Xiayin Wang - Rachmaninov: Piano Sonatas, Preludes (2014)

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Xiayin Wang - Rachmaninov: Piano Sonatas, Preludes (2014)

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Xiayin Wang presents her second disc of piano works by Rachmaninoff, playing the two piano sonatas alongside three of the Op. 23 Preludes. She impressed with the first volume, Gramophone remarking that it featured ‘playing of an awesome clarity and poise’ (Gramophone Choice).

Piano Sonata No. 1 from 1908 was originally inspired by Goethe’s Faust, and follows the model of Eine Faust- Symphonie by Liszt. Although Rachmaninoff abandoned any explicit references soon after starting the Sonata, the influence of Liszt’s work can be heard in its grand three-movement structure and complex emotional trajectory. The symphonic proportions of the first sonata contrast with the compact 1931 revision of Piano Sonata No. 2, which Xiayin Wang performs here. Rachmaninoff cut some 120 bars from the original as well as toning down some virtuosic extravagances and creating clearer textures. Despite this apparent modesty, the rhapsodic expression and emotional breadth so characteristic of Rachmaninoff are abundant in the sonata.

Three miniature masterpieces from Rachmaninoff’s first, Op. 23 set of preludes complete the disc. No. 4 in D major is a pure Andante cantabile while No. 5, one of Rachmaninoff’s bestknown works, is a striding march. No. 6 in E flat major offers another reverie which effectively returns us to the calm of the D major prelude.

Composer: Sergei Rachmaninov
Performer: Xiayin Wang

Reviews: It’s not easy to make Rachmaninov’s prolix First Sonata cohere, yet not impossible. For example, Alexis Weissenberg’s gaunt tone, febrile temperament, and paragraphic sweep give shape and clarity to the work’s vast textural tundra. By contrast, Xiayin Wang often adapts a more lyrical approach and luxuriates in the keyboard writing while keeping a grip on momentum.

At first she seems to stretch out and sectionalize the right hand’s three-note phrases at bar 33 in the first movement, yet she’s simply leaning into the composer’s intentionally accented downbeats. The pianist allows inner voices and hidden melodies their songful due, even when they threaten to be obliterated by big, galumphing chords strutting in opposite directions. Her warm, sensitively voiced Lento shines among this movement’s finest recorded versions, notwithstanding Weissenberg’s more effectively translucent soft passages. While Wang clearly articulates the third movement’s complex thematic interactions (complete with its Dies irae quote), some of the obsessive dotted rhythms and driving climaxes bog down instead of being swept away.

Three Op. 23 Preludes provide an entr’acte. I understand the expressive intent behind Wang’s dynamic hairpins and tiny accelerations in No. 4, yet they wind up tangling up textural balances and cause the melodic thread to veer on and off a steady, floating course. Conversely, No. 5’s march motive truly swaggers, while Wang projects the Trio’s dynamic surges and famous countermelody with full-bodied presence. All the more surprising that she holds back in No. 6, which lacks the expansive dynamism and long line of Vladimir Ashkenazy’s reference recording.

I suspect that Wang has lived longer with the Second Sonata (heard here in the composer’s 1931 revision), for she knocks it out of the park. Wang keeps significant thematic matter, harmonic felicities, and magic transitional moments (such as the slow movement’s recollection of the opening movement’s first theme) in clear focus. At the same time she takes virtuosic flourishes, scintillating runs, and other decorative patterns out for a proverbial joyride, unpredictably speeding up and slowing down, yet maintaining continuity, flow, and excitement without a trace of vulgarity. Well, maybe a trace. But who cares? In short, a disc that gets off to a promising, searching start, and ends with a decisive knockout.