Beach: Solo Piano Music, Vol. 3 - Fire-Flies

After By the Still Waters and Under the Stars, Fire-Flies is Joanne Polk's third and final recorded volume devoted to the piano works of the American composer Amy Beach, who was born in 1867 and died in 1944. The varied and always beguiling works span the composer's career and include "sketches" and "improvisations" as well as her piano transcription of Richard Strauss's lied (German art song), Standchen. Polk's interpretations are fluid and clear, by turns impassioned and ethereal. In the laudable effort to bring Beach's music greater recognition, Polk is in good company; the Hildegard Publishing Company has recently reprinted a number of Beach's works and Adrienne Fried Bloch has written a Beach biography, published this year by Oxford University Press. --Gwendolyn Freed Amazon.com

BEACH AT HER BEST (YET AGAIN, AND LASTLY)

With this third installment, Joanne Polk completes her consistently thoughtful, exceptionally performed and unforgettably diverse traversal of the solo piano music of New England's own, Mrs. Amy Beach [1867-1944].

In reviews of Volume 1 ("By the Still Waters") [February 11, 2003] and Volume 2 ("Under the Stars") [October 24, 2000], never having heard any of these works before, and being caught completely off guard by the continuous melodic invention, ingenuity and personal voice of Beach, I had hoped to adequately express my excitement and enthusiasm. There were wonders here unique to the repertoire--- the marvelous Variations on Balkan Themes, Op. 60, the attractive miniatures of Op. 128, the Valse-Caprice, Op. 4, the mournful Hermit Thrush "dialogues" of Op. 92--- that needed talking about.

Volume 3 ("Fireflies") offers, if possible, piano music even more strikingly original than its predecessors. There are inspired creations here, too--- the lyrical, Schumannesque Four Sketches, Op. 15, the delightfully comic, almost jazzy Fantasia, Op. 87, with its slips and slurs trippingly mindful of Bach, the forward-looking miniatures of Op. 148, which subtly recall Brahms, Scriabin and, of all people, Ernesto Lecuona, the atmospheric impressionism of the Nocturne, Op. 107, the wistful Elgar-like ruminations aptly titled From Grandmother's Garden, Op. 97--- that cry out to be recognized and heard.

The apostolic Ms. Polk enables us to do both. By her absolute communion with the composer, she transfixes, her breadth of vision, every thought, whim and nuance captured to perfection in a recording of incredible clarity and warmth. Absorption such as this precludes the notion that these pieces can be played any other way.

[Running time: 69:38] March 4, 2003

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