If nothing else, you have to give Ekaterina Derzhavina credit for unhackneyed programming savvy. Giovanni Platti’s four-movement sonata contains ample opportunities for the pianist’s nimble fingerwork and crackerjack articulation to completely disarm the pickiest critic. I’m less enamoured of Derzhavina’s Schubert D major sonata. Her heavy-handed, rhythmically slack first movement (minus the desirable exposition repeat) barely suggests the music’s headlong brio in the manner of Richter, Ashkenazy, Curzon, and Goode, or of Schnabel in his wild and wooly old recording. The slow movement fares better, although Derzhavina minimizes the contrasts between its lyrical and anguished moods. Her habit of slightly delaying the main Scherzo theme’s chord on the third beat of the second and fourth measures (and similar places) proves increasingly irksome, as do the pianist’s arch phrasings in the final movement. She takes the G major theme not at Schubert’s Un poco più lento, but markedly slower, so that dense listeners will not miss the change of character, let alone the pianist’s increased pounding.
Derzhavina’s temperament better suits Nikolai Medtner’s Mood Pictures. It takes her four pieces to get into gear, but she comes alive in No. 5’s gorgeous, supple rapid runs, No. 7’s tumultuous polytextural interplay, and No. 8’s deftly tossed-off swirling patterns. Her best moments hold their own against Geoffrey Tozer’s more lithe, supple, and technically consistent account of this opus (Chandos). Recommended for half of the Medtner, and all of the Platti.
