Verdict: "The perfect tribute to an American pianist who found the right balance between showbiz and poetry."
Every so often, a new CD seems to come spinning out of left field straight to the heart; Xiayin Wang's The Piano Music of Earl Wild is just such a disc.
Wild, who passed away this year at 94, was one of the old school, enough of a "name" to merit his own album in the Great Pianists of the 20th Century collection 10 years ago.
A respected Chopin and Liszt man, the American was best known for his many deft and sometimes flashy transcriptions. These ranged from his Doo-Dah Variations on a theme of Stephen Foster to the Seven Virtuoso Etudes based on Gershwin songs, popular enough to tempt a number of occasionally foolhardy pianists to post their versions of the pieces on YouTube.
Xiayin Wang, who dazzled last year playing Scriabin for Naxos, has moved to Chandos with an hour of Wild's Gershwin transcriptions, including his Grand Fantasy on Porgy and Bess.
The very title of the Grand Fantasy is deliciously old fashioned, and over its almost half-hour running time it proves itself to be much more than just a showbiz slam. How effortlessly Wang creates the illusion of a sea of hands attending to Summertime with their silken caressings, painting Gershwin's Buzzard Song with a Ravel-tinted palette and rippling through a range of emotional turmoils in My Man's Gone Now.
The Etudes treat Tin Pan Alley with wit and discretion. Wang catches the romantic swoonings of Oh, Lady Be Good before the blues set in; The Man I Love, with its seemingly inexhaustible supply of fingers, is a giddy whirl. Someone To Watch Over Me gets its own workout in three variations. Wild's final take, in tango style, has Wang's crisp articulation making the most of the piece's playful Bach samplings.
The CD closes with Wild's 2000 Sonata, a work described by the man himself as an expression of a few moments in his long life. The high point is the final movement, titled "a la Ricky Martin", presented by Wang as a tizzy tumble of a toccata, evoking the Puerto Rican glam boy who gave the world Livin La Vida Loca.
