Miguel Baselga’s third installment in his ongoing complete Albéniz cycle for BIS falls slightly short of the excellences that impressed me in Volume 2. In the three pieces making up Iberia’s Third Book, for example, Baselga’s hard-hitting tone and tendency to imbue complex chordal passages with equal doses of loudness frankly don’t turn me on. Why must the slinky dissonances peppering Lavapiés be so punched out? Staccatos are overdone to a crisp and mostly sound alike no matter what melodic information lurks behind the articulation signs. I miss the lyrical patience and innate rhythmic flexibility of Esteban Sánchez both in these three pieces and in the España cycle. How unformed and casual Baselga’s rendition of the famous D major Tango sounds next to Sánchez’s expansive lilt, or Alicia De Larrocha’s exquisite timing. At the same time, Baselga colors the opening Preludio’s guitar-like patterns with alluring half-tints and murmuring washes of pedal. The remaining short works are served up with idiomatic vigor, as you would expect from a pianistic fireball like Baselga. Now I’m curious to hear him in non-Spanish fare.
