Search - Anna Gourari :: Visions fugitives (Medtner/Prokoviev/Chopin)

Pianist Anna Gourari's ECM debut 2012's Canto Oscuro, an album that channels the Baroque and its spirit reflecting darkly through the ages earned praise far and wide. Gramophone declared her version of the Bach-Busoni Chaconne "one of the most riveting on record," while The Absolute Sound judged the entire disc "devastating." Visions Fugitives, Gourari's second ECM release, showcases the intense beauty of her sound in Prokofiev's title work, a set of 20 fleeting visions whose moods swing from lyrical to sardonic, grotesque to calm, melancholy to boisterous, nostalgic to insistent, and back again. The album also features Nicolai Medtner's Fairy Tale in F minor, from one of his sets of skazki tales of musical figments, of melodies and harmonies, rhythmic profiles and altered chords, shapes and gestures and atmospheres. Then there is Chopin's Sonata No. 3 in B minor, which encompasses not only a Beethoven-inspired opening movement but also a Largo that's like a funeral song, with a melodic poignancy that justifies and even necessitates some extraordinary harmonic progressions.