If, like me, you can’t stand pigeonholing and such things, you’ll also love what David Greilsammer does here. He has chosen nineteen pieces which play uninterruptedly (literally attacca – this is not an album to dip into, rather to be beguiled by instructive juxtapositions over seventy minutes) which group into six lots of three with, each time, the same first and third composers embracing a second one, pivoting (as track ten) on Granados. Ergo, Janáček surrounds Lully; Beethoven meets George Crumb; Ligeti and J. S. Bach become neighbours; Satie and C. P. E. Bach similarly; then Ofer Pelz and Marin Marais; and, finally, Scriabin and Jean-Féry Rebel. This very revealing recital, superbly recorded, is not only instructive but also very enjoyable, and features some fabulous playing from Greilsammer: white-hot at times, not least for Vers la flamme, and always communicative. Naïve V 7084.
David Greilsammer records Labyrinth for Naïve.
