and as semi-popular (
Ernesto Lecuona,
Astor Piazzolla, and Camargo Guarnieri, whose name is misspelled in the tracklist), as well as several composers who do not fit any of these categories. All of these composers wrote music rooted in the popular dances of the times in which they worked, and the continuity of the dance tradition, in
Stott's hands, comes to seem as important as the various "watershed" moments generally thought to define the music of the early twentieth century. The placement of
Chopin's Mazurka in A minor, Op. 17/4, at the end of the program has an exquisitely nostalgic feel, suggesting the sensation of a glance back at a venerated ancestor for all the music.
Stott moves effortlessly between famous pieces like the Sibelius Valse Triste, Op. 44, and oddities like Graham Fitkin's Old Style, which here receives its first recording. The idea of the dance is certainly pushed in different directions by these composers: toward the minimal by Satie, toward the geometric by
Stravinsky, and toward the satirical by
Shostakovich.
Stott arranges the program in such a way that a new perspective on the same kind of basic material appears at every turn, and she seems equally comfortable with diverse kinds of material. Especially noteworthy is her version of
Astor Piazzolla's Milonga del Ángel, in an arrangement for solo piano by Kyoko Yamamoto:
Stott creates a fair facsimile of
Piazzolla's bandoneón rolls and his general sensuously grim mood. This disc is easy enough on the ears, but it will keep you coming back again and again. Chandos' sound is superb.