Grand Piano is a new label, launched in March of this year and distributed by Naxos, dedicated to recording rare works and complete cycles. This is Volume 1 of Moisei Vainberg’s piano music…and contains the first recordings of the Lullaby, Op. 1, the Two Mazurkas, Op. 10, and the Sonata, Op. 49b. Sonata No. 1, Op. 5, from 1940, is a four-movement piece that clocks in at 15 minutes. III, an Adagio, has a lot of beauty and emotional variety. The playing is good…Excellent notes in English and German. © 2012 American Record Guide Read complete review on American Record Guide

Franzetti’s playing in the Second Sonata is outstanding; layered and clearly the result of much thought. The Adagio plumbs the greatest depths of the disc, ending with tolling bells that lead into the dancing finale.

Franzetti’s Naxos disc of 20th-century piano music has been warmly welcomed by the critical press; this disc is just as successful. © 2012 International Piano

Carolyn Weichert brilliantly captures the idioms of both modernism and jazz in Partita (1922) where 1920s dances replace Bach-era ones. Transcending clichés of decadent Weimar Germany, the depth and seriousness of its jazz scene during the 1920s and ‘30s are evident; I love the charm, quirky humour, fleeting pensive moments and glimpses beyond the ordinary in the Tango-Rag. Schulhoff’s harmony is never just “bi-tonal” or “wrong-note.” Weichert balances chords and brings out subtle voice-leadings in music evocative of the era and more. The Third Suite for the left hand is a work of pianistic genius. Weichert’s fingers crawl “multi-legged” over the keyboard; as her thumb sings out one of Schulhoff’s exquisite long melodies in the Air, fingers carry on a canonic invention below! After the harmonically-adventurous Improvisazione, she delivers the mixed-metres perpetual-motion Finale with flair but without bombast. © 2012 The WholeNote Read complete review

Interest in the music of the Polish-born Russian composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg has revived over the past couple of years, since the emergence of his 1968 Holocaust-themed opera “The Passenger.” Now comes a new collection of gritty and fascinating works—the first installment of a projected complete cycle of Weinberg’s piano music—that can only accelerate the process. Weinberg, who died in 1996, was a friend and protege of Shostakovich’s, and the influence of the older composer suffuses this music—especially the Sonata No. 1, which boasts some of the same angular rhythms, tart dissonances and mournful expressivity. But Weinberg’s harmonic language, as well as his taste for spirited fantasy, is distinctive, and there is an ambitious quality to the last piece here—a sonatina expanded 25 years later into a full-scale sonata—that is irresistible. Completeness means we also get some teenage works that are slim but utterly charming. Allison Brewster Franzetti plays it all with fervor and appealing commitment. © 2012 San Francisco Chronicle

Much of this album features premiere recordings…Harmonically slippery, by turns ironically wry or darkly elusive, they are excellent works, and anyone who diminishes them by comparison to Shostakovich and/or Prokofiev, as some do, is being too harsh—and is missing out on some dramatically effective music. Allison Brewster Franzetti, whose modernist bona fides are certainly in order, gives us bravura performances that make an emphatic case for the numbered sonatas’ artistic significance. Of the Grand Piano releases I’ve heard, this is the most crucial and satisfying. © 2012 Culture Catch Read complete review

Weinberg (1919–1996) is sometimes mentioned as the third great Russian/Soviet composer of the 20th century, after Prokofiev and Shostakovich, but his works are far less frequently played than theirs. And he is primarily known for orchestral music, including 22 symphonies and seven operas, plus chamber music (17 string quartets) and film scores (about 40). Still, he wrote six piano sonatas and a fair amount of other piano music, and Allison Brewster Franzetti makes a strong case for this first batch of it, which includes his first two sonatas and world première recordings of three other works. Sonata No. 1 dates to 1940 and has a modern, or rather modernistic, feel, with considerable dissonance. Sonata No. 2 (1942) has more-classical poise and balance and a greater feeling of solidity. These are four-movement works. Also here is a three-movement one identified as Sonata, Op. 49bis, which is actually a 1978 reworking and expansion of a 1951 piece that Weinberg labeled a sonatina. It is one of the première recordings. The others are the composer’s Op. 1, Lullaby, a brief work from 1935 that is surprisingly intense for a piece with this title, and two Mazurkas written even earlier (in 1933), which are essentially examples of well-constructed 20th-century salon music. Weinberg’s piano works may not be the best introduction to his music, but they are worthy and well-made and will be of particular interest to pianists—Weinberg himself was one. © 2012 Infodad.com

Parfois regardée comme un succédané de celle de Chostakovitch, la musique de Mieczyslaw Weinberg (1919-1996) mérite d’être défendue. C’est ce à quoi s’emploie magistralement Allison Brewster Franzetti sur un splendide Fazioli de concert (idéal de tranchant et de moelleux dans ce répertoire) en enregistrant des pièces composées entre 1933 et 1978, dont près d’une demi-heure d’inédits au disque. On y trouvera ce qui constitue probablement la plus ancienne des partitions de Weinberg: deux Mazurkas composées en novembre 1933. Elles précèdent de près de deux ans son Opus 1: une Berceuse, caractéristique du chemin néo-impressionniste dont les secousses de l’histoire feront dévier Weinberg.

Le disque contient également—pour le plus grand bonheur du mélomane qui ne les connaîtrait pas et qui en tiendra ici une interprétation magistrale—les deux premières Sonates, datant toutes deux de l’émigration contrainte vers Minsk (après l’invasion de la Pologne par les nazis), puis vers Tashkent et finalement Moscou—empêchant Weinberg de donner suite à l’invitation de Josef Hofmann à le rejoindre à Philadelphie. La fascinante Première Sonate (1940) sonne avec la même angoisse que chez Chostakovitch, alors que l’entêtante Deuxième Sonate (1942), admirée par Emil Gilels (qui en fut le tout premier exécutant, dans la grande salle du Conservatoire de Moscou, le 16 octobre 1943), évoque immanquablement Prokofiev.

En spécialiste du répertoire du XXe siècle, Allison Brewster Franzetti donne de ces partitions une lecture objective mais engagée, percutante mais toujours claire, aux graves généreux et aux contrastes marqués. Cette approche magnifie tout particulièrement le premier enregistrement mondial de la Sonate opus 49 bis (1978), réécriture profonde d’une œuvre du début des années 1950 (exagérement marquée par les conventions folkloriques de l’époque stalinienne), qui s’achève dans un crescendo obsessionnel et effrayant.

Aves les volumes consacrés à Saint-Saëns, Schulhoff et, surtout, Raff, le nouveau label Grand Piano frappe décidemment fort dans le château de la Belle au bois dormant des trésors en sommeil de la littérature pianistique. Un château qui ne demande qu’à s’éveiller... © 2012 ConcertoNet.com

not the best samples of Weinberg’s mature style, but all are worthwhile. The Two Mazurkas, Op. 10, and Lullaby, Op. 1, were Weinberg’s earliest works, written during his teenage years, with all kinds of unexpected youthful complications arising from simple tonal material. The Piano Sonata No. 2, Op. 8, is a pure essay in Prokofiev’s style; it was premiered by Emil Gilels. A bit more interesting is the slightly earlier Piano Sonata No. 1, Op. 5, with tough dissonances kept in check by contrapuntal passages. The mood, although not the specific language, recall early Shostakovich. The final Piano Sonata, Op. 49bis, will also be of interest to Soviet music buffs. It had its origins in a work written during the repression of Stalin’s culture czar Andrei Zhdanov, when composers retreated to a safe simplicity. But Weinberg returned to the work in the 1970s and expanded it, with intriguing results: it has the flavor of a reflection on those difficult days. American pianist Allison Brewster Franzetti has a basic feel for Russian music and a muscular style that projects these explosive youthful works well. This is the first in a projected series of Weinberg works from this performer, and it bodes well for the set. © 2012 Rovi/Ariama Read complete review

CD of the Week

Polish composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg (who died in 1996) has been rediscovered recently…His piano music, played persuasively by Allison Brewster Franzetti, runs the gamut from a Satie-esque Lullaby to the unabashedly dissonant Sonata No. 1. His second sonata has a Romantic-era feel, as do the early Two Mazurkas from 1933, while another Sonata—a 1978 revisiting of a 1951 piece—seamlessly blends his mid-period and later styles. © 2012 The Flip Side Read complete review

Allison Brewster Franzetti is the soloist on this first volume of Weinberg’s complete piano music for Naxos’s new Grand Piano label.

SAINT-SAENS, C.: Piano Works (Complete), Vol. 1 (Burleson) GP601
RAFF, J.: Piano Works, Vol. 1 (Tra Nguyen) GP602
WEINBERG, M.: Piano Music (Complete), Vol. 1 (Brewster Franzetti) GP603
SCHULHOFF, E.: Piano Music, Vol. 1 - Partita / Susi / Suite No. 3 / Variationen und Fugato, Op. 10 (Weichert) GP604