Curtly entitled 'Made in America' Alpha CLassics disc hardly hints at the riches on offer, let alone playing of a scintillating virtuosity and poetic empathy. Writing in her own admirable and succinct note Claire Huangci tells of the essential nature of American music, of its exuberant discarding of the old European forms and traditions (exemplified, if endearingly, by Edward Mc Dowell),a lifting of Shakespeare's far distant 'Brave New World' into an assertive reality.
I would only question her description when it comes to Amy Beach's Variations on Balkan Themes, opus 60, for Huangci the heart of her programme, with their nostalgic memories of Schumann and Liszt. Ambitious and resourceful they include a gently swaying 'Barcarola' an 'Allegro all' Ongarese,' a 'Marcia funebre' and an outsize concluding cadenza elaborating all that has gone before.
Both here and elsewhere Huangci is gloriously assured and never more so than in the Barber Sonata where she is dextrous to a degree and alive to its dark, neo-romantic poetry. There is pin-point delicacy, flashing light and colour in the second movement 'Allegro vivace e leggiero' and a powerful sense of the 'Adagio mesto's declamation. The fierce elaboration of the final Fugue's extended subject holds no fears for a pianist so formidably in command, in her pace and articulacy, and the final cataclysmic build up will set everyone's heart beating faster.
The Sonata was premiered by Vladimir Horowitz(Barber was heard to exclaim in amazement,'I'd no idea my Sonata could sound like that!') yet even with his legendary recording together with others by John Browning Van Cliburn and Terence Judd Huangci's performance makes comparison irrelevant.
In Gershwin's Rhapsodie in Blue she evokes all of the giddy whirl and extravagance of the jazz age, the world of Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby' and the composer's own brash, insinuating, bitter-sweet nostalgia. Here, as NIcolas Derny tells us in his accompanying essay, is the very essence of America, making you return to that extraordinary occasion, the 1924 premiere of the Rhapsodie. Gershwin's own transcription for solo piano followed in 1927 and even with an outstanding earlier recording by Andre Watts, Huangci, with all of her brilliance and aplomb, once again erases comparisons.
For encores she gives us seven of Earl Wild's gaudy and glamorous song transcriptions evoking, once more, Gershwin's inimitable voice, his kaleidoscopic flashing of lost or forbidden love, of joy clouded by pain.
Technically astonishing and poetically acute you could hardly wish for a more vivid introduction to American piano music. I can hardly wait to hear Claire Huangci(who won the 2018 Geza Anda Competition) in her recordings of a wide-ranging repertoire including Schubert's last three Sonatas and the complete Chopin Nocturnes.
Bryce Morrison