Stratigou’s 2nd Album of Farrenc’s Piano Works

courtesy of A440 Arts

One week from today Grand Piano will release the second volume in a project to record the complete piano works of nineteenth-century composer Louise Farrenc. The first volume had accounted for four sets of études composed between 1833 and 1863, performed by pianist Maria Stratigou. The title of the second volume is Theme and Variations – Part I, and Stratigou is again the pianist. As tends to be expected, Amazon.com has created a Web page for taking pre-orders of this new release.

While the études album consisted of 57 short tracks, the new release has only nine. However, the durations, which tend to reflect the number of variations on the theme, cover a generous breadth. The shortest is a world premiere recording of a set of variations on a theme in F major, fifteen seconds short of three minutes. The longest is the Opus 4, which is slightly longer than eighteen minutes. This work was originally composed in 1824 (or earlier) for piano with orchestral accompaniment, and it was subsequently published for solo piano. That version is also a world premiere recording. Indeed, seven of the album’s nine tracks are all world premieres!

Beyond the experience of listening to music of the past that has only recently surfaced, however, there is the question of whether or not this new CD was meant for a “sit back and listen” experience. The fact is that, where attentive listening is involved, a collection of theme-and-variations compositions is not that different from the collections of études found in Stratigou’s first volume. In that context, it is worth recalling what I wrote about those étude collections:

Presumably, Farrenc was not interested in anyone choosing to sit back and listen to a pianist work his/her way through 30 études in a single sitting. The fact is that what any of these pieces lack in duration is made up for in technical challenges. This is as true of the final set of “easy” études as it is of the contents of the earlier publications. Performing any of these publications as a “set” is asking more of any pianist than would be considered appropriate.

In other words this new album is as much of a “reference resource” as the two CDs of études were. Personally, that means that all of the selections on this new release are way above my “pay grade” when it comes to what I play for myself at the piano! The more important question, which I have not yet answered for myself, is whether there is enough diversity among the nine compositions on this new album as there is inventiveness in each individual composition. Personally, I have to confess that I would feel more at home listening to an album of variations composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but that may just mean that I am more familiar with the themes because Mozart selected them. Would I have reacted differently to Farrenc’s variations compositions had I been her contemporary?