Fresh off his album of piano music of
Sibelius
,
Leif Ove Andsnes
returns with another late Romantic composer not much known for his keyboard output,
Antonin Dvorak
. Although they come from the creatively rich final period of his life, these works are not much played, at least outside of Czech lands. They have been recorded from time to time, but
Andsnes
is the first "name" artist to take them up. It is hard to understand why they have remained obscure; they are charming pieces with depth for the pianist to sink his teeth into. Perhaps their relative technical simplicity has caused their neglect, but in a way that is the appeal of the music;
Dvorak
's pieces are pictorial salon works dressed up with compositional sophistication. Sample the "Sorrowful Reverie," a Chopinesque piece whose harmonic evolution keeps the listener guessing.
is fully aware of the layers in the music, and his takes on these pieces will linger in the mind. Only the engineering in Trondheim's Olavshalle is troublesome; it adds an unwanted edge to
' playing, and picks up extraneous noise but in the main, this is another fine outing from one of the pianistic stars of the day, one which landed on best-seller charts in the fall of 2022. ~ James Manheim