I remember hearing Oxana Yablonskaya in recital shortly after she emigrated from Russia to the United States in the late 1970s; I also acquired her three solo-debut releases on Connoisseur Society. They first appeared as audiophile cassettes, duplicated in real time by In Sync Labs. One featured Beethoven sonatas, another was devoted to Liszt (including a dynamite Spanish Rhapsody), and the third appears now for the first time (I believe) on CD. The sound quality is drier and more dynamically constricted than what I remember from the cassette, and certainly falls short of the big, warm, luscious tone Yablonskaya produces in the concert hall. Still, her technically solid and musically unified Mussorgsky Pictures breathes a welcome air of normalcy in an era clogged with one too many exaggerated “personality” renditions.
However, Yablonskaya saves her most inspired playing for the Prokofiev selections. The ten Visions Fugitives are as lithe, transparent, and wittily shaped as we could wish, while the pianist thoroughly understands and projects the Third sonata’s sardonic, galloping demeanor and lyric reserve. Here the sound appears to gain a bit in fullness and amplitude. I hope this reissue is a harbinger of more releases of long-unavailable Connoisseur Society gems. May I request Anthony Bonaventura’s genius Scarlatti sonatas, Ilana Vered’s complete Moszkowski Etudes Op. 72, and Ivan Moravec’s 1965 Chopin Preludes (briefly on VAI, now impossible to find)?
