It’s reasonable to suspect that Western audiences–especially Americans–have little contact with Albanian piano music. Pianist Kirsten Johnson has traveled to Albania to research the repertoire, interviewing pianists, composers, and musicologists along the way, and then performing this music in Albanian venues. Under Enver Hoxha’s communist regime (1944 through 1985), composers were forbidden to study any music written after March 5, 1953 (the day both Stalin and Prokofiev died). Any new piece had to be approved by the Albanian League of Artists and Writers prior to public performance. Given such restrictions, it’s not surprising how a lot of this music draws upon Albania’s folk heritage and is stylistically accessible.
A triptych by Alberto Paparisto includes a Song of Ancient Times (replete with tolling bass lines), plus a modal Toccata. Neither it nor Arian Avrazi’s Toccata quite matches the sophistication and invention that Feim Ibrahimi displays in his own Toccata that opens this disc with a bang. A suite of short pieces by Kozma Lara makes fewer demands on both pianist and listener. Tonin Harapi’s surface simplicity, though, conceals a subtle and refined style that just might grow on you over repeated listening. The same holds true for Pellumb Vorspi’s Variations on a Popular Theme and Ramadan Sokoli’s Nocturne No. 2.
Song of Bravery, by Simon Gjoni, creates a more ambivalent impression than the title implies in its intentionally stilted syncopations and bleak textures. And an arrangement of the popular song Nina-Nana by one J. Papadhimitri wouldn’t be out of place among the G. I. Gurdjieff/Thomas de Hartmann collaborations. I’m particularly taken with the stark rhetoric, quirky harmonic language, and restrained passion of Çesk Zadeja’s Four Pieces for Piano, which suggest a latter-day Janácek.
Kirsten Johnson’s loving mastery of this music and skillful, nuanced pianism are a delight. What is more, she’s able to find just the right tempo, sound world, dynamic range, and character that allows each piece to emerge as an individual entity, from her exquisite legato in Zadeja’s lyrical writing to the Ibrahimi Toccata’s piquant fingerwork. The engineering turns a bit strident in louder moments and picks up too many pedal noises for my taste. Don’t let that prevent you from hearing this fascinating release. Does Johnson plan a sequel?
