Recommended

“… Ivana Gavric is a formidable, thoughtful, versatile presence throughout.… The disc concludes with a rendition of the bare, unadorned folk tune on piano. It is touching and uneasy. It’s an apt way to end an issue of singular personal design which has universal appeal. Frances-Hoad’s concerto merits the widest currency – I urgently commend it to all.”

 

Performance ****      Recording ****

“The Sarajevo-born British pianist Ivana Gavric plays Joseph Haydn’s 11th Piano Concerto with a great deal of expertise and much precision. One never regrets that she uses a modern piano, on the contrary. The refinement that the pianist is capable of contains a degree of playfulness, lightness, nuances and contrasts that would not be possible on either the harpsichord or the piano. The Southbank Sinfonia agreeably replies to this lightness. Debussy’s Hommage à Haydn and Paul Dukas’s Poème élégiaque are all thoughtful and dark in colour. Ravel’s minuet is already brighter in colour, but still slightly melancholic, just like the other works on the CD, with Widor’s Fugue being the most playful. But these pieces are only the stones in the river that open the way to Cheryl Francess-Hoad’s Between the Skies, the River and the Hills. Composed in 2018 the work draws its sources from Haydn’s Piano Concerto No. 11, a Sarajevo folk song, and Ivo Andric’s novel The Bridge over the Drina. The first movement is conflict-laden and passionate, the second a dance-like scherzo and the last a Lamentoso lento. This finale repeats the folk song Kad ja podoh na Bentbasu (which is considered the unofficial anthem of the city), leading to a fortissimo climax and ends with a piano cadenza. A committed interpretation by both soloist and orchestra makes the piece effective. As a descriptive-romantic piece, it plays with moods that the composer draws from contemporary history. The role of the piano, often used percussively, is relatively limited.” ****