Prokofiev. Isata Kanneh-Mason, piano. Philharmonia Orchestra. Ryan Bancroft, conductor. Decca 48718573. Total time: 75 minutes.
DIGITAL REVIEW — In her fourth solo release for Decca, British pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason makes one of her boldest statements with a simply titled album: Prokofiev. In it, we experience a portrait of the composer across his lifetime — from his audacious writing as a 23-year-old in the opening Toccata to his most celebrated concerto, the Third, to vivid cameos from his opera, ballet, and film music, ranging from the mercurial Romeo and Juliet Suite and Cinderella to The Love for Three Oranges. But in what is essentially a tribute album, I find myself asking: Am I hearing Prokofiev, or am I hearing Isata Kanneh-Mason?
The question matters for two reasons. First, Prokofiev’s music is so instantly recognizable — his impish wit, his satire, his fervor — that any digression from the composer’s singular voice is immediately felt. Second, and more intriguingly, the answer here is genuinely ambiguous. At its best, the recording crackles with Prokofiev’s spirit; at other times, the composer seems to have quietly vacated both the piano and the orchestra’s hands. Any tribute album — classical, rock, or country — lives or dies on the artist’s genuine affection for the source material and the intelligence and creativity of their reinterpretation. The most successful marry the two. Kanneh-Mason’s regard and dedication to Prokofiev is proven, but the album is a mixed accomplishment: illuminating in places, elusive in others. It oscillates between potential and success.
The opening Toccata in D minor is a point of exception: Here, Kanneh-Mason overachieves. It is a technical showcase par excellence. The pianist serves and volleys everything Prokofiev asks of his performer with breathtaking speed — conjugating the rapid percussive hammer of the opening Ds with remarkable clarity before driving the chromatic passages of the finale with the kind of adrenaline and physical muscularity one would ideally like to witness in live performance.
Next comes the Third Concerto in C major — the centerpiece of the album and, by some distance, the most popular of Prokofiev’s five concertos. To date, the work has received over 120 commercial recordings, with the Argerich-Abbado-Berlin Philharmonic collaboration holding a hallowed place for its extreme speed and furious energy. The decision to add to that recording canon carries with it an implicit obligation: at the very least, a point of difference.
Here, Kanneh-Mason is accompanied by the Philharmonia Orchestra under Ryan Bancroft, with whom she built a productive Prokofiev 3 partnership with the Toronto Symphony and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Mark van de Wiel’s deliciously idiomatic opening clarinet solo sets high expectations, but the string entry that follows betrays the promise. Prokofiev’s energy quite suddenly flattens, and from that point on the orchestra’s interpretation drifts, flip-flopping between purposeful momentum and inexplicable inertia.
There is no doubt that Kanneh-Mason’s technique is equal to the demands of this schizophrenic neo-classical concerto, but her interpretation engages only sporadically. Her strengths are manifest in crisp articulation and iron control — most evident in the octave triplet motives of the first movement, the 16th-note arpeggios, and the ferocious orchestral-piano battle of the third movement’s coda. Yet a compelling case can be made for surrendering that control — for yielding to Prokofiev’s sardonic wit in the first movement’s Allegro, for coaxing out the multi-faceted characters lurking within the Tema con Variazioni, and for unleashing an unbridled gallop in the third movement. Prokofiev’s language is picaresque, and without its mischievous, onomatopoeic, and dance-like qualities, we are left wanting.
Elsewhere on the album, momentary flashes of success filter through. Prokofiev’s piano reductions of works from ballet, film, and opera — among them the Ten Pieces from Romeo and Juliet, Op. 75, and the Ten Pieces from Cinderella, Op. 97 — present no great technical obstacle for a pianist as adept as Kanneh-Mason. Her gauntlet here is a different one. These miniatures carry the trace evidence of our collective musical memories: Juliet pirouetting in giddy infatuation, the soaring unison strings of the Montagues and Capulets squaring up for battle. Kanneh-Mason paints some affecting portraits — conjuring Cinderella and Juliet with tenderness — and does her mightiest to reproduce the visceral weight of the orchestra at the piano. She succeeds more often than not, though the moments where the orchestral imagination falls short are keenly felt.
The liner notes and artwork are a particular disappointment. The photography offers stylized, stiff poses that reveal little of the artist’s personality, while Claire Jackson’s curiously archaic prose — featuring phrases such as “the orchestra yawns and stretches” — left this listener wondering whether we were being invited to be excited by Prokofiev or to drift off to sleep. In a release of this ambition, the written presentation deserves to be held to the same standard as the performances themselves and, more importantly, to attract a 21st-century and — dare I say? — a next-generation audience.
