Margaryta Golovko is a young pianist born in Ukraine, whose first prize victory in the First Midwest International Piano Competition in June 2014 resulted in a cash prize, an orchestral engagement, professional management, and the present release. The serious, somewhat distant impression conveyed by her photo on the CD booklet spills over into her immensely capable yet rather earnest interpretation of Brahms’ F minor sonata.
One cannot question how she shapes the composer’s big chords, thick textures, and ungrateful passagework with authority and technical finish, never making an ugly sound, no matter how thorny the writing. Yet very little of the music’s ardor and impetuous energy comes through, possibly due to the studio microphone’s all-hearing, unforgiving presence.
There’s no sense of abandon or forward impetus in the treacherous octaves at the start of the first movement’s development section, in the Scherzo’s upbeat scales, or throughout the dead-on accurate yet inhibited Finale coda. Golovko’s alla breve treatment for the Andante is neither too fast nor too slow, but the arching lyrical lines never really come out of the pianist’s literalist shell. And you can imagine more nuanced, characterful Intermezzo movements.
Golovko seems far more attuned to the Schumann Humoreske’s unpredictable mood swings and elaborate tempo modifications, musically and pianistically speaking. Pages of passage work that can sound like mere filler in the wrong hands here emerge with appreciable variety by way of unusual accents, dynamic inflections, and subtle pedal effects. Golovko may not quite convey the force of personality distinguishing the catalog’s great Humoreskes (including Arrau, Richter, Lupu, both Ashkenazy versions, and Schiff), yet it’s still an enjoyable performance. I’d like to hear Golovko live and in a wider variety of repertoire before I reach a verdict. Blue Griffin provides superb and realistic engineering that is up to the label’s highest sonic standards.
