The recordings here were made nearly two decades ago and have
done the reissue rounds a number of times before now. Elisso
Bolkvadze is a prize-winning pianist and her hard hitting playing
is personable, whilst Jansug Kakhidze (1935-2002) was known,
somewhat optimistically one feels, as ‘the Georgian von
Karajan’.
Rachmaninov’s evergreen Paganini Variations illustrates
fairly graphically what is wrong - or at least one of the things
that is wrong - which is an impossible acoustic. It swirls and
echoes and with a very closely balanced piano we have something
of an acoustic nightmare on our hands. In any case the performance
is very cautious and dogged. It lacks clarity of direction,
pianistic aerial fancy and a real sense of ensemble cohesion.
Add to that a bizarre, albeit vividly hallucinatory moment toward
the end and we are left with a badly balanced, poorly recorded,
stolidly performed piece of work.
The Saint-Saëns is much more up to the mark tempo-wise
but the bad balance does for it too. Bolkvadze’s technique
is strong, albeit her imagination is often somewhat brusque.
Orchestral counter-themes sound vapid or so in the background
they might as well not be there at all. Her finger precision
is laudable and she illuminates successive movements reasonably
well but she’s fighting insuperable odds when it comes
to the recording. The same is true of Liszt’s badinage
in his Fantasy on Hungarian Folk Themes.
I think it’s probably time these performances were given
what the old Record Guide used to call ‘honourable retirement’.
Jonathan Woolf
Elisso Bolkvadze (piano)