Ukraine – A piano portrait
Margaret Fingerhut (piano)
rec. 2024, The Menuhin Hall, Stoke d’Abernon, UK
Reviewed as a download
SOMM Recordings SOMMCD0701 [78]

Many of us will have on our shelves a disc or two by pianist Margaret Fingerhut, who has been frequently recorded by Chandos.  In this new recording from Somm, she performs a wonderful selection of pieces by Ukrainian composers. Much of the music is from 1920 or earlier and all of it is tonal, immediately accessible, picturesque and evocative. The pianist and Somm are donating proceeds from the sale of this record to buying aid for the country which has been so ravaged since the invasion of 2022. In the excellent notes, the pianist herself makes the case for her choice of music and her connection to it. We also get Robert Matthew-Walker’s scholarly assessment of each piece on the record, too.

Bortkiewicz is a fairly well known composer. Hyperion, Dutton and the Piano Classics label have explored his work quite substantially. Margaret Fingerhut tops and tails her programme with two of his loveliest works. From his Sketches of Crimea, we first hear Les Rochers d’Outche-Coche, a very special piece for her. Back in 2022, she teamed up with a young Ukrainian filmmaker called Viktoriia Levchenko to make a short film using the work and images of Ukraine at peace and war. In the age of social media, I understand many thousands saw the short clip and were moved by it. The film is not a necessary prerequisite for enjoying this delightful vignette, however. It is a beautiful work and very well written for the piano. If anything, the other piece by Borkiewicz lies even better under the hands. The gentle sway of the modulations in this exquisite Consolation provides an enchanting end to the recital. Margaret Fingerhut’s Steinway D is songful and particularly well caught in the upper registers of its range.

If I must be critical of anything here, it is that most of the pieces are very similar. Lyrical, beguiling, intimate, they are all mostly on the light side, too. There is nothing wrong with that and the time flies by listening to such a wonderful instrument in this intoxicating music. Nonetheless, some listeners may be waiting for a main course that never comes. That said, I hope to signpost what variety there is as one moves through the pieces of the disc.

Barvinsky’s 2 preludes are impressionistic like the first Bortkiewicz work. The second piece is particularly pretty. They are followed by another work called Loneliness, the Sorrow of Love. This is harmonically a very interesting piece and deserves to be better known. Lysenko, a couple of generations older than Barvinsky, is showcased by a Rhapsody. The music contains a splendid dumka section, the dance form of which he was a master. Fingerhut is surprisingly quite reserved; If I am honest, I can imagine this great piece being dashed off with a little more elan.

Fingerhut next plays four movements by the intriguing composer Revutsky. This selection of music is perhaps my favourite on the disc. Characteristically Ukrainian, I think, he captures the essence of the region’s folk music in a late Romantic, Scriabinesque manner. There is a sense of yearning, craving even, in the first piece and a great crescendo. The second piece is like a Rachmaninov prelude while the third with its leaping octaves reminds me of Chopin. The final improvisation is different again and simply lovely. Ukrainian pianists, of which there are many famous names, not least Horowitz, Moiseiwitsch, Gilels, Richter and Cherkassky, never recorded any Revutsky, nor, indeed, any of the music on this program. After hearing it, I am certain that you, like me, will wish they had.

The Nocturne-Fantaisie included by Kosenko uses tremolo effects to create a repetitive, hypnotic effect. Fingerhut relishes the big build up to the apex of the piece at its absolute dead centre – as a mathematician myself, I am impressed by the symmetry on show here. Robert Matthew-Walker’s notes call the monumental climax an “arc of golden sunlight, that winds down to dark emptiness”. This is extremely impressive piano writing and it is superlatively played.

Silvestrov is a fairly well known living composer, 87 at the time of writing. His 3 bagatelles dates from 2005. They sound deceptively simple yet in them they contain real emotion and delicacy. Margaret Fingerhut in the booklet says she feels a “visceral intensity” in the music. Silvestrov is a favourite composer of Hélène Grimaud who has recorded much of his fine output, including these bagatelles, for DG. Another of his advocates is Alexei Lubimov. I was glad to hear these works in the recital.

The final composer on the disc is Lyatoshinsky. Readers may remember a Chandos disc from the Bournemouth SO under Kirill Karabits, whose parents were both students of the famous Ukrainian composer. In fact, the symphonies generally are worth exploring and are available on Naxos and cpo. The music in these three pieces is darker, angrier and more defiant than what we have heard previously on this record. Fingerhut digs deep in these troubled pages and I think produces her best performances. Lyatoshinsky wrote this music in war time and I wish the record had included a little more of the same.

There is much to enjoy in this recital and I can recommend it warmly. Somm tells us it was recorded over two days and there are a couple of places where I believe you can tell. In the Silvestrov selection, for instance, the dynamic levels are much higher than in the pieces that surround them and I had to adjust the volume at that point. It is not a huge issue but I felt it right to draw attention to it. As I write this review there seem to be tentative yet hopeful signs of a peace perhaps on the horizon for Ukraine. Like Margaret Fingerhut and Somm Recordings, I dearly wish for this.

Philip Harrison

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Contents
Sergei Bortkiewicz (1877–1952) 
Esquisses de Crimée, Op.8 (1908) – Les Rochers d’Outche-Coche
Vasyl Barvinsky (1888–1963)
5 Preludes (1908) – No.1 in G major, No.2 in F sharp major
Piano Cycle on Love (1915) – Loneliness, the Sorrow of Love
Mykola Lysenko (1842–1912)
Rhapsody on Ukrainian Themes No.2 “Dumka-Shumka”, Op.18 (1877)
Levko Revutsky (1889–1977)
3 Preludes, Op.4 (1914)
Improvisation (1920–30)
Viktor Kosenko (1896–1938)
Nocturne-Fantaisie, Op.4 (1919)
Valentin Silvestrov (b.1937)
3 Bagatelles, Op.1 (2005)
Boris Lyatoshinsky (1895–1968)
2 Preludes on the Melodies of Ukrainian Folk Songs, Op.38b (1942)
Elegy-Prelude “Mourning” (1920)
Sergei Bortkiewicz
Consolation, Op.17 No.4 (1914)