Chopin: Études
Yunchan Lim, piano (Decca)
The pianist Yunchan Lim, who recently turned 20, debuted at Carnegie Hall in February with an old-school program: all 24 of Chopin’s études. His first album on the Decca label, playing those same 24 devilishly difficult pieces — 12 each in Op. 10 and 25 — is old-school, too. The cover photo, shot on film, has Lim nearly engulfed in moody shadow, an image that, along with the font, evokes classical music’s glamorous mid-20th century.
The aim seems to be to position him as an heir to that era’s keyboard titans. It’s hardly a difficult task. After Lim’s Carnegie performance, and his dazzling winning rounds at the 2022 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, it’s no surprise to find him in total command on this recording, balancing note-by-note clarity with long-phrase lyricism amid staggering technical demands.
Even in fiery études, he is calm as he exposes the panoply of voices that emerge from just two hands. His rubato breathes naturally yet energetically; there’s a vitality and sense of forward motion even in slower pieces. And Lim’s soft playing is particularly sensitive, as in the pleading quality he brings to a tiny pianissimo quintuplet in Op. 10, No. 9. The album loses little of the excitement of a live concert while adding more control, transparency and polish. It’s a triumph. ZACHARY WOOLFE
‘In C’
Maya Beiser, cello (Islandia Music)
For the 60th anniversary of “In C,” Terry Riley’s crusading, proto-minimalist work, the intrepid cellist Maya Beiser has reimagined the piece ingeniously. As written, “In C,” which consists of a series of 53 short musical motifs, can be played by any group of musicians on any instruments, and lasts as long as their individual decisions about how long to repeat those motifs.
Beiser, by contrast, creates loops out of the motifs and stacks them atop one another in gradually evolving paragraphs, with a near-constant pulse on the cello’s lowest string undergirding the activity above. She adds subtle live drumming in places (by Shane Shanahan and Matt Kilmer), as well as a few wordless vocal tracks.
The result is transfixing. In place of the controlled chaos that usually prevails in performances of “In C,” Beiser creates a sound picture that is sleek and orderly, Riley’s brief themes rising to the surface, then disappearing through the dark whirl of sound. She also plays with the cello’s timbre to introduce just enough variation to keep the sound picture from becoming too uniform. At times the pulses fall away, leaving the listener in suspension.
Above all, this version of “In C” gives an emotional impression different from any I’ve heard: moody and introspective, but also, by the end, quietly uplifting. DAVID WEININGER
Hamelin: New Piano Works
Marc-André Hamelin, piano (Hyperion)
The Canadian virtuoso Marc-André Hamelin is persuasive in a wide span of repertoire that includes C.P.E. Bach, Frederic Rzewski and William Bolcom. He also composes. His 1998 album “The Composer-Pianists” was a sweeping survey that also included selections from his 12 Etudes in all the Minor Keys, which he released in their entirety in 2010.
His previous offerings of his own music were rich, but his latest self-portrait album is on another level. As before, he is a devoted tipper-of-the-cap: This set’s opening “Variations on a Theme of Paganini,” from 2011, nods to one of Rachmaninoff’s riffs on that much-adapted Caprice No. 24. It’s all good fun, but there is another quality on this set that moves well beyond a game of spot the quotation. Call it a more sumptuous synthesis.
Even as Hamelin’s “Suite à l’Ancienne” (2019) and “Pavane Variée” (2014) blend vintage forms and tunes with advanced harmonic trappings, his well-documented affection for jazz also peeks through. That’s not so surprising, since he has played jazz-influenced sonatas and études by Nikolai Kapustin, too. But Hamelin’s particular feel for incorporating blues sonorities strikes me as less of a pastiche than Kapustin’s — even when he is mixing American textures with 16th-century chanson. It’s probably time to add the epaulet of “rising composer” to this pianist’s already imposing biography. SETH COLTER WALLS
‘Orchestras’
Bill Frisell Trio; Brussels Philharmonic; Umbria Jazz Orchestra (Blue Note)
The prolific and protean guitarist Bill Frisell and the composer-arranger Michael Gibbs have a relationship that stretches back nearly half a century. Despite a raft of collaborations, a full-scale orchestral project has eluded them until now. This album contains two concerts by Frisell’s trio: one with the Brussels Philharmonic (under Alexander Hanson), the other with the Umbria Jazz Orchestra (under Manuele Morbidini). All the arrangements are by Gibbs, mostly of Frisell originals, with a couple of Gibbs’s own pieces and a few standards thrown in.
Undertakings like these can easily fall victim to bloat and inelegance, but “Orchestras” feels balanced and natural. Gibbs’s arrangements, dense yet spacious, leave space for Frisell, the bassist Thomas Morgan and the drummer Rudy Royston to weave nimbly through the textures. Some of the arrangements are breathtaking: Listen to how the trio and Brussels orchestra seem to expand and push each other upward in Frisell’s “Throughout” and “Richter 858, No. 7.”
For all the chops on display here, the album’s most affecting moment is the simplest: the civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome,” with the guitarist subtly decorating the jazz orchestra’s chorale-like accompaniment. Frisell has been playing the song for much of his life, and recently said he would keep doing so “till there is no need anymore.” DAVID WEININGER
‘Rose in Bloom’
Erin Morley, soprano; Gerald Martin Moore, piano (Orchid Music)
A debut solo album based on birds and flowers might seem hackneyed; “Florals? For spring? Groundbreaking,” as Miranda Priestly would say. But that’s not the case with a talent on the order of the coloratura soprano Erin Morley.
Her voice is opalescent, a font of sheer, innocent colors, with bell-like clarity, pristine runs and notes in alt that spin like mad. Her singing has an instrumental purity, but it is also tenderly observant. A Saint-Saëns vocalise has such specificity that you almost forget it has no words. There’s humor, too: In Milhaud’s “Tais-toi, Babillarde,” Morley mimics a chatty swallow with cheeky exuberance.
Morley and the pianist Gerald Martin Moore shift swiftly through styles and moods. In one compelling sequence, they thread together nightingale songs — the vibrant sensuality of a Rimsky-Korsakov romance, the intriguing mystery of a Berg lied, the resplendence of the Saint-Saëns vocalise — with radiant weightlessness.
Ricky Ian Gordon’s new song cycle “Huit Chansons de Fleurs” comes in the middle and slows the program’s rapid pace. His effortless prosody, soaring melodies and generous spirit suffuse the music, even turning a poem of mournful decay, “Her Garden,” into a tribute to the love shared with someone who has died. Morley gently tugs on the rhythm and shades the delicate melody, sounding both technically immaculate and emotionally fragile in an album of predictable loveliness and unexpected poignancy. OUSSAMA ZAHR
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