It is Prokofiev's Visions fugitives, Op. 22, that are referenced in the title here, and those 20 pieces, as short as 27 seconds, stand at the center of the program. However, all of the pieces on this album by the young pianist Nathalia Milstein are miniatures, and with that, she poses herself quite a challenge. Prokofiev indicated that his fugitive visions did not need to be played together and, in fact, he often played them singly; the 41 miniatures here run the risk of overwhelming the listener with a rush of brief ...
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It is Prokofiev's Visions fugitives, Op. 22, that are referenced in the title here, and those 20 pieces, as short as 27 seconds, stand at the center of the program. However, all of the pieces on this album by the young pianist Nathalia Milstein are miniatures, and with that, she poses herself quite a challenge. Prokofiev indicated that his fugitive visions did not need to be played together and, in fact, he often played them singly; the 41 miniatures here run the risk of overwhelming the listener with a rush of brief sensations. Milstein solves the problem elegantly, sharply defining each composer's particular take on the miniature. She moves from Bartók's dances of Out of Doors, wonderfully vigorous in her hands and startling in their energy right from the beginning, to the little-known short works of Le monde pianistique of composer Valéry Arzoumanov, accessible moments of relaxation, to Chopin mazurkas and Liszt's late Valses oubliées. These mysterious late Liszt works are split up and...
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