Dances and Dreams: Piano Music from Around the World – Hanren Zhang, piano – MSR MS 1758 (54:40, complete contents listed below) (2/7/24) [Distr. by Albany] ****:
Hanren Zhang won the 2017 Honens Recital Award in Omaha, Nebraska and currently pursues his Doctorate at the University of Georgia, supervised by Dr. Liza Stepanova. This selection of dances for MSR derives from sessions taped in April 2021. Zhang (rec. April 2021) selects 24 pieces from 13 countries that celebrate national and ethnic dance forms, suggesting the universality of physical expression and gestures as signs of our creative life. The recital, performed on a Yamaha instrument, reveals an artist with a catholic taste and a natural affinity for diverse styles, especially those indulging in purposeful ambiguities of rhythm and tonality..
Essentially, Zhang creates a musical travelogue in gamesmanship or in picture-postcards that sojourn into exotic places, like Kwabena Nketia’s Ghana, for his Volta Fantasy, based on “vertical contrasts or cross-rhythms.” The two Grieg selections from his Op. 72 Norwegian Peasant Dances reveal less of his melodic gift, since they derive from endemic, harshly sonorous, fiddle tunes, likely those which influenced Ole Bull. The Nigerian Dance No. 1 of Joshua Uzoigwe (1946-2005) exploits the independence of the hands, étude-like, even as the two Chopin mazurkas display the Polish master’s late-style tendency to slide ambiguously between duple and triple meters. The Frenchman Darius Milhaud indulges his love of Brazil with the same enthusiasm as he had explored Harlem, New York jazz in La Creation du Monde. His two Saudades do Brasil challenge us with polytonal colors, when his Botafogo dance confronts F Major with F# Minor.
The liner notes well provide the historic and musical contexts of the pieces, so that Zhang’s personality has to assume, like Lon Chaney, a series of faces without revealing much distinct character. I am tempted to invoke James Bond, deftly and fleetly shape-shifting to clothe himself in any and all national styles. A pleasant, colorful hour of music awaits the listener, who if motivated, will wish to seek Zhang in a sustained investigation into an established musical persona.
—Gary Lemco
Dances and Dreams: Piano Music from Around the World
ALBENIZ: El Puerto;
CHOPIN: Mazurka in A-flat Major, Op. 59/2; Mazurka in F# Minor, Op. 59/3;
SMETANA: Polka in A Minor, Op. 12/1; Polka in E Minor, Op. 13/1;
BARTÓK: 6 Romanian Folk Dances, Sz. 56;
GRIEG: Norwegian Peasant Dances, Op. 72: Nos 2 and 13;
MUSSORGSKY: Hopak from Sorochintsy Fair;
UZOIGWE: Nigerian Dance No. 1;
NKETIA: Volta Fantasy; G
INASTERA: Milonga; Pequena Danza;
MILHAUD: Saudades do Brasil, Op. 67: Nos 1 and 2;
LECUONA: Danzas Afro-Cubanas: Nos 6 and 3;
ALBRIGHT: Sleepwalker’s Shuffle;
SUN: Dance of Spring
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