Franziska Lee’s first Capriccio solo CD presented an intelligently curated and capably executed recital of works by 20th century French composers. Her followup release lavishes similar treatment upon five British composers.
The craggy neo-classicism of Tippett’s First sonata makes for a good concert opener, especially in Lee’s highly articulated, rhythmically incisive reading. Her piercing detaché passagework in the third-movement Presto, for instance, differs from Paul Crossley’s faster, more generalized Decca and CRD recordings, although Murray Perahia’s finale keeps the foreground and background material in better perspective. Lee’s similarly harder-hitting approach to the Funfair movement from Britten’s Holiday Suite differs from Stephen Hough’s altogether suaver interpretation.
Listeners familiar with Frank Bridge’s Three Sketches may appreciate Lee’s literalism and attention to inner voices, while preferring Mark Bebbington’s songful flexibility. Capriccio’s relatively close engineering underlines the linear emphasis in Lee’s performance of Ireland’s Ballade of London Nights. Yet again, Bebbington’s more luminously engineered and slower traversal proves a more seductive option.
While Lee certainly gets around the thick textures and swirling passages in Bax’s early, sprawling single-movement Sonata No. 1, her frequently square phrasing and insufficient coloristic resources yield to more emotionally varied and fluent catalog options from Eric Parkin and Michael Endres. I’m not certain if the late British pianist Iris Loveridge’s 1959 Lyrita recording was the work’s first, but its combination of nobility and excitement remains unsurpassed, despite the aging sonics. Capriccio’s annotations say nothing about the works nor Franziska Lee’s programming concept.
