Tuija Hakkila introduces the keyboard works of the brothers Lithander to the world, playing with great charm, confidence, and obvious enjoyment. The works by Carl Ludvig Lithander are the meatiest here, using (and borrowing from folk music) pleasing, cantabile melodies. The Sonatas are similar to the more sophisticated Clementi or the late Haydn sonatas, and the second one also has shades of Beethoven in it: sharp changes in dynamics, an almost improvisatory adagio movement, a finale that takes advantage of the wider keyboard. His Capriccio shows the same Beethoven-like imagination in thematic transformation, using unexpected modulations and mood changes (it also seems to end, unresolved, in the middle of a cadence). The Rondo "La Jouissance" by Fredrik Lithander has a Baroque-sounding theme, straightforward and generally unadorned, but the episodes build off that theme just as does the development section of a typical Classical-era sonata. The Variations on a Theme of Haydn, also by Fredrik, are not unlike Mozart's sets of variations, but are slightly less sophisticated.
Hakkila plays all of these not with heavy-handedness, overwrought affectation, or too much delicacy, but very smoothly and gracefully. The runs in the Capriccio are like bubbly cascades; the Variations No. 8, while not a slow variation, is still played with a gentle touch. She also brings lively animation to the final waltz on the disc. The first fortepiano she uses is more like a modern piano in sound than the second one, used for the Variations. The sound of the recording is very rich and close, making it easier to appreciate
Hakkila's appealing performance.