Rana’s Ravel-Stravinsky Album Disappoints

from the Amazon.com Web page for the recording being discussed

This coming Friday Warner Classics will release its second solo album featuring the young rising talent Beatrice Rana. Readers may recall that her first solo album was devoted entirely to Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 988 set of (“Goldberg”) variations on an Aria theme. This was a daring way to launch her presence on Warner Classics, and readers may recall that I was not entirely convinced. Nevertheless, I felt willing to give the album multiple listening experiences.

However, that willingness was more than a little undermined when Rana came to San Francisco in April of 2017 to perform in the Young Masters Series presented by San Francisco Performances. I was far less convinced by her performance than I was by her recording and probably went overboard in “counting the ways” of my discontent. However, Rana’s second album will be devoted entirely to the music of Maurice Ravel and Igor Stravinsky, presenting listening experiences to which I could bring a significantly different set of evaluative criteria. As can be expected, Amazon.com is already taking pre-orders for this new release.

Three of the four selections on the album are transcriptions. The only “original” is Maurice Ravel’s five-movement suite Miroirs (mirrors). In this case the pendulum would swing in the opposite direction, so to speak, since Ravel subsequently orchestrated the third and fourth movements, “Une barque sure l’océan” (a boat on the ocean) and “Alborada del gracioso” (the jester’s aubade). The Wikipedia page for Miroirs also accounts for subsequent orchestrations of the other three movements. Nevertheless, I have taken a Ravel-knows-best attitude and have not sought after any orchestrations other than his own. However, the final selection on the album was the result of Ravel preparing a piano version of a late composition that was richly and powerfully orchestral in its original version, “La Valse” (the waltz).

The Stravinsky selections, on the other hand, originated as orchestral scores composed for two of the best known ballets in the repertoire of Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, “The Firebird” and “Petrushka.” Stravinsky himself composed “Trois mouvements de Petrouchka” (three movements from “Petrushka”) for Arthur Rubinstein, who was never able to master performance of the work. Rana couples this with Guido Agosti’s transcription of the last three movements of the 1945 suite of music from “The Firebird,” the “Infernal dance of King Kashchei,” the lullaby (“Berceuse”), and the finale. (For the record, Stravinsky prepared his own piano version of the entire “Firebird” score.)

Sadly, there is little on this album that is particularly convincing. Where the Stravinsky selections are concerned, Rana’s technique is up to snuff, but her interpretations show little understanding of the narrative elements behind the music. Furthermore, notwithstanding Rubinstein’s weaknesses, the “Petrushka” excerpts have been taken up by any number of skilled pianists capable of delivering both technical dexterity and vivid impressions of the narrative elements. In other words there are plenty of more viable alternative recordings.

Miroirs has a similar difficulty in delivering on technique but little else. In this case, however, the movements that Ravel did not orchestrate do not seem to garner much attention in either recital programs or recordings. Even so, there are other ports I would prefer to seek out to weather this particular storm. “La Valse,” on the other hand, has never struck me as much more than a high-wire act. My preference will always be for the original version; but I have to say that, of all of the selections on this album, this is the one for which Rana comes closest to capturing the spirit.