Inna Faliks: Reimagine: Beethoven & Ravel
Navona Records

Inna Faliks: The Schumann Project, Vol.1
MSR Classics

With these solo piano releases, Inna Faliks shows herself to be both extraordinary musician and inspired conceptualist. Of the two projects, it's the Navona release that's more novel. On The Schumann Project, the Ukrainian-born American pianist features music by Clara as well as her husband Robert; it's not, however, the first time it's been done: in early 2020, for example, Lara Downes issued her own homage to the Schumanns, For Love of You. Reimagine: Beethoven & Ravel, on the other hand, breaks fresh ground in presenting nine newly commissioned responses to Beethoven's Bagatelles, op. 126 and Maurice Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit. Enhancing the impact of the recording, the six bagatelles appear alongside the compositions they inspired.

The idea for Reimagine grew out of a 2017 piano festival Faliks curated at UCLA in which students and faculty performed new pieces that responded to earlier ones, an idea that itself grew from her experience performing 13 Ways of Looking at the Goldberg by Gilbert Kalish, one of her teachers. Inspired by the potential of the concept and for the way it draws a dynamic bridge between past and present, Faliks, head of piano studies at UCLA, invited six composer colleagues from the university faculty—Peter Golub, Tamir Hendelman, Richard Danielpour, Ian Krouse, Mark Carlson, and David Lefkowitz—to create responses to the final work Beethoven wrote for the piano. Wishing to expand the project's scope, she then asked three others—Paola Prestini, Timo Andres, and Billy Childs—to write treatments in response to Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit (“Ondine,” “Le Gibet,” and “Scarbo”), in her words “an iconic triptych of the piano repertoire.” Collectively, the results are stunning, for both Faliks' impeccable execution of the material and the sensitivity she demonstrates in her interpretations.

In keeping with Beethoven's originals, the “responses” exemplify as expansive a range of expression. Humour, wit, lyricism, moodiness, and contrapuntal brilliance abound in both sets, as well as much else besides. Golub's response to Beethoven's first bagatelle eases the listener into the set with a quietly dazzling and charmingly playful meditation, whose connections to the original are evident the moment it makes its graceful appearance. Here and elsewhere, Faliks gives eloquent voice to the material, and her assured command of tempo and phrasing makes listening to her all the more rewarding. Significantly contrasting with Golub's, Hendelman's response to the second is a whirling dervish of sorts, the composer's likening of it to a spinning top reflected in its insistent, manic energy—though it includes ponderous passages too. Faliks' precise essaying of the original's rapid patterns throws the spotlight back on Beethoven, after which Danielpour's “Bagatelle – Childhood Nightmare” accentuates gentle lyricism before shadowy tonalities creep into the writing. Whereas the original third is a thing of delicate, resonant beauty, Krouse's reply to the fourth, “Etude 2a – ‘ad fugam' On a non-octave-replicating mode” is at times impish, so much so the image of a mouse furtively scampering along baseboards springs to mind. Responding to the loveliness of the fifth bagatelle, Carlson infuses his elegant rumination “Sweet Nothings” with the tenderness of the “sweet nothings new lovers whisper to each other,” which Lefkowitz follows with an intricate, rather spidery reply to Beethoven's often wistful sixth bagatelle.

Though the character of the material shifts dramatically in the transition from Beethoven to Ravel, both of their works on the release reflect their creators' appetite for experimentation and exploration. Prestini initiates this chapter with the two-part Variations on a Spell, written in response to “Ondine” from Gaspard de la Nuit, itself based on poems by Aloysius Bertrand. Prestini paints a poetic pastoral scene in “Water Sprite” that Ravel would be proud to call his own and entrances further with “Bell Tolls – Golden Bees.” At album's end, Pursuit, Childs's reply to “Scarbo,” involves material drawn from racism-related images of a Black man being pursued by a slave catcher, KKK mob, and the police and alternates between frenetic and sombre passages. It's Old Ground, however, Andres' response to Ravel's “Le Gibet,” that registers most powerfully, in part because its fifteen-minute length encourages protracted immersion. Andres, by his own admission fascinated and repulsed by the original's extramusical detail of a hanged corpse at sunset, casts a ravishing spell with an urgent and ever-flowing interweave. Andres' material envelops the listener intensely, especially with Faliks at the keyboard.

Though Reimagine succeeds on multiple levels, there are two things I would have preferred otherwise: first, rather than have the Beethoven original follow the response, I would rather the original had appeared first and the reply second, which would have made it easier to hear specifically how the new work responded to the original; secondly, in being presented with the six bagatelles and the related new pieces, I wish Faliks had included Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit in its original form too, even if doing so would have made Reimagine a double-CD release. Having the original Beethoven pieces at hand offers a fascinating comparison study that isn't an option for the Ravel work. Such caveats are minor, however, and hardly detract from all that Faliks achieves with the recording.

Similarly, that she's not the first to issue a recording dedicated to both Clara and Robert Schumann in no way lessens the rewards this first volume in a projected series provides. Faliks is well-acquainted with the composers: she performed Clara's Piano Concerto in A minor (composed when she was fifteen) with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra when she was herself fifteen years old, and concurrent with that was her exposure via her teacher to Robert's Carnaval, which very quickly captivated her and prompted her desire to learn others by him. Though his works eventually became staples of Faliks' repertoire, her appreciation for Clara's was renewed when her UCLA students performed the composer's works in their entirety. It was then that Faliks decided to undertake a recording project devoted to both Schumanns.

Her intent isn't to set up an evaluative battleground between the two but instead show how comfortably their works sit alongside each other, something more easily accomplished when the release presents a single work by each. Faliks rightfully ponders how different things might have been had the nineteenth-century milieu been more conducive to treating the two as artistic equals. In her estimation, Robert profoundly benefited from having her as a muse; as a wife, mother, and support to her husband (concert pianist also), she, on the other hand, didn't have the same room in her own life for her music to develop as much as it could have. Still, the Piano Sonata in G Minor leaves no doubt about her ability; furthermore, that it in no way suffers when paired with his Symphonic Etudes, Op. 13 testifies to her talent. One of the more fascinating details about the works concerns their years of creation: hers in 1841, when she was only twenty-two, his in 1834 at the age of twenty-four. Another noteworthy detail is fascinating too but sadder: the Piano Sonata in G Minor didn't see publication until 1991, 150 years after its birth. The longest of the work's four movements, the opening “Allegro” begins with a dramatic voicing of its lyrical main theme before advancing into elaborate explorations of mood and dynamics. Alternating fluidly between tender and tempestuous gestures, the movement single-handedly functions as a compelling argument for Clara as a composer. While the “Adagio” that follows is lovely and eloquent, the as-brief “Scherzo” radiates joy, after which the “Rondo” closes the circle with an engrossing parade of radiant expressions.

With a melody by Baron von Fricken, the amateur composer father of Ernestine, the woman to whom Robert was briefly engaged, providing a springboard, Symphonic Etudes begins with the dark, brooding “Theme” before advancing through seventeen variations and etudes. Though the work total thirty-four minutes, changes happen at a dizzying pace when only two of the eighteen tracks push past three minutes. Rich in yearning, ebullience, passion, and grandiosity and filled with laments, marches, and waltzes—the work offers Faliks immense interpretive freedom. An interesting side-note: when first published, five variations of a particularly lyrical and searching character were rejected though eventually published by Johannes Brahms nearly two decades after Schumann's death. It's hard to imagine material as magnificent as “Posthumous Variation IV” could have been lost to history had things unfolded differently. Despite the vast scope of the explorations, a progression of sorts comes into focus as the work progresses, such that the opening tragic statement is bookended by the jubilant affirmation of the “Etude XII (Finale).” This inaugural volume promises much for whatever else Faliks has planned for the series, and collectively the two recordings testify to her consummate artistry and the enduring nature of the composers' works.

July 2021