It is very interesting to present the same week this first CD by Jean-Paul Gasparian on Naïve and the 1er CD of Haydn’s “London Symphonies” cycle by Paavo Järvi on RCA. These two releases, especially this one, could be much more eminent if their sound recordings did not interfere negatively with the musical message. With RCA and Haydn, we’ve seen that location and engineers dull the sonic impact of the orchestra. For Gasparian, the trap is disastrous. The pianist proved his sense of sound to us in Rachmaninov at Aparté. The CD engineers of the 2e Sonata by Rachmaninoff captured this quest and this magic. Here everything is laminated in a hard piano disc, a little metallic, flashy, pulled towards the treble. How can we, under these conditions, appreciate the playing of this intelligent artist who had so much to tell us? To make matters worse, these harshnesses are inscribed in a reverberation that does not define any credible space. A record is a technical-artistic symbiosis, really.
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