Rumor has it that a beautiful piano sound follows Pascal Rogé from recording session to recording session. However, it must have taken him a while to warm up when he set down Images Book I. Perhaps that explains why he gingerly broaches Reflets dans l’eau’s wide, rapid arpeggios, or why Mouvement comes off atypically dry and stiff-jointed. Furthermore, Rogé’s slow and stagnant Hommage à Rameau clocks in at a little more than eight record minutes.
The pianist proves less harmfully sedate in the Book II selections. L’Isle joyeuse’s Lisztian gestures do not sparkle and scintillate as they do elsewhere (Horowitz, Bavouzet, Ashkenazy, Gieseking). Pour le piano’s closing Toccata begins at a leisurely, eloquently controlled pace, only to grow heavier in texture and slower in speed as it progresses. Yet similar moderation in Danse allows Rogé the luxury of shaping the busy keyboard writing so that the syncopations speak rather than scramble. I enjoyed Rogé’s quirky, jazz-like phrasing in Hommage à Haydn; Bill Evans would have approved. As for the closing Réverie, it embodies the proverbial five “Ls”: leisurely, lilting, liquid, lovely legato. In sum, Rogé/Debussy/Onyx’s Volume 3 is similar to Volumes 1 and 2: not consistently fine, but full of nice moments, and excellently recorded.
