Beatrice Rana, and Yuja Wang (again)

I investigated Beatrice Rana, a new Italian piano “star” (on a CD with Antonio Pappano and the Santa Cecilia Orchestra in Rome). She is presented by the Warner company as a keyboard tiger, with the orchestra well in the background. The background orchestra does not matter too much in Prokofiev's second piano concerto, which must rival Chopin's piano concertos as one of the least rewarding for an orchestral player. Listening to the Prokofiev second piano concerto, I realised I have never really taken to Prokofiev's music; slick, clever, fashionable but, a bit like Stravinsky, lacking that Russian “soul” one finds in Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov or Shostakovich.

Like her ancient pianistic ancestor, Vladimir Horowitz, Ms Rana can certainly play the piano and, with the up-front Warner recording, we hear every demi-semiquaver she plays. The orchestra is less fortunate and comes over, in so far as the recording engineers are concerned, as a necessary back-up group. There are four photos of the photogenic Ms Rana, and we are in the world of showbiz rather than serious music making. I followed Ms Rana's CD with Yuja Wang playing the Ravel piano concertos with the Zürich Tonhalle orchestra conducted by Lionel Bringuier. Ms Wang is also a star (at the moment, even bigger in the galaxy than Ms Rana) but, with Yuja, we are back in the land of music making rather than circus tricks. I am not a great fan of Ravel, nor of his piano concertos. However, I can recognise great performances when I hear them, and the constant dialogue between Yuja Wang and the Swiss orchestra is a welcome antidote to the “pianist plus one” recording by Beatrice Rana. It's not often that the sweeping Tchaikovskian melodies in his first piano concerto go for practically nothing; here they are just an interlude before Ms Rana thunders in again. The Italian recording engineers should be shown the door. And Ms Rana, incredible pianist though she may be, does not go on my “buy” list.

The CD of Yuja Wang playing the two Ravel piano concertos is in a demonstration class of how piano and orchestra should play together in a piano concerto, and how they should be balanced (DG). Yuja's opening of the second movement of the Ravel G major concerto will melt any heart. I am afraid, however, that Beatrice Rana's CD of Prokofiev's second piano, coupled with Tchaikovsky's first, is a demonstration of how not to do it. Antonio Pappano will probably put this CD at the bottom of his bottom draw. I just hope that Warner does not follow this with a duo recording featuring Ms Rana and Andrea Bocelli. Or a duo recording with Ms Rana and Lang Lang.