Yue He, piano : Alfred Cortot : Piano Arrangements

Piano International (Sep, 2013)
Alfred Cortot (1877-1962) has had much written about him as a pianist and he left us recordings to help determine his musical personality; he played with a certain freedom and much poetry, as if telling a story. All the music here consists of Cortot’s transcriptions for solo piano, beginning with Faure’s Dolly Suite, played in an unsentimental and businesslike way by He Yue that must be the polar opposite to what Cortot had in mind. Each to their own, but though He Yue does display a certain sensitivity, his straight-bat approach is far from engaging; clear and easeful, but not much more.

The Toccata and Fugue in D minor (BWV565) finds …