Harmonia Mundi and Radio-France co-produce a collection presenting what they call “the cream of the new generation of musicians”. As in any collection of this kind, the quality of the performances varies from one CD to the next. The Ukrainian duet featuring violinist Graf Mourja and pianist Elena Rozanova, for example, can’t really be part of the “cream”–unless it’s a sour one. Though an accomplished virtuoso (who isn’t nowadays?), the violinist lacks the refinement and fluency that can catch the listener’s attention, while the pianist often indulges in brutality, with a tone that’s at once punching and thin. The rather unbalanced recording, favoring the piano, doesn’t help. Compared with Michael Rabin’s hot-blooded recording of Tzigane, or even Frank Peter Zimmermann’s more tempered one (both use the orchestral version), Mourja and Rozanova seem to be satisfied with playing all the notes and little else. Ravel’s Sonata receives the same undistinguished treatment: the phrases rarely depart from metronomic stiffness. In a recent recording of the same work (rated 10/10 by the undersigned), Gilles Apap and Eric Ferrand-N’Kaoua show how much can be accomplished with this piece in terms of color and imagination. While the Frenchmen reveal Ravel’s tongue-in-cheek humor and supremely flexible rhythms, notably in the Blues, the Ukrainians are so literal and schoolish that they become boring. The rough style of Mourja and Rozanova works predictably better with Schnittke’s First Sonata (1963), a dense and dramatic piece that pays a marked homage to Shostakovich. With its spinning virtuosity, Szymanowski’s Notturno e Tarantella keeps the performers busy, and they’re good at that.
