Hexameron is a set of variations based on the march from Bellini’s I Puritani, to which six leading virtuoso pianist/composers of their day—Liszt, Chopin, Thalberg, Herz, Czerny, and Pixis—contributed a variation. Although a concert featuring all six composers battling it out at the keyboard never happened, a November 2012 Berlin event brought five young pianists and their mutual mentor Claudius Tanski together for a collective Hexameron, later recreated in the studio for MDG.
If you listen carefully, you can tell that different people are playing different variations; in fact, two pianists share duties in the introduction and in those variations where Liszt added transitions at the end (Nos. 3, 5, & 6), with the flashy finale given over to three players in succession—a veritable pianistic round robin, but the interpretation turns out to be cohesive and fluid. Kanako Yoshikane’s understated elegance and supple fingerwork in Herz’s fluffy filigree (Joseph Moog’s fleet, quicksilver performance however is the best) and Carlos Goicoechea’s superb marcato/legato differentiation in Thalberg’s demanding variation stand out.
Following Hexameron, each pianist gets at least one solo turn in a work by a Hexameron composer. Caroline Sorieux’s sensitive and superbly paced Chopin Op. 55 No. 1 Nocturne compensates for her comparably literal-minded Op. 17 No. 4 Mazurka. Similarly, in Liszt’s Funérailles, Johann Blanchard’s playing proves both exciting (the opening section, the central left-hand octave episode) and uneventful (the softer, lyrical passages). Goicoechea’s beautiful legato touch and keen ear for tone color lend interest to the long, harmonically bland Thalberg Nocturne.
The qualities I cited earlier in Yoshikane’s pianism happily extend to his rippling, poetic performance of Czerny’s Op. 12 set of Variations on a Schubert Waltz. Tanski himself shines in Herz’s trivial La valse suisse and in a slight yet charming waltz by Pixis that’s over in a minute. Lastly, Leon Buche plays his own “Hexameron over the clouds”, a work that morphs both the aforementioned Bellini theme and Serge Gainsbourg’s “Je t’aime” into an effective tremolo-based study whose harmonic language captures the essence of contemporary American musical theater (Sondheim and his followers) without the clichés. In all, this disc’s concept provides an unusual and enjoyable way to showcase emerging keyboard talents.
