In the 40 years since he won the Gold Medal at the first annual Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, Ralph Votapek has kept up a distinguished dual career as both performing artist and teacher, serving for more than three decades as Artist-in-Residence at Michigan State University. He’s recorded far less than his talents merit, a situation rectified by Ivory Classics with the pianist’s splendid 1998 Latin American/French collection, and again with the present release featuring music of Granados and Falla.
He does a splendid job in the six pieces that make up the piano cycle Goyescas. The labyrinthine textural strands in the opening Los requiebros are clearly dispatched, while Coloquio en la reja takes on an optimistic, less brooding façade than Alicia de Larrocha’s broader, darker reading. In El fandango de candil, Votapek’s elegantly contoured inner lines and turns are marvelously timed, if not with Larrocha’s sultry snap. Quejas ó la maja y el ruiseñor receives a caressing, lyrical reading, although the final cadenza’s cooing, bird-like passagework could have been more magical still. Votapek truly comes into his own in the final two selections as he seizes upon the large-scaled drama and rhetoric of El amor y la muerte and imbues the Epilogo with plenty of alluring lilt.
Just as Granados himself used El pelele as an introductory piece when he performed Goyescas in concert, Votapek’s sparkling rendition (replete with memorably murmuring trills) leads off the disc. To conclude his recital, Votapek illuminates the subtle harmonic felicities and rhythmic variety throughout Falla’s four Pièces espagnoles with idiomatic grace and sensitivity. A thoroughly enjoyable disc. [2/8/2002]
