Compared with his enormous oeuvre for orchestra,
Stravinsky didn't write all that much for the solo piano. Indeed, this single disc encompasses nearly the whole of his output, ranging from extremely youthful efforts to those of his later maturity. Yet as performed by
Victor Sangiorgio, all
Stravinsky's solo piano music sounds like the product of the same arch-modernist musical mind.
Sangiorgio's technique is truly astounding; no matter how difficult
Stravinsky's writing for the keyboard,
Sangiorgio pulls it off. Everything that's on the page is articulated, from the mightiest 10-note chord to the least sixty-fourth note rest. And yet so crisp is his attack, so lucid his textures, and so détaché his touch that in
Sangiorgio's performances the youthful Scherzo sounds as much like an ironic pastiche as the mature Serenade sounds like a droll parody.
There is nothing wrong, and everything right, with this approach in the later works. Without the kind of focused energy, concentrated strength, and clear intelligence
Sangiorgio brings to the music, it sounds brutal, brawny, and not all that interesting. But that same approach in the earlier music makes the pieces sound quite unlike the work of a young Russian Silver Age composer and much more like the work of a mature expatriate postwar composer. And this, some would argue, is a mistake. More than that of most composers,
Stravinsky's music goes through enormous style changes and the Romantic sonata he composed in Russia should sound very little like the modernist sonata he composed in Paris or the sarcastic Circus Polka he composed in Hollywood. Yet in
Sangiorgio's performances, they all sound like the work of the same modernist wise guy. Cleanly recorded in 1991, first released on Collins Classics in 1993, and re-released here on Naxos in 2007, this disc should be heard by all who admire
Stravinsky's music -- although they might not equally admire every performance here.