Mirna Lekić - Mirage (2023) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

MIRAGE is a collection of sonic illusions, allusions, and transformations that celebrate the piano’s unique capability to imitate, echo and morph into other instruments. These compositions reveal and free a broad spectrum of sounds inherent in the instrument, inviting it to take on the roles of a traveler and a polyglot. The collection provides both a path to deepening our relationship with the piano and an opportunity to examine its place within a wider musical sphere. The album title points to the illusive and elusive aspects of the various transformative processes and their results, as well as to the ongoing conversation between tradition and innovation in the never-ending search for the many possibilities the instrument has to offer.

"The inclusion of works by 11 very different composers in a recording by Mirna Lekić on the Furious Artisans label turns the disc into something akin to modern art in painting. The CD’s overall title, “Mirage,” hints at what Lekić is looking for here: ways in which the piano takes on the sonic appearance of other instruments, using its unique percussive capabilities to produce aural scenes that sound as if they are being musically painted by sound producers of many types. As with the Chochieva release, this one requires listeners to be fully attuned (so to speak) with the pianist’s ideas in order to appreciate the individual works as parts of a larger whole. Also as with the Chochieva recording, the pieces here do not really relate all that well to each other sans the connective tissue supplied by the pianist’s intent in performing them. Strictly on a musical basis, the works here are often jarring in juxtaposition – which is not much of a surprise, given that they were composed as long ago as 1892 and as recently as 2013. The composers are also a highly varied group, some being quite well-known and others being thoroughly unfamiliar. The selections are presented in scattershot fashion that presumably reflects Lekić’s notions of the colors and shapes of the individual works. First is Music for Piano (1989/1997) by Franghiz Ali-Zadeh (born 1947), featuring string harmonics with a vaguely Middle Eastern sound beneath shimmering ornamentation. Next is Albéniz’ Leyenda (Asturias) from 1892, filled with staccato emphasis. Then come the two very short pieces of Achtamar (1948) by Alan Hovhaness, the intentional exoticism of the first contrasting with the rhythmically varied second. Next is Prelude in F-sharp Minor (1962) by Igor Shamo (1925-1982), its Rachmaninoff-like elements given some updated harmonic twists."

Tracklist:
01. Ali-Zadeh: Music for Piano
02. Albeniz: Leyenda (Asturias)
03. Hovhaness: Achtamar: I. Adagio
04. Hovhaness: Achtamar: II. Allegro
05. Shamo: Prelude in F-sharp Minor
06. Draper: Fractured Bells
07. Lachenmann: Guero
08. Debussy: Pagodes
09. Godowsky: Gamelan
10. Cowell: Aeolian Harp
11. Prokofiev: Prelude op. 12 no. 7
12. Scherzinger: The Horse is not Mine, a Hobby Horse


Thanks to the Original customer!