Don’t let this collection’s provincial title and graphics deceive you, for the young Israeli pianist Itzhak Solsky is a serious artist. His poetic instincts come to the fore in Bach’s B-flat Partita. Like his former teacher Maria Tipo, Solsky paints this composer in Romantic shapes and colors without sacrificing contrapuntal clarity (the final Gigue is a case in point). However, the Haydn Sonata’s outer movements are too billowy and rounded off for the music’s sudden silences and unexpected harmonic twists to truly register. Solsky’s Chopin hits and misses between a beautifully executed yet underplayed B minor sonata, a fussy Barcarolle, and an intelligently detailed “Winter Wind” etude. Likewise, Beethoven’s Op. 111 receives a proficient yet glib performance that contrasts with an involving, muscular reading of the Op. 10 No. 1 C minor sonata. The limpid, delicately shaded Fauré Theme et Variations is beautiful to behold, although I prefer Vlado Perlemuter’s stronger polyphonic projection. Ravel’s Jeux d’eau gets a rhapsodic, subjectively elegant treatment that convincingly differs from the poised classicism and symmetry heard in recordings by Gieseking, Casadesus, Simon, and Hewitt, among others. Good booklet notes, excellent engineering.
