| Fanfare Magazine reviews "Votapek plays Gershwin" |
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GERSHWIN Promenade. Songbook: 18 songs. Preludes. WILD Grand Fantasy on Themes from Porgy and Bess. Seven Virtuoso Etudes: Oh, Lady Be Good; Embraceable You - Ralph Votapek (pn) - BLUE GRIFFIN 139 (61:38) Votapek's recent recordings on Ivory Classics have all been notable for their technical finesse, their refined sense of color, their formal clarity, and their unfailing awareness of the composers' characteristic idioms (see Peter Burwasser's acclaim for his Ginastera, Poulenc, Szymanowski, and Piazzolla in 22:2; James Miller's praise of his Granados and Falla in 25:4; and my own enthusiastic review of his Debussy in 27:6). This new Gershwin CD is just as impressive, both in terms of Votapek's technique (note the ease with which he handles the big chords and the intricate rhythms of the Grand Fantasy) and in terms of his interpretive flair. The song transcriptions are elegantly cheeky: spiky but never aggressive, ironic but never campy, and always alert to Gershwin's harmonic genius. And in the Grand Fantasy - a far more attractive work than I thought it was a quarter of a century back when I first made its acquaintance - Votapek manages miraculous feats of balance, bringing out the virtuoso glitter of Earl Wild's elaborations (inner lines are especially well handled) without obscuring the expressive core of Gershwin's original music. Wild's own recording (now on Ivory 70702) may have more improvisatory panache, but Votapek's slightly more sober and less overtly pianistic reading provides an affecting alternative. Votapek is not entirely faithful to Gershwin's score in the Songbook: he changes the order and splices songs together, for instance, and recasts a few measures here and there, but nothing runs against the grain. I do, however, wish he hadn't left out "Oh, Lady Be Good."Presumably, he made that choice because he was including Wild's Etude based on the same tune; but giving us both versions would have been revealing, rather than redundant. That is, though, a minor blemish on an excellent release. Fine sound too.
Peter J. Rabinowitz
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