I first became aware of the young Italian pianist Mariangela Vacatello through her impressive recital appearance during the 2010 International Keyboard Institute and Festival at Mannes College, along with her Brilliant Classics solo debut featuring Liszt’s Twelve Transcendental Etudes. Vacatello clearly has the fingers to negotiate the equally considerable yet very different hurdles that Debussy’s Etudes present.
She impetuously and effortlessly tosses off the final etude’s treacherous leaps from chords to octaves, and shapes the rapid scales in Pour les huit doigts with harmonically pointed shifts between legato and detached articulation. However, Vacatello is not a great colorist (the dry, somewhat constricted sonics don’t help), and both the tonal and expressive limitations of her rather astringent sonority become apparent when measured alongside the characterful sheen you hear from Mitsuko Uchida and Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, or the even more sensual Florent Bouffard.
In Estampes, Vacatello controls Pagodes’ textural layers with steady, knowing hands, yet her tendency to speed up at climactic points in Jardins sous la pluie borders on the vulgar. In L’Isle joyeuse her brittle fingerwork and pounded-out loud passages hold little allure, yet her dry-point articulation of the Second Arabesque’s embellishments perfectly captures the music’s cameo-like wit. Happily, Vacatello’s tone opens up for a relaxed and sensitive performance of the First Arabesque. While this disc faces artistically and sonically superior competition from all corners of the catalog, the promise that Vacatello displays in her best playing certainly will not deter me from following her career.
