The booklet notes for this release begin with a rather befuddled paragraph that contains the following sentences: “To Anna Scheps, an indispensable part of her passion for music is to connect with her listeners, to thrill them and to kindle their imagination. The prerequisites for that are the highest artistic standard and a
venue outside the ivory tower. She is an authentic personality who is able to reach the depths that enable art from the ‘other world’ to take place while appealing to a broader 21st-century audience.”
Now for the reality check: Scheps is a sensitive yet small-scaled interpreter, whose refined fingers spin out cameo portraits in subtle pastels rather than oil canvases created in broad brush strokes. For example, the embellishments and inner counterpoints in Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance have amazing clarity, at the expense of the swagger and dynamic drama you hear from Arthur Rubinstein. In the Schubert/Liszt and Chopin works Scheps tends to slow down at phrase ends or slightly linger on downbeats to the point of predictability. She also broaches the big climaxes in Liszt’s Tarantella and 13th Hungarian Rhapsody gingerly, albeit with less generic expression than in other selections.
And for all of her impressive digital control and tone shading, Scheps’ broadly paced Liszt St. Francis Légend loses sight of the long lines. If Rachmaninov’s Polka de V. R. doesn’t quite convey the impish panache of a Cherkassky or Horowitz, Scheps’ rubatos allow the intricate harmonies to fully sing out. Vocally oriented simplicity, in fact, characterizes her lovely performances of Liszt’s Loreley and the three Medtner Fairy Tales. Whether or not this disc will thrill 21st-century audiences and kindle their imagination remains to be seen.
