A recent Paris Conservatory graduate, Guillaume Vincent has chosen all 24 Rachmaninov Preludes for his Naïve solo debut. Trouble sets in right away, when the pianist follows the famous C-sharp Prelude’s three introductory notes with an interminable pause (it actually lasts about eleven seconds, yet seems to go on forever). He subjects the main section to overly stretched-out, dynamically outsized phrases, then ploughs through the agitato middle section with barely any room for punctuation.
Op. 23 No. 2’s taxing left hand arpeggiated patterns are articulated well, but the interpretation grows increasingly heavier and squarer. His picky, detached phrasing in No. 3 robs the music’s stern pulse of its backbone, nor does his suave legato control throughout No. 4 come close to Ashkenazy, Osborne or Richter for songful shaping. No. 5’s central section rarely has sounded so mechanical and uncomprehending, and forget about any sense of line or bringing out the countermelodies. Most great performances of No. 7 project a firm bass line that launches the swirling figurations into free flight. Vincent, however, underplays the bass, and fusses over figurations with irrelevant dynamic hairpins.
The Op. 32 group fares better. Although Vincent fails to establish a steady reference tempo for Op. 32 No. 2’s lilting dotted motive, and underplays No. 5’s ravishing chromaticisms, Nos. 3 and 6 are appropriately gruff and decisively accented. I also applaud Vincent’s flexible animation in the Lento B Minor (No. 10), a piece all too often interpreted like a deadly dirge. No. 11 stands out for its rippling, crystalline fingerwork, despite Vincent’s reticence in the central climax that Horowitz conveys with devastating impact. On the whole, though, this young pianist’s Rachmaninov Preludes are not in the same league with the Ashkenazy or Osborne reference versions, nor the less sonically appealing yet musically riveting Fiorentino (APR) or out-of-print Keene (Protone) and Weissenberg (RCA) editions.
