Claire Huangci (piano): Made in USA (Alpha Classics)

Made in USA Gershwin, Beach & Barber Alpha Classics

Claire Huangci (piano)
Made in USA
George Gershwin (1898-1937)
Rhapsody in Blue (1924, arr. solo piano Gershwin, 1927)
Amy Beach (1867-1944)
Variations on Balkan Themes (1904)
Samuel Barber (1910-1981)
Piano Sonata in E flat minor Op. 26 (1949)
George Gershwin (transcr. Earl Wild (1915-2010))
7 Virtuoso Etudes
rec. 2024, Leibniz Saal, Hanover, Germany
Reviewed as a 16/44 download
Alpha Classics 1071 [78]

Claire Huangci is an American pianist based in Germany. She has been making records with Berlin Classics for ten years. Her legacy of discs including those of Bach, Scarlatti, Chopin Nocturnes and Rachmaninov Preludes were well received in the main. Her last record with them was a Schubert double containing his last four sonatas and more.

For her solo recital debut on Alpha, Claire Huangci has programmed an interesting mix of Americana that shows off her artistry well. Her disc comes into direct competition with Isata Kanneh-Mason’s “Summertime” album of 2021 sharing the Gershwin/Wild transcriptions, music from Amy Beach and the stand-out Barber sonata (review). Whilst the Decca record includes more Gershwin and some Coleridge-Taylor Huangci offers us Beach’s Variations on Balkan Themes, a major work worthy to stand alongside the Gaelic Symphony or the Piano Concerto, works collectors may already know.

Besides the revelatory Beach we have the aforementioned Barber Sonata of 1949, that Big Beast of the American piano sonata repertory of which its first performer Vladimir Horowitz said it was the first truly great example. The disc is topped and tailed with Gershwin. We begin with the 1927 composer arrangement of Rhapsody in Blue and end with the seven Earl Wild song arrangements.

Rhythm is key in the Rhapsody in Blue, that and sheer virtuosity is on display as we move through the cheerful opening section to the central theme of the piece at 9:30. This dreamy interlude is endearingly phrased and leads us to the third section beginning at 12:15. Clear articulation of the developed themes takes us via a flourish to the final coda of the work at 14:05. Wonderful – you almost forget there wasn’t an orchestra there (pace Messrs Whitman and Grofé).

Next we come to the Beach Variations, a substantial work of 24 minutes showing-off Beach’s re-composition of four themes from Serbia, Macedonia and other locales gathered for her by a Missionary friend at the turn of the century. At the time Bartók, Kodály, Vaughan Williams, Holst and many others were busy collecting native folk tunes and we hear the results in many pieces of theirs we all know and love. Amy Beach, a respectable Boston lady, could not very well get down and dirty in Eastern Europe, not in those days, so these melodies gathered second-hand had to suffice. What a tour de force she made of them though. Echoes of Schumann and especially Liszt notwithstanding, this is an original masterwork and as Sarah Walker of BBC Radio 3’s Record Review has noted, peppered as it is with more double sharps and flats than a Rachmaninov Prelude, it needs a virtuosic artist to do it justice.

Martina Frezzotti recorded it for Piano Classics in 2023 (review) and both versions are excellent in my opinion. I cannot choose between them. Frezzotti’s Variations are not individually tracked though and form part of an all-Beach disc that contains mainly shorter pieces so that may affect buyers’ decisions.

For me, the main course in this menu is the Piano Sonata of Samuel Barber. On this Huangci stands or falls you might say. If you don’t know the work you have to hear it and thanks to the record companies’ work over the last seventy years there is no shortage of good and great versions to sample. In under twenty minutes you will hear a captivating journey in four movements, thoroughly modern yet infused with the spirit and imposing stature of Bach and Beethoven.

In reviewing the present disc I re-listened to the aforementioned Isata Kanneh-Mason (2021), the magnificent Marc-André Hamelin on Hyperion (2004) and obviously Horowitz on Victor (1950). I note the Horowitz first appeared in the first supplement of WERM (Clough and Cuming’s World Encyclopaedia of Recorded Music) in 1951 as being available on two 78s (DM 1466). I suppose the war-weary and still-rationed British buyer would have had to special order that as an import, as it doesn’t look like it had an HMV number assigned. I bet there are not many of those still about! Thankfully RCA Victor and Sony have made sure it has always been available for reference in most formats.

The first movement has been described as apocalyptic and there is constant chromaticism in the score in the exposition and into the development (beginning at 2:11) until we reach bass ostinatos in the left hand ushering in gorgeous tonal harmony (3:09). We come to the recapitulation of the ideas (at 4:17) and the finally the coda (5:56). The clarity of Hamelin’s recording is noticeable in this first movement but Horowitz’s intensity and the way he pushes forward (reaching the coda at 5’30) is memorable. The old sorcerer’s magic touch at 6:14 brings a wry smile in what is an overwhelmingly dark movement.

The second scherzo movement in ABACA rondo form provides an opportunity for Huangci to show off her dexterity as she moves through the mercurial Prokofiev-like textures but it is in the great third passacaglia movement we may perhaps feel a thinness in tone as compared with Kanneh-Mason or Hamelin. Huangci plays a Yamaha CFX the top of the range model and an impressive piano but the Steinway D favoured by the others carries more especially in the lower registers I hear. In this dense Adagio and the following movement it matters.

The Barber sonata closes with the great fugal finale in the tradition of the great Leipzig master and the late Beethoven sonatas. Horowitz wanted a flashy finish but with content. Barber delivered in spades!

Claire Huangci’s recital ends with the seven Gershwin transcriptions penned by the great virtuoso Earl Wild. These are fantastic and fearsomely difficult in the grand tradition of the great piano transcribers of the past. Earl Wild probably recorded them (I believe his discography was enormous) but I cannot believe he would be disappointed with the performances on offer here.

Philip Harrison

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