| Fussy Schumann, Technical Aplomb (review from amazon.com) |
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Hideyo Harada is a Japanese pianist living in Europe. She has a number of competition prizes in her background and certainly does not lack for technical finesse. I had never heard anything she'd recorded before this CD, and on the basis of this disc am not inclined to search out any more. (She has recorded a disc of Grieg Lyric Pieces to some acclaim Edvard Grieg: Lyric Pieces [Hybrid SACD] and I can imagine that she is better suited to them by virtue of their brevity. She seems to have difficulty building a work's architecture satisfactorily.) Each moment of these performances might satisfy on its own, but with the stop-and-start tempi and extreme fussiness as regards effects, each note calculated and spontaneity thus disappointed, the end result is a patchwork that does not build to an effective whole. Just compare her Fantasie in C, Op. 17, with that of Evgeny Kissin Schumann: Kreisleriana; Fantasie, Op. 17 and you'll see what I mean. The same is true when comparing these artists' Kreisleriana, which however in Harada's hands is more successful than the Fantasie by virtue of its being a collection of short pieces whose slower sections, as it happens, are emotionally satisfying.
The Arabesque, Op. 18, the short filler on this disc, is a disappointment because of the extreme calculation that is audible in virtually every measure. I think Ms Harada might want to think less and feel more in this repertoire.
Scott Morrison
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