Pianist Elena Rozanova begins her entry in Harmonia Mundi’s “Les Nouveaux Musiciens” series with Prokofiev’s Toccata, sacrificing tone and character for sheer speed at the outset, and ultimately giving in to exhaustion at the end. I’ve rarely heard Ravel’s Miroirs so woefully lacking in color, dynamic shading, and sensuality. The trilled chords in Une barque sur l’ocean don’t suggest cresting waves as much as rattling cubes in an ice crushing machine, and Alborada del gracioso’s winged repeated notes are pummeled to smithereens. Noctuelles, however, benefits from the pianist’s dry-point clarity, as do most of Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes. Sometimes in the latter Rozanova’s rubatos soften the music’s caustic undertones, undermining, for instance, the expressive effect of the composer’s carefully marked tempo fluctuations in Nos. 8 and 17 that Vladimir Viardo (Nonesuch) and, more recently, Elisio Wirssaladze judge to perfection.
Next to the debonair irreverance and rhythmic control that characterize Frederic Chiu’s superb Prokofiev Third Sonata or Emil Gilels’ blistering, kinetic artistry in the same work, it’s perhaps unfair to mention Rozanova’s slightly less poised and less personalized fingerwork and bonier sonority. Maybe she’s a more alluring pianist live. On disc, though, she faces serious uphill competition.
