Rorianne Schrade, pianist
Tuesday, September 19, 2017, at 7:30 PM
Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall*
Program
Sonata in C Major, K. 330 Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart
Sonata in F minor (“Appassionata”),
Op. 57 Ludwig
van Beethoven
Für Alina
Arvo
Pärt
Prelude Op. 11, No. 1
Anatole
Liadov
Etude in B Major, Op. 8, No. 4
Alexander Scriabin
Etude in E Major (“La Nuit”)
Alexander
Glazunov
Etude, Op. 40, No. 2 (“Reverie”)
Nikolai
Kapustin
Etude-Tableau in E-flat Major Op. 33, No. 7
Sergei
Rachmaninoff
Scherzo from the Sixth Symphony
Tchaikovsky-Feinberg
From From Isler’s
Insights, 2017:
Review
Pianist Rorianne Schrade stepped onto the stage of Weill Hall this evening expecting a small audience,
due to bad weather predictions, heavy UN/Trump traffic in the neighborhood, etc. She was confronted, instead, with a full
house of enthusiastic listeners. And she played a very fine concert.
She
began with a Mozart sonata which
she played in what seemed to me a very Romantic approach. Yet, with her sincerity, sensitivity and use of nuance and expressivity, she won me over with her
interpretation.
Ms. Schrade is a member of the noted Schrade family of pianists, several of whom, sadly, have passed away in the last
few years. Her performance of the Appassionata Sonata was powerful, and it
was by then clear, also from the confidence she displayed at the instrument, that she excels at the “family business”
of playing the piano.
The first six works of the second half were played without a break. It was a mostly
lovely, mostly Russian tour of some wonderful music most of which is not well-known, starting with the slow and spiritual
Pärt work, through the lovely Liadov Prelude, and eventually moving on to the more muscular Kapustin and Rachmaninoff
works. (The Rachmaninoff, of course, is well-known.) Most of these pieces did not sound easy to play. Except, perhaps, by
contrast with the final work on the program.
Samuil Feinberg (1890-1962) was a terrific pianist whose accomplishments
include an excellent recording of the complete Well-Tempered Clavier of Bach. Less well-known are his own compositions, and
even less well-known are his transcriptions. I was not even aware of the
existence of his transcription of the Scherzo movement of the Tchaikovsky Sixth Symphony. Hugely complex and brilliant, Ms.
Schrade ate it alive! And received a standing ovation afterwards.
It was a wonderful
evening.
Donald Isler