Sex appeal sells. That’s why Decca graces the cover of Naida Cole’s second recital for the label with an attractive photo of the pianist, her name in large type, the album title “Reflections” in smaller type, and, in even smaller type, the composers’ names. Be that as it may, Cole’s technique knows no difficulties. In Ravel’s Miroirs, for example, she controls Noctuelles’ delicate figurations with pinpoint accuracy and very little pedal. She contours the textural layers of Une barque sur l’océan and La Vallée des cloches to pluperfection, albeit without the warmth and nuance Angela Hewitt and Jean-Yves Thibaudet bring to their recordings. Alborada del gracioso is fast, exciting, and aggressively accented as Cole pushes the celebrated repeated notes to their limits of playability.
You might imagine the Bartók Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs to dance with more color and melodic shaping than Cole’s otherwise direct and stylish readings reveal. However, I like her straightforward, baggage-free approach throughout much of the Liszt sonata. The notorious octave passages are febrile in their impact, while Cole makes the central fughetta’s motivic strands sting with uncommon clarity. At the same time, Cole seems unwilling to allow the music’s rhetorical stretches and lyrical episodes their natural breathing space. Part of this may have to do with the close-up, dynamically restricted engineering, where sudden loud passages often are accompanied by annoying thumping sounds. All told, this is a release with memorable moments, performed by a talented pianist who’s still finding her way.
