Timings ought not be a harbinger of performance quality, yet Igor Do Amaral’s unusually protracted ones throughout Alkan’s Symphony for Solo Piano give fair warning. He cautiously ambles through the opening Allegro moderato in sixteen minutes, while Marc-André Hamelin confidently sails through it in 10:29 flat. His lethargic and nerveless Funeral March lasts an interminable 9:46, four minutes longer than the norm. Without looking at the score, Do Amara’s 7:55 timing for the Minuet and Trio actually sounds plausible, indeed, almost Brahmsian. However, at 5:18, Raymond Lewenthal proves far more urgent at twice Do Amaral’s speed. Lastly, at 6: 26, Do Amaral’s concluding movement emerges as an elephantine lope, in contrast to Paul Wee’s 4:20 whirling dervish of a Presto.
Do Amaral is clearly more comfortable with the twelve less demanding pieces contained in The Months Op. 74, and plays with sufficient sensitivity and color. Cases in point: the mellifluous soft high chords in the first piece and the lyrical turns of phrase in Le serenade (No. 5). He rises to the occasion in L’Hallali, digging into the broken chords and the first measures’ gnawing dissonances with impressive gusto; this piece might be described as Schumann’s Papillons recomposed by King Kong. Yet selections requiring more power and projection like Nos. 2 and 8 lack the assertion and suppleness that Daniel Capelleti brought to his long out of print 1988 recording on the René Gailly label. In short, this first in a projected series of releases devoted to Alkan’s piano works sorely disappoints. Good engineering and annotations.
