Soli Deo Gloria - An Anthem of Faith
Organ Chorale Prelude; Ich ruf zu dir, Herr [3:25]
Preludio from Partita No.3 for solo violin BWV1006 arranged Sergei Rachmaninov [4:09]
Invention No.6 in E major BWV 777 [3:43]
Well-Tempered Clavier; Prelude and Fugue in C minor BWV847 [1:38 + 1:54]
Toccata and Fugue in D minor arr. Ferruccio Busoni [9:46]
Adagio from the Sonata in F minor for violin and keyboard BWV1018 arranged Alexander Siloti [3:36]
English Suite in G minor BWV808 [20:04]
Clavier Büchlein für WF Bach; Prelude in B minor, BWV855a arranged Alexander Siloti [2:47]
Margaret Wacyk (piano)
rec. location? 2012?
EMPYREAN RECORDS 696859121067 [51:18]
Bach is the focus of this release from pianist Margaret Wacyk, an album
devoted ‘Soli Deo Gloria’ and, indeed, the Glory is God’s.
I began by listening to the Siloti arrangement of the Adagio
from the Sonata in F for violin and keyboard, a well-established
repertoire piece in concert and, especially, on disc. Wacyk plays with
sparing rubato, but employs it perceptively, and her musicianship is
predicated on a firm line untroubled by sentimentality. The recording,
a touch hard, emphasises this quickness of purpose - quickness but not
metricality - whereas a more cushioned performance such as that by Hamish
Milne (Hyperion
CDA67506) explores a more quiescent tonal perspective. She is perhaps
a touch less successful than Milne in the Siloti-arranged Prelude
in B minor from the Clavier Büchlein für WF Bach
where the drier acoustic and spare pedalling encourages thoughts of
harpsichord imitation.
In the main she abjures the grandiose and magisterial even when latent.
Thus the Toccata and Fugue in D minor is a more seamless, quite
lateral traversal with, seemingly, the intent to allow the music to
fuse from paragraph to paragraph. There’s no attempt to imitate
the imperious grandiosity of a Grigory Ginzburg here, the playing remaining,
if anything, on the dainty side with voicings quite sublimated, and
the drama kept at a very cool setting. This clearly reflects a strong
musical and aesthetic choice.
Hyphenation is a strong part of the repertoire in this release - Siloti,
Busoni and also Rachmaninoff, whose famous arrangement from the E major
Violin Sonata she plays: just this movement. Here she plays with time,
perhaps to excess, the music sometimes held in reverie-like stasis.
She also finds some quite droll voicings, though they’re not ones
that Rachmaninoff found in his tensile performance of 1942. One moment
in the Bach-Busoni Ich ruf zu dir, Herr disturbed me and that
comes at 1:13 when she breaks the line completely, to restart again
after a pause. The speedings up and exaggerations here strike me as
strange indulgences for Wacyk; Egon Petri’s classic 78 retains
integrity through its utter repudiation of anything other than the core
of the music.
The most extended piece here is the English Suite in G minor
in which Wacyk is at her best. Her playing is dedicated and rhythmically
alert. She doesn’t take every opportunity to colour her tone,
something that Angela Hewitt is at pains to do in her Hyperion
set of the suites. Hewitt prefers more expressive extremes - slower
and darker in the Courante for example - where her Fazioli shimmers
with colour. Wacyk’s more direct, less showy performance is not
inflexible and if she doesn’t cultivate Hewitt’s sense of
the bereft in the Sarabande Wacyk’s performance is consistent,
resolute and sensitively thoughtful.
Throughout, in fact, she reveals her affinities with the selected music,
to which she responds with devotion and sincerity.
Jonathan Woolf
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