5 Variations (2010)

Idiosyncratic American pianist Andrew Rangell has been at it for decades, and he continues to draw new fans because, although he antagonizes listeners with willfully unorthodox interpretations, he manages to string them together into sequences that sometimes yield genuinely transcendent moments. Here's a typical Rangell release that's greater than the sum of its parts. There are many better choices for the great variation set of Haydn's old age, the Variations in F minor, Hob. 17/6, than this odd reading by Rangell with its ... Read More

Idiosyncratic American pianist Andrew Rangell has been at it for decades, and he continues to draw new fans because, although he antagonizes listeners with willfully unorthodox interpretations, he manages to string them together into sequences that sometimes yield genuinely transcendent moments. Here's a typical Rangell release that's greater than the sum of its parts. There are many better choices for the great variation set of Haydn's old age, the Variations in F minor, Hob. 17/6, than this odd reading by Rangell with its overemphasis on the ornamental arpeggio figures throughout. Yet in the sequence of events on the album it makes a certain amount of sense: the Haydn variations offer a quirky introduction that lead into a group of five keyboard variation pieces that proceed from concupiscently virtuosic (the Variations chromatiques de concert of Bizet, composed in 1868 and ever since then sorely underrated) to rigorously economical (the even less well-known Chaconne, Op. 32, of Carl Nielsen), to... Read Less