Franck à la Russe! Alexander Paley transforms the Prelude, Chorale and Fugue into a full-blown virtuoso thriller, replete with agitated tempo fluctuations and the organ-like bass lines of the fugue boomed out as if by a Vladimir Horowitz mini-me. A far cry from the more musically disciplined and proportioned Hough, Kissin, Richter, and Rubinstein versions, Paley’s reminds me of Julius Katchen’s like-minded mono recording, reissued in Philips’ Great Pianists series. By contrast, Paley spaces his rubatos to more judicious effect throughout Harold Bauer’s arrangements of the Prelude, Fugue and Variation and the Pastorale.
Paley’s recording of the Franck Violin Sonata transcribed by Alfred Cortot for solo piano strikingly differs from Yukie Nagai’s traversal on BIS. He employs more rhythmic freedom and a wider berth of dynamic inflection. This especially pays off in the timbral distinction Paley brings to the finale’s violin/piano contrapuntal interplay. While I don’t find Nagai as interesting an artist as Paley, her more fluent command of the writing and comparatively conservative musicianship holds up better for the long haul. Marco Polo’s brittle, constricted sonics, moreover, work to Paley’s distinct disadvantage. Anything above forte sounds metallic, strident, and downright ugly, plus the piano’s tuning doesn’t always hold. I’ve heard Paley several times in concert, and believe me, he is not the banger Marco Polo’s engineers made him out to be.
