The title
Tchaikovsky on the Piano
suggests that this is an album of transcriptions. In fact, some of the pieces are genuine piano works; these are interspersed among the larger transcriptions and have the function of interludes, although several are delightful. Sample one of the excerpts from
Tchaikovsky
's inexplicably neglected final piano work, the
18 Pieces, Op. 72
, which, in the hands of pianist
Yevgeny Sudbin
, reveals great depths. However, the main attraction is the group of transcriptions of ballet music (and of the overture to
Glinka
's
Ruslan and Lyudmila
, a common opener to
concerts
Sudbin
has played). Some of these feature
's 12-year-old daughter
Bella
, who sounds promising indeed. The transcriptions are by
, although for the Waltz from
The Sleeping Beauty
, he sticks closely to
Rachmaninov
's arrangement of this famous tune. They lend an inward quality to, especially, the music from
Romeo and Juliet
. There are plenty of virtuoso passages, but what strikes one most strongly is the personal quality of
's encounter with
; he finds unusual piano pieces and imparts an unusual quality to the ballet music. On one hand, an audience of
's time would have found absolutely nothing surprising about playing this music on the piano. On the other,
makes something quite distinctive out of it. The music was recorded at various places during the coronavirus pandemic, but the mastering engineers have stitched it together into a reasonably cohesive sonic whole. ~ James Manheim