Notes and Editorial Reviews
ARIA: OPERA WITHOUT WORDS
•
Jean-Yves Thibaudet (pn)
•
DECCA
000843102 (60:53)
BELLINI
(arr. Mikhashoff)
Norma:
Casta diva.
GLUCK
(arr. Sgambati)
Orfeo ed Euridice:
Dance of the Furies.
GRAINGER
(ed. Thibaudet)
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Ramble on R. Strauss’s Love Duet from “Der Rosenkavalier.”
GRÜNFELD
Soirée de Vienne.
KORNGOLD
(arr. Thibaudet, Kerber)
Die tote Stadt:
Marietta’s Song.
PUCCINI
(arr. Mikhashoff)
Gianni Schicchi:
O mio babbino caro.
Tosca:
Vissi d’arte.
Mikhashoff
Portrait of Madame Butterfly.
SAINT-SAËNS
(arr. Thibaudet)
Fantasy on Themes from “Samson et Dalila.”
WAGNER
(arr. Brassin)
Die Walküre:
Ride of the Valkyries
Here’s an imaginative sampler of opera transcriptions, familiar and unfamiliar, played with the evocative color, fluid legato, supple phrasing, harmonic sensitivity, and textual clarity that characterizes Jean-Yves Thibaudet at his best. Generally speaking, Thibaudet is more comfortable with the wistful (“Vissi d’arte”) than with the whimsical: Grünfeld’s bubbly Strauss concoction seems rather flat and straight-faced, with some surprisingly heavy downbeats that drag the music down. Likewise, he’s more attuned to the virginal (“Casta diva” and the once-popular Gluck-Sgambati “Dance of the Furies”) than to the violent: the technical challenges of Brassin’s Wagner transcription are palpably evident here. Nor, in the chestnuts, is he quite up to the competition. He doesn’t have the unforced eloquence of Rachmaninoff in the Gluck-Sgambati, for instance; nor, in
Ramble
(played, for some reason, with Thibaudet’s own ending), does he quite bring out the subtle distinctions at the quiet end of the spectrum that we hear, say, in Hamelin’s magisterial account.
Still, for the most part the collection plays to his strengths—and while none of the newish contributions by Yvar Mikhashoff or by Thibaudet and Randy Kerber (the pianist “outlined” the transcriptions and commissioned Kerber “to complete them”) reveal the keyboard imagination heard in the best of the Golden Age transcriptions, they certainly serve their purpose. Excellent engineering too. Not a disc for repeated close listening, perhaps, but it will make an effective aural condiment for Sunday brunch.
FANFARE: Peter J. Rabinowitz
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Works on This Recording
1.
Gianni Schicchi: O mio babbino caro by Giacomo Puccini
Performer:
Jean-Yves Thibaudet (Piano)
Period: Romantic
Written: 1918; Italy
Date of Recording: 06/2006
Venue: Reitstadl, Neumarkt, Germany
Length: 2 Minutes 53 Secs.
Notes: Arranger: Yvar Mikhashoff.
2.
Tosca: Vissi d'arte, vissi d'amore by Giacomo Puccini
Performer:
Jean-Yves Thibaudet (Piano)
Period: Romantic
Written: 1900; Italy
Date of Recording: 06/2006
Venue: Reitstadl, Neumarkt, Germany
Length: 3 Minutes 25 Secs.
Notes: Arranger: Yvar Mikhashoff.
3.
Norma: Casta diva by Vincenzo Bellini
Performer:
Jean-Yves Thibaudet (Piano)
Period: Romantic
Written: 1831; Italy
Date of Recording: 06/2006
Venue: Reitstadl, Neumarkt, Germany
Length: 6 Minutes 58 Secs.
Notes: Arranger: Yvar Mikhashoff.
4.
Die Walküre: Ride of the Valkyries by Richard Wagner
Performer:
Jean-Yves Thibaudet (Piano)
Period: Romantic
Written: 1856; Germany
Date of Recording: 06/2006
Venue: Reitstadl, Neumarkt, Germany
Length: 5 Minutes 5 Secs.
Notes: Arranger: Louis Brassin.
5.
Orfeo ed Euridice: Dance of the Furies by Christoph W. Gluck
Performer:
Jean-Yves Thibaudet (Piano)
Period: Classical
Written: 1762/1774; Vienna, Austria
Date of Recording: 06/2006
Venue: Reitstadl, Neumarkt, Germany
Length: 3 Minutes 25 Secs.
Notes: Arranger: Giovanni Sgambati.
6.
Improvisations on "Samson et Dalila" by Camille Saint-Saëns
Performer:
Jean-Yves Thibaudet (Piano)
Period: Romantic
Written: France
Date of Recording: 06/2006
Venue: Reitstadl, Neumarkt, Germany
Length: 6 Minutes 55 Secs.
Notes: Arranger: Jean-Yves Thibaudet.
7.
Ramble on R Strauss's love duet from "Der Rosenkavalier" by Percy Aldridge Grainger
Performer:
Jean-Yves Thibaudet (Piano)
Period: 20th Century
Written: USA
Date of Recording: 06/2006
Venue: Reitstadl, Neumarkt, Germany
Length: 7 Minutes 27 Secs.
Notes: Arranger: Jean-Yves Thibaudet.
8.
Die tote Stadt, Op. 12: Glück, das mir verblieb "Mariettalied" by Erich Wolfgang Korngold
Performer:
Jean-Yves Thibaudet (Piano)
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1920; Vienna, Austria
Date of Recording: 06/2006
Venue: Reitstadl, Neumarkt, Germany
Length: 6 Minutes 6 Secs.
Notes: Arrangers: Jean-Yves Thibaudet; Randy Kerber.
9.
Soirée de Vienne, Op. 56 by Alfred Grünfeld
Performer:
Jean-Yves Thibaudet (Piano)
Period: Romantic
Date of Recording: 06/2006
Venue: Reitstadl, Neumarkt, Germany
Length: 5 Minutes 40 Secs.
10.
Portrait of Madame Butterfly by Yvar Mikhashoff
Performer:
Jean-Yves Thibaudet (Piano)
Period: Romantic
Date of Recording: 06/2006
Venue: Reitstadl, Neumarkt, Germany
Length: 12 Minutes 18 Secs.
Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review: 
( 1 Customer Review )
Disappointing............ December 5, 2012
By Laszlo Straka (Fontana, CA) See All My Reviews
"This CD is certainly not up to the standard one expects from Jean-Yves Thibaudet whose work I generally admire. It is a helter-skelter potpourri of piano adaptations, with no overarching theme, and performed with a surprising lack of fire (except for the last track, Wagner's old warhorse The Ride of the Valkyries, which is an appropriately rousing finish). Most of the other selections add nothing notable to the ouvre and are easily forgettable -- alas!!"
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