Records

Textura Review

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July 2024

Inna Faliks: Manuscripts Don’t Burn
Sono Luminus

Pianist Inna Faliks has issued recordings featuring material by Beethoven, Ravel, and Rachmaninoff, but no album’s she’s released, nor likely will release, is as personal as Manuscripts Don’t Burn. Consider: it includes five world premiere recordings written for her that focus on her favourite book, Mikhail Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita; honours her Ukrainian-Jewish heritage and pays tribute to her hometown of Odesa (also spelled Odessa); and augments in multiple works Faliks’ sterling piano playing with her own recitations. Faliks has no composer credits on Manuscripts Don’t Burn, yet the recording couldn’t be a more personal portrait.

While her command of standard piano repertoire is reflected in the inclusion of three Schubert-related pieces, Manuscripts Don’t Burn is distinguished for the most part by new material that speaks to her adventurous spirit. Further distinguishing her from other pianists, Faliks is a writer whose memoir, Weight in the Fingertips – A Musical Odyssey from Soviet Ukraine to the World Stage, was published in October 2023. She’s also known for her poetry-music series Music/Wordsand her monologue-recital Polonaise-Fantasie, the Story of a Pianist, which recounts her immigration to the United States from Odesa. All such experiences amplify the resonance of Manuscripts Don’t Burn; in fact, Faliks herself states that the seventy-three-minute recording is “something of a mirror image” to her memoir.

Considering how enduring a part Master and Margarita has played in her life, it’s fitting that the album (whose title comes from the work) would begin with Veronika Krausas’ Master and Margarita Suite for Speaking Pianist; the book’s Faust-related content, which involves an artist surviving in a totalitarian regime, clearly spoke to Faliks at an early age and continues to do so. Her arresting speaking voice precedes the piano part in each of the dance suite’s seven parts, with the poem identified first and the text read thereafter. At the outset, an ominous sarabande, intoxicatingly rendered by Faliks, announces the Master and Margarita’s imminent departure with the Devil; “14th of the Month of Nisan” colours the work with dramatic portent, after which a polonaise becomes a soundtrack to the nights streets of Moscow. A nimble-footed bagatelle evokes the dance of a devil spirit in the guise of a large black cat before the delicate epilogue resolves the work with peaceful stillness. The alternation between voice and piano proves powerful throughout when each intensifies the impact of the other.

The Faust story also informs Schubert’s Gretchen am Spinnrade, with the image here of the young Gretchen dreaming of Faust while at the spinning wheel and gradually losing control as her thoughts about love overtake her. The familiar strains of the song’s melodies entrance in Faliks’ beautifully executed performance, and like the two other Schubert pieces, Gretchen am Spinnrade is presented in a piano transcription by Liszt. Derived from a Goethe poem, Erlkonig (Erlking) involves the monstrous, supernatural Elf King and the eventual death of an abducted child; musically the oft-grandiose material suggests a horse’s gallop using repetitive patterns and the child’s pleading with urgent and desperate expressions. Set to a poem by Heinrich Heine, Am Meer (By the Sea) imagines two lovers by the seashore with the woman ultimately poisoning the man with her tears. Word-painting is deployed again when the musical temperament first evokes the calm of the sea and then the emotional turbulence endured by the pair.

Complementing the Krausas and Schubert pieces are ones by Maya Miro Johnson, Mike Garson, Ljova Zhurbin, and two by Clarice Assad (the digital version of the release includes two bonus tracks, Fanny Hensel-Mendelssohn’s Notturno in G minor, H337 and Fazil Say’s Black Earth). Based on the Satan’s Ball scene in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, Johnson’s theatrical Manuscripts Don’t Burn, for Speaking Pianist ranges widely and unpredictably from inner piano flourishes, sprinkles, and crushing chords to contemplative reverie and the recitation of a Russian text passage. Garson, most famously known as the pianist on Bowie’s Aladdin Sane, is represented by A Psalm for Odesa, a heartfelt expression that draws from an Odesan fisherman song, “Shalandi Polniye Kefali,” and incorporates improvisatory elements by Faliks.

As compelling as the album generally is, it’s Ljova Zhurbin’s Voices, Suite in Three Movements for piano and historical recordings that is perhaps the most striking for its incorporation of real-world documents of Jewish cantorial and klezmer music. “Sirota” augments Faliks’ hypnotic ostinati with the haunting sound of a 1908 recording of cantor Gershon Sirota chanting prayers for Rosh Hashannah in Warsaw. “Alter(ed) Zhok” pairs Faliks with a 1912 recording from Ukraine of an unidentified clarinetist, while “Freydele” finds the pianist playing alongside a stirring recording of the celebrated Yiddish singer Freydele Oysher from 1953.

Assad’s pieces have the unfortunate task of following Zhurbin’s, but they’re in no way of incidental value. Commissioned for Music/Words and featuring text by poet Steven Schroeder, Godai, the Five Elements, for Speaking Pianist features Faliks reciting, singing, and humming in its four short movements. “Dry Bones – Wind” conjoins blustery sound treatments, voice effects, and a poem recitation to an epic piano component; “Absence – Fire and Water” is animated by fiery rhythms and fluid runs; humming and atmospheric trills imbue “Earth” with a ghostly, Noh theater-like character; and “Ascension-Sky” concludes the work by cycling through swirling sixteenth-note patterns. Originally written as part of Godai, Assad’s even-faster Hero took on a separate life as a standalone piece available in different arrangements, with the torrential one on Faliks’ release the solo piano version, naturally.

Words and music illuminate each other throughout this singular expression by Faliks. It’s an extremely revealing portrait to the extent that in creating it she has shared details about her life, her beliefs and emotions, and her anguish over the vicious attacks being perpetrated upon her homeland. No one can ever totally know what someone else is going through, but with Manuscripts Don’t Burn Faliks has opened herself to others in such a way that they’re able to acquire a powerful sense of her own experiences.

 

https://www.textura.org/archives/f/faliks_manuscriptsdontburn.htm

 

Pizzicato Review

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May 5, 2024
Remy Franck

Pianist Inna Faliks says about her new album: « It is my most personal album yet, with five premieres written for me in celebration of my favorite book, Mikhail Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, my Ukrainian-
Jewish heritage, my hometown of Odesa, and so much more. This collection of music speaks to my love of dialogue between music and words. The connections between text and sound here are not just literal but emotional, based on memory, intuition, dreams and hopes. »

Much of the music on the album revolves around Master and Margarita, a Russian novel about art censorship and dictatorship. Several of the pieces on the album are directly related to the book, including, of course, Veronika Krausas’ expressive pianistic suite Master and Margarita, which is still quite conventional, but also Maya Miro Johnson’s Manuscripts Don’t Burn (an important line in the book). This piece is more experimental than the others.

Clarice Assad’s Godai uses a text by Steve Schroeder for a five-part suite about the five elements (called Godai in Japanese Buddhism). The music is reminiscent of Ravel and Debussy. The pianist manages to make the pieces, in which she plays and speaks, very expressive.
One of the strongest compositions is Ljova Zhurbins Voices (3 movements for piano and historical recordings). The first piece is Sirota, and the historical recording features the phenomenal tenor voice of Ukrainian cantor Gershon Sirota from 1908.

The Alter(ed) Zhok refers to a folk dance and uses a recording made in 1912 in Skvira (UIkraine). Fraydele recalls the Yiddish actress and singer Fraydele Oysher. On the 1953 recording she sings the prayer Ov-Harachamim, which was written in the 12th century and commemorates the destruction of Ashkenazi communities around the Rhine by Christian crusaders during the First Crusade. Ljova Zhurbin has succeeded in composing a new piano accompaniment to Fraydele Oysher’s song, which supports it incredibly well.

Embedded in these works are transcriptions of Schubert songs by Franz Liszt, in which Inna Faliks shows herself to be a very personal and innovative pianist, both in terms of rhythm and phrasing.
Inna Faliks has also found her own approach to Fazil Say’s Black Earth, which makes the effective music a little more thoughtful and mysterious than in Say’s own recording.

Mike Garson’s Psalm to Odessa is based on a well-known Odessa song and contains improvisational elements that Faliks introduces very spontaneously. The bottom line is that this is an album for and of our time. On the other hand, it gives the pianist the opportunity to make her mark in terms of interpretation.

Ein ganz besonderes Klavieralbum

Steven Kennedy: Manuscripts Don’t Burn Review

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Feel The Burn in Faliks’ Personal Pianistic Release

By Steven Kennedy

Recording:   ****/****  Performance: ****/****

Pianist Inna Faliks’ new release is a companion to her new memoir, Weight in the Fingertips (Backbeat Books, 2023).  Here, the Odessa-born pianist has taken her love for her homeland, Ukraine, in the midst of war and explores concepts of censorship and dictatorship in a variety of new pieces presented here in Manuscripts Don’t Burn.  The title itself comes from a 1967 Mikhal Bulgakov novel, The Master and the Margarita.  This retelling of Goethe’s Faust also becomes a unifying feature for some of the other works on the album. The release features these new pieces that blend dialogue and music inviting reflection of the music’s intent and suggestiveness.

The opening Master and Margarita Suite (2022) by Veronika Krausas, is provides brief introductory excerpts from Bulgakov’s novel and explores different characters and moments from the work.  Each brief movement takes a more free exploration of earlier musical forms (sarabande, polonaise—with a quote from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, waltz, bagatelle).  The tonal focus of the music lends a semi-extended romantic quality to the music with interesting splashes of virtuosic gestures across the rather intriguing work.  The title work, Manuscripts Don’t Burn (2022) by Maya Miro Johnson focuses on the Satan’s Ball scene of Bulgakov’s novel focusing on Margarita’s vision of the world.  It utilizes some more avantgarde styles of clusters and strumming in the piano strings among more angular lines as it explores the full range of the instrument.

Three Schubert songs, two inspired by Goethe and one by Heine, are also part of the first half of this recital.  They are all Liszt’s transcriptions and provide a nice palette cleanser stylistically to the contemporary works on the program.  Both Gretchen am Spinnrade and Erlkonig serve as interludes to the works that follow.  The former to Johnson’s piece with its reference to the young Gretchen/Margarita dreaming of Faust at her spinning wheel.  The latter serves as a sort of postlude to the first half of the release.  Am Meer becomes the transition into the second part of the program with its seascape inspirations.  Psalm to Odessa (2023) by Mike Garson incorporates an Odessan fisherman’s song as it reflects also on the destruction in Ukraine and pulls us into the new directions of the narrative here.

Voices (2011, 2019-20) is an interesting suite in three movements that incorporates historical recordings into the performance.  The piece, by Ljova Zhurbin, uses a 1908 recording of Jewish cantor as the work begins.  At the center is a setting of an Ukrainian folk dance incorporating a 1912 field recording.  The final movement features a 1953 recording from Yiddish actress/singer Fraydele Oysher.  It thus provides interesting snapshots of the rich musical heritage of the region. 

Music by Clarice Assad brings the album to a conclusion.  First is Godai, The Five Elements (2013) which also features poetry by Steven Schroeder.  The music here shifts to Japanese Buddhism and the five elements of the world: wind, fire, water, earth, and sky.  Assad utilizes a lot of interesting effects to imply the ethnic musical inspirations here while also providing a variety of musical challenges for the performer that further highlight Faliks’ skills.  The album closes with Heroes (2013) which was originally conceived as part of the earlier suite but has been featured in other settings.  Here it serves as an upbeat, hopeful conclusion to the storytelling across the release.

The overall conception of the release works superbly with musical settings that invite reflection along the musical and textual journey that Faliks takes.  Her own virtuosic abilities also shine here and are perhaps more apparent in the excellent performances of the three Liszt-transcriptions.  The same dedication and musical interpretations there all can be discerned in the newer pieces written for her that complete the release.  As we move from the storytelling first half into the more personal aspects of history and its connection to modern events, we get a new sense of the dramatic abilities of Faliks.  There are moments that are quite touching here as musical quotations are overcome by intense, contemporary writing styles.  The musical choices tend to point out this interesting struggle between the troubled regional history and its many folk and cultural connections.

The sound captures the piano’s rich quality and provides a solid presence to the instrument.  For those accessing the album through streaming services, there are two additional pieces (one by Fanny Mendelssohn, and one by Fazil Say) to enjoy as well which add another twelve minutes of music to this engaging new release.

https://www.sakennedymusic.com/single-post/feel-the-burn-in-faliks-personal-pianistic-release

Ihr Opernratgeber review

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by Sven Godenrath

Reimagine: Beethoven & Ravel

The Bagatelle by Peter Golub, played by Inna Faliks, impresses with its sparkling elegance and the subtle sparkling piano. The same applies to Bagatelle No. 1, no. 3 , no. 5 and no. 6 by Ludwig van Beethoven, the Bagatelle by Richard Danielpour, Sweet Nothings by Mark Carlsons… The Bagatelle by Tamir Hendelman is rhythmically accentuated, as is Bagatelle No. 2 and no. 4 by Ludwig van Beethoven, Etude 2a by Ian Krause, Bagatelle by Daniel Leikowitz.

Pizzicato review

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by Remy Franck

Reimagine: Beethoven & Ravel

Ukrainian-born American pianist Inna Faliks has asked nine contemporary composers, including Richard Danielpour, Paola Prestini, Billy Childs, and Timo Andres, to write a short piece of music on each of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Bagatelles, Op. 126, and Maurice Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit.

The results, as might be expected, are of varying interest. Richard Danielpour, Ian Krouse and David Lefkovitz have succeeded in creating particularly characteristic new Bagatelles.

In contrast to Beethoven’s Opus, where each new Bagatelle is followed by Beethoven’s, in Ravel’s case only the contemporary interpretations of Ondine, le Gibet and Scarbo are heard, with Paola Prestini’s vision of Ondine and Billy Child’s “Pursuit” to Scarbo being particularly pleasing.

In all the pieces of this original program, ultimately the pianist herself impresses the most thanks to a technically brilliant playing, which is rhythmically immensely secure and also sensitive enough to make the right moods audible with dynamic as well as color nuances, both in the Beethoven original and in the new compositions.

The album contains detailed texts by Inna Faliks, and also from the composers, who report about their own pieces.

American Record Guide review

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by James Harrington

Reimagine: Beethoven & Ravel

The title may be “Reimagine” but the concept is yet another amazing product of Inna Faliks‘s extraordinary imagination. Besides the quality of the music and her exceptional pianism, we have to consider other great aspects of this recording. The program alternates a newly composed Bagatelle response with each of Beethoven’s original six Bagatelles, OP.126. The second part of the program is a series of responses to Ravel’s Gaspard del la Nuit, which has been a part of her repertoire for quite some time now.(MSR 1333, Jan/Feb 2010). We should also honor Faliks for commissioning works from mine composers during the pandemic. All were written specifically for her, and these are world premiere recordings. Her booklet essay is outstanding, and each of the composers contributes a paragraph.

The foundations for this project go back to her studies with Gilbert Kalish. She gives him credit for introducing her to the compositional response idea. Two excellent Faliks recordings also add to the foundation of “Reimagine”: Beethoven (MSR 1446, Mar/Apr 2014) and Ravel (above). Her comments about alternating the Beethoven with newly composed responses are worth quoting here. “I hope that the emerging dialog between then and now points out the unique character of the original while forming a wholly new sonic adventure.” She could not have succeeded better.

Her Gaspard de la Nuit recording from over 10 years ago is still memorable, and she would probably include it in a full recital program with the pieces on this disc. The new works are every bit as demanding as Ravel’s notorious original. ‘Ondine’, the water spirit, gets treated to a pair of Variations on a Spell by Paola Prestini: ‘Water Sprite’ and ‘Bell Tolls’. ‘Le Gibet’, the hanging corpse, inspired Timo Andres to use a forward-moving ostinato that ends with dark chords in his ‘Old Ground’. ‘Scarbo’, the goblin up to nighttime mischief, was taken by Billy Childs to an even darker place in ‘Pursuit’. He used the theme of a black man pursued by either a slave catcher, a KKK mob, or even the police. He calls Faliks’s interpretation of the piece extraordinary. She refers to his new work as one that is as fiendishly difficult to play as Ravel’s finger-buster. ‘Pursuit’ was released as a downloadable single on Navona back in May.

This release continues a lengthening list of great recordings from Faliks. I have been fortunate to see her perform in person a couple of times and have communicated with her via email from time to time. She told me that she hopes to be in New York this coming season for this “Reimagine” program. You can be sure I will be there.

The Schumann Project is Record of the Week on the CBC!

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So honored to have my album The Schumann Project, Volume 1 as “Record of the Week” on CBC’s In Concert with Paolo Pietropaolo! The program airs noon ET on Sunday, November 7th, and you can listen at the CBC website.

The CBC’s website describes Pietropaolo’s program as: “The ‘best of the best’ live classical music — that’s the heart and soul of In Concert. Gorgeous chamber works, the world’s finest orchestras, and intimate recitals featuring some of Canada’s best young musicians on the brink of stardom. You’ll hear a carefully curated blend of classical hits along with new brand new discoveries presented with passion and rare insight by Paolo Pietropaolo.”

Thank-you again, Paolo, for your kind appraisal!

For an archive of the episode’s playlist, click here.

Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review

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by Grego Applegate Edwards

Reimagine: Beethoven & Ravel

The world of music has many facets of course and if you are like me the whole everloving Pop scene seems ever more vast and mysterious. I’ve pretty much given up on trying to assimilate the new flavors of the month there. I no longer feel compelled to hear all that as it comes out. There is too much great music coming out in Classical, New Music, Jazz, Avant, “World” and Avant Rock to appreciate. And the days when I made ends meet in a “Top 40” band are long gone, for better or worse.

So today another unexpected new one by the very talented pianist Inna Faliks. It is called Reimagine: Beethoven & Ravel (Navona NV6352). It is a great example of how a poetic musicianship and the freedom to rethink typical categories can make for very enjoyable and rewarding fare.

Essentially Ms. Faliks spans three centuries of piano music by paying homage to Beethoven and Ravel in interesting ways.  The program zeroes in on key compositions–Beethoven’s “Bagatelles op. 126” and Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit. 

Ms. Faliks had an inspired idea—to commission living composers to write piano music dedicated to work out modern implications from the Bagatelles and Gaspard. The program features some nine world premieres in all. So to begin the opening sequence each Bagatelle gets Inna’s lucid reading, followed in each case by a commissioned work that draws from that Bagatelle for a special New Music utterance. Stylistically the new works cover a good deal of ground, from harmonically stretched passages to rollickingly motor minimal to anything goes lyricisms.

Each of the six op. 126 “Bagatelles” gets a worthy performance, followed in each case by a newly commissioned work that extends Beethoven to our present day world in interesting ways. And then we have three more works based on Ravel’s Gaspar.  The names of the New Music composers are some quite familiar, some less so but all of the music leads to an essential impression of the place of the revered masters in the realm of the Modern.

So we gladly explore the adventurous adoption of each classical work in the imaginative hands of, respectively, Richard Golub, Tamir Hendelman, Richard Danielpour, Ian Krouse, Mark Carlson, David Lefkowitz, Paola Prestini, Timo Andres and Billy Childs.

It is an album that wears very well as you listen repeatedly. It is a beautiful showcase for Inna Faliks’ deeply rich musicality and a wonderful program that gets you to appreciate Beethoven and Ravel anew and what they contribute to our contemporary music world. Strongly recommended.

  1. La Campanella, Paganini - Liszt Inna Faliks 4:53
  2. Rzewski "The People United Shall Never Be Defeated" (excerpt, improvised cadenza) Inna Faliks 8:36
  3. Beethoven Eroica Variations Inna Faliks 9:59
  4. Gershwin: Prelude 3 in E-flat Minor Inna Faliks 1:25
  5. Mozart Piano Concerto #20 - II Inna Faliks with Chamber Orchestra of St. Matthews 10:27
  6. Gaspard de la Nuit (1908) : Scarbo - Ravel Inna Faliks 9:07
  7. Sirota by Lev 'Ljova' Zhurbin Inna Faliks 7:45