Just when you’re about to break down and order this 1993 Collins Classics release from a second-hand CD outlet for around $70, the Naxos reissue squad comes to the rescue and gives Victor Sangiorgio’s Stravinsky a new lease on life. For the most part his playing is consistently solid, textually honest, and stylistically sound. Although Sangiorgio doesn’t play up Piano Rag Music’s brash satire with Aleck Karis’ bite, he nevertheless orchestrates the composer’s multi-leveled articulations with intelligence and sophistication.
Vivid phrasing and impeccably timed transitions distinguish the Circus Polka as well as the Sonata’s sharply delineated, well-poised outer movements. Sangiorgio also shapes the Adagietto elegantly, although Earl Wild’s brisker tempo and beautifully cultivated trills make for more engaging irony. Still, Sangiorgio’s pointed bass-note upbeats contribute to the Tango’s infectious inner “swing”, while his innate lyricism and transparent touch throughout the Serenade’s four movements hold their own next to Peter Serkin’s reference recording. In this context the Op. 7 Etudes come off relatively dry and careful.
Because Stravinsky’s early, derivative, and episodic F-sharp minor Sonata smacks of Tchaikovsky and, at times, Schumann (the finale’s obsessive dotted rhythms), it needs a pianist who’s not afraid of unleashing huge and colorful sonorities and just enough rubato–an interpretive approach opposed to Sangiorgio’s matter-of-fact literalism. Yet he does well with the little 1902 Scherzo’s disarming tunefulness and strange rhythmic groupings. In all, this is a disc worth hearing, as long as you’ve got Martin Jones’ robust account of the early Sonata and Paul Jacobs’ Op. 7 Etudes close at hand.
