Kaleidoscope
Contemporary Piano Music by Female Composers from Around the World
Contents listed after review
Isabel Dobarro (piano)
rec. 2023, Estudio Uno, Madrid, Spain
Grand Piano GP944 [56]

I believe that this is the debut album by the thirty-two-year-old pianist, who gives high priority to the promotion of piano music by female composers. Almost all the twelve pieces by twelve composers are premiere recordings, and may be unknown to most listeners. I have heard music by Caroline Shaw (when she was Composer of the Week on Radio 3) and by the sadly short-lived Claudia Montero, whose Piano Concerto was recently broadcast.

Eleven countries are represented: three composers from South America, then Nigeria, Jordan, Japan and more. Twelve pieces in a programme of under an hour means that most of them are quite short. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that Shaw’s piece lasts over thirteen minutes. What we have left can, I feel, sound a little inconsequential with many pieces of just two or three minutes. Such a timeframe does not allow one to really discover the nature and individuality of the composer, or sometimes indeed the full character of the music.

The booklet goes into excellent detail about each piece and its composer. A section at the back also offers some rather overly detailed biographies of each composer. We are led to believe that every piece is of special interest, and is ideally heard in the hands of Isabel Dobarro. Now, I do not doubt her fine pianism and dedication, but few of these pieces, for me anyway, struck home and made an impression.

The natural world, especially water, has been a strong inspiration to some of these composers. Take, for example, Karen Tanaka’s Water dance, Yoko Kanno’s Hana wa saku [flowers will bloom] composed after the horrifying tsunami and earthquake in 2011, and Blue Ocean by the Australian Carolyn Morris with its constant flow of wavelike arpeggios. But I will pick out three works especially interesting for me, which you might be able to sample.

Caroline Shaw’s Gustave Le Gray pays homage to the nineteenth-century photographer justly famous for his portrait of Chopin, taken only a short time before the composer’s death. The piece is based on Chopin’s Mazurka Op.17 No.4, using the typical repeated chords often found in that work. Manuel Garcia-Orozco writes in the booklet that the Mazurka ‘undergoes a deconstruction into contrasting tonal landscapes that traverse the spectrum of human sentiment’; make of that what you will. Soon after four minutes, we hear this most tear-jerking of Chopin’s works right through. Shaw then moves in again, but with the barest of development, eventually adding various syncopations to the Mazurka’s harmonic outline and rising to a climax. She repeats just a few chords all too often, in my view. The ending, however, is sensitively handled.

The American Julia Wolfe is represented by Earring. This clever fragment of less than two minutes has, we are told, the right hand playing a samba rhythm but basically on one note, whilst the left hand ‘drifts in a dream-like state’. Coordination between the two contrasting rhythms and textures is a real challenge, brilliantly conveyed here.

Also making its mark is Gabriela Ortiz’s exciting Estudio 3, homage to Jesusa Palancaes. The Mexican composer seems to know her Revueltas and Ginastera, if that helps you grasp the language. There is a brief contrasting lyrical idea, but the rhythmic drive is never lost in this almost six-minute virtuoso romp.

The recording, as ever with the label, is immediate and clear. Isabel Dobarro is a highly committed pianist whose development will be fascinating to follow.

Gary Higginson

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Contents
Dobrinka Tabakova (b. 1980)
Nocturne (2008)
Gabriela Ortiz (b. 1964)
Estudios entre preludios: Estudio 3, Homenaje a Jesusa Palancares (2007)
Nkeiru Okoye (b. 1972)
African Sketches: II. Dusk (2003-2004)
Suad Bushnaq (b. 1982)
Improvisation (2001-2002)
Yoko Kanno (b. 1964)
Hana wa saku (2012/2015)
Tania León (b. 1943)
Tumbao (2005)
Carolyn Morris (b. 1970)
Blue Ocean (2020)
Karen Tanaka (b. 1961)
Water Dance III : Very Lightly, like a harp
Claudia Montero (1962-2021)
Buenos Aires, Despierta y Sueña (2008)
Julia Wolfe (b. 1958)
Earring (2000)
Caroline Shaw (b. 1982)
Gustave le Gray (2012)
Carme Rodríguez (b. 1996)
Alalá das paisaxes verticais (2021)