How happy pianist Elizabeth Herbin looks on the front and back covers, with a little bird perched on her finger. Her Schubert playing, however, doesn’t make me happy. She subjects the B-flat sonata first movement’s long, flowing lines to fitful emphatic accents and not very smooth tempo adjustments. The same happens to a lesser yet equally noticeable extent in the Andante sostenuto, where the accompanimental ostinato fails to provide an anchoring frame of reference for the main theme to relate. Listen, for example, to Anna Malikova’s comparably slow version for clearer and more cogently expressive alignment between hands. Likewise, Herbin’s choppy articulation and sectional ritards yield to suppler renditions of the Scherzo that better communicate the music’s harmonic sleights-of-hand. The pianist’s unstable rhythm at the finale’s outset (her rushing of the main theme) sets the stage for similar interpretive vagueness ahead.
Herbin plays the Liszt Dante sonata’s notes accurately and honestly, but with little power, projection, or poetic sweep. Her competent octaves, for example, pale even when scrutinized alongside Jorge Bolet’s similarly understated craftsmanship. Gallo’s dry, close-up, monochrome engineering is most unflattering; would Herbin’s interpretations have benefited from a more resonant acoustic?
