Inna Faliks: Stranger Things
Navona Records

The title of Inna Faliks' 2023 book Weight in the Fingertips: A Musical Odyssey from Soviet Ukraine to the World Stage could function equally for her latest release when it likewise offers an intensely personal account of her musical evolution. Beginning with two short settings by the Ukrainian-born American pianist herself, the nearly hour-long recording advances through pieces by Wagner and Schoenberg before culminating in its grandest expression, Brahms' monumental Piano Sonata No. 3 in F minor. As those acquainted with her 2024 release Manuscripts Don't Burn already know, Faliks is a consummate pianist, but, as Professor of Piano and Head of Piano at UCLA, she's also an educator and, of course, writer. Faliks is also adventurous—she recently premiered Gabriel Prokofiev's Concerto for Minimoog Synthesizer and Orchestra in Portugal—and thoughtful in her programming.

Establishing the project's personal nature at the outset are the self-composed pieces that as hand-written manuscripts accompanied the then ten-year-old as her family left Odesa, Ukraine as Jewish refugees to arrive via Slovakia, Vienna, and Rome in Chicago months later. Having recently dusted off the early pieces and re-edted them, she records them for the first time. They show that, in addition to everything else, Faliks was clearly a prodigy. Wandering Stranger oozes disturbance as it creeps its chromatic way through dark passageways, the sophistication of the writing remarkable for a ten-year-old, and the addition of wordless vocal parts merely adds to its mystique. Haunting too is Old Belltower, an ultra-dramatic evocation that could sneak into Pictures at an Exhibition without anyone batting an eye (appropriately, the piece matches a painting she created as a kid). Again one comes away stunned by the preternatural maturity of the writing—even if the pieces were finessed into their presented form by the pianist later.

In anticipating a break from strict tonality, the chords-heavy Elegy by Wagner from 1858 serves as a fluid lead-in to Schoenberg's Drei Klavierstuke. Resonating powerfully with Faliks as music of great passion, probing, and daring, the three-part work progresses from the searching, angst-inflected introspection of its opening piece to the brooding lugubriousness of the second. Expressive declamations appear alongside dark lower-register rumblings until the parts coalesce into an elegiac cry of despair, after which the third discards tonality altogether for an explosive statement still capable of dividing modern-day listeners. Faliks' strong connection to the material and Schoenberg in general is explained, in part, by the fact that she's based at UCLA, where he also taught.

For her “a lifetime piece,” Brahms' third piano sonata holds a special place in Faliks' heart. Composed in 1853 when he was twenty, the five-movement work impresses for its maturity of vision and depth of feeling. As grandiose as it is, its most affecting moments occur during the second movement, whose tenderness still induces chills 173 years after its creation. Before it arrives, however, a titanic “Allegro Maestoso” appears to affirm the work's epic Romantic character. There's tenderness here also, which Faliks articulates with her customary eloquence, though its expression is no match for the beauty of the heartfelt “Andante espressivo.” Delivered with exquisite slowness, her gentle voicing of the movement's aching themes stays with you long after the recording's over. A jubilant and jovial scherzo gives way to a funereal fourth movement, after which the sonata concludes triumphantly with an expansive finale, a dizzying rondo of many colours the ever-meticulous pianist transitions between with finesse.

September 2026