Artistled is a kind of vanity production, initiated by Wu Han and David Finckel (of the Emerson String Quartet), to produce recordings without artistic or commercial constraints. Pianist Wu Han, like cellist David Finckel, has been associated with the Menlo Concerts in San Jose for several years. Her Hamburg Steinway ss brightly warm, courtesy of Da-Hong Seetoo.
Wu Han opens with the set of Tchaikovsky’s The Months (1875-1876), in the form of Schumannesque vignettes and character pieces, played with bold delicacy by Han. Demure October and May seem to have caught Ms. Han’s fancy, especially, the latter in its official ringing in of spring fancies. The more popular June (Barcarolle) and December invocation of Christmas wax eloquent without sentimentality or intrusive bathos. An occasional clangor can infiltrate the proceedings, as in July. September’s Hunt opens with chords that might derive from Chopin’s Op. 18 Grand Waltz before the aggressive march overwhelms us. The November Troika enjoys a pride of place, spreading its lavish chords with alternately sensitive and pompously playful thunder.
Seven Rachmaninov preludes permit Han more emotional and color scope than the Tchaikovsky Suite: the No. 1 in F-sharp Minor sensually creeps in half steps and repeated notes, angst versus nostalgia. The G Major from Op. 32 is all snowflakes and sweet dreams, poignantly rendered by Han–she makes me wonder if she knows the Moiseiwitsch rendition. The G Minor from Op. 23 gallops with military aplomb, the middle section succumbing to the wiles of Mata Hari. The D Minor from Op. 23 tries to be a minuet or prancing gavotte, but it is too heavy in the bass, too rife with danger. The G-flat Major, OP. 23, No. 10, proves most elusive to define, a kind of nocturne whose points of melancholy Han illuminates effectively. The G-sharp Minor, glittering ostinati set against a descending, chromatic line insists on passion remembered. Han concludes with the B-flat Major from Op. 23, No. 2, an aggressive tempest that renews its furies with each arpeggiated episode, much like Chopin’s Third Scherzo. The transcription of Kreisler’s Love’s Joy engages Ms. Han’s palette in broad, bright colors, more bravura than Viennese but effective always.
Finally, we have Scriabin’s 1903 Fourth Sonata, basically set in two movements, Andante and Prestissimo volando. Han confesses this is her favorite of the Russian mystic’s ten sonatas, intimate, erotic, various, whimsical, inflamed. At each chord progression, the emotional envelope stretches, the possibilities urge themselves outward and inward at once. The sense of cosmic play absorbs and consumes everything, just as Donne described Love the Devourer in his poem “The Broken Heart.” The flame consumes, but we crave more even as we perish. Or as another poet put it, “Dying of life, a lover gasps for breath/From one whose lips graft on a sweeter death.” Potent album, Ms. Han.
— Gary Lemco
