Russian pianist
Katya Apekisheva is a veteran of the festival and competition circuit; Grieg Piano Music is her second CD for the English label Quartz and her first for the company as soloist. The selection is well chosen, containing
Grieg's piano solo version of Holberg Suite, the Poetic Tone-Pictures, and a dozen pieces drawn from the Lyric Suites that form a good representation of that series as a whole, containing many of the best-known works therein.
Apekisheva is an ideal competition-grade pianist; she gets all of the notes in where they belong, follows tempi with care, and transmits what's on the page in a literal, not a figurative, sense. As such, these recordings would be excellent for student pianists trying to learn the ropes in this literature. However, from a purely listening standpoint, this is also
Apekisheva's greatest drawback.
Grieg's music needs to sing, to breathe; while virtuosic elements in the music come off with precision here, slower, less difficult melodic passages are quiet, pristine, and rather lacking in poetry. One hopes for the personality of the pianist to raise
Grieg's music to the realm of the exalted; the expected and score-faithful just isn't enough as
Grieg cannot be eaten cold. Quartz's recording is at its best in loud passages, where the weight and power of
Apekisheva's grand rings out in full display; otherwise the short reverb in the room, combined with the digital sound, adds a metallic sheen to the sound of the piano that's less than unattractive, but not to the point where its consistently bothersome.