CRITICS TO HIS FIRST CD

FRANCE

CD Audio

Martha Argerich presnts Mauricio Vallina

EMI CLASSICS: ASIN : B000067DNN

Press award: » CHOC du Monde de la Musique«

From the four pianists of the series »Martha Argerich presents« (that we really hope could continue), Mauricio Vallina is the most mature, who has the most finished piano style - and his personality is not at all simple. Behind his evident technical facilities, we feel a tormented soul. This ambivalence goes marvellously with the music of Schumann (the Gemini) and Rachmaninov (the pianist Jeckyl and the composer Hyde). If this programme could seem odd, in fact these three works have in common that they turn their back to a certain architecture, instead choosing for some kaleidoscopic aesthetics in order to protect an inside logic... Mauricio Vallina’s interpretation of Rachmaninov’s variations is magnificent in its mixture of fervour and roughness, its rich palette of orchestral colours, and in the lucid conduction of the events, conferring to the work a secret unity.

In Schumann’s Carnaval Vallina goes even further with the freedom of interpretation, with the drawing of feelings and with the mood fantasies. He characterizes each piece with an extremely sharp psychology, with a real histrionic talent.Coquette is etched out so precisely and with such an elegance that we have the impression to be reading one of the Characters by La Bruyère. In the same sense, his Florestan could seem a cynic double of Eusebius. We feel closer to »Octave« and »Celio« from the Caprices de Marianne by Musset. The remains of a lost purity can be read in filigrance.Although each piece is charged by its own original significance, it never weighs heavy on the interpretation, which remains spontaneous.

The recital ends up with »The blue Danube« by Schulz Evler ( a student of Tausig, one of Liszt‘s favourite pupils,), a piece renowned as a highly technical challenge to perform.Joseph Lhèvinne already left us a celebrated recording followed, at their own time ,by Jorge Bolet, Earl Wild and Byron Janis.Mauricio Vallina joins this line without fainting from the confrontation with his prestigious predecessors. 

Olivier Bellamy

UK

Classical CD releases

»Key players of the future«

»The piano needs new blood, and EMI are making a good start, says Andrew Clements...« »…Vallina produces the most dashing, daring playing, keeping the huge structure of Rachmaninov's Chopin Variations buoyant and coherent. He brings fresh ideas to Schumann's Carnaval and treats Schulz-Evler's piece of fluff with style and dazzling technique… an imposing pianist of whom we shall surely hear much more.«

Andrew Clemens: The Guardian. Friday 5 of July 2002

MusicWeb

»Recording of the Month«

»… it is a very great pleasure to be able to prove to myself and my readers that I have not developed a permanently jaundiced view of life. MauricioVallina was born in Cuba in 1970 and I cannot sing too highly the praises of his debut album. Technically unruffled and texturally clear in the most teeming passages, he makes an excellent case for a Rachmaninov work which proves to have been underestimated. His sound is always warm, musical and singing in the quieter variations, and rich and full in the stronger ones. The charge often made that the last variation is bombastic is quite belied by a performance which remains as fluid as this one. There is not a bashed note from beginning to end. Vallina always knows which is the melodic line to bring out, he shapes each variation unerringly, with flexibility but avoiding all exaggeration. I was reminded of the young Ashkenazy’s Rachmaninov - need I say more? Despite its popularity, »Carnaval« remains a tall order. This is not music you can play by the book, it needs all sorts of rubatos and personal inflections to bring it off the page. The performer must continually hover on the brink of grotesque exaggeration and only his own sensibility can lead him to the dividing-line between freedom of expression and murder most foul. At root, you can say that if the listener perceives a shape to the individual pieces and to the whole, if the rubatos and changes of tempo do not destroy the sense of rhythmic continuity, then the performer has found that dividing line. It seems to me that Vallina is completely successful in this. He is also able to identify equally with the two elements which make up Schumann’s psyche - the impetuous Florestan and the gentle Eusebius - and allows them to dialogue naturally with one another. And he has the right sound for Schumann - full and singing but also brilliant when necessary and never heavy. In short, this is a »Carnaval« to rank with the best.

Our grandparents loved »Carnaval« above all Schumann’s works. In our own day there has been a tendency to go for pieces like the Fantasy in C, »Kreisleriana« or the Second Sonata. Perhaps it was easier in our grandparents’ day to empathise with a quirky work in a series of tiny movements; our more hamstrung age finds that a large, »symphonic« construction can to some degree prop up our hidebound imaginations. Vallina, it seems to me, has this ability to give free rein to his imagination while keeping in sight the form of the music and the style of the composer.

Our grandparents would have enjoyed the Schulz-Evler and there is still a place for it when played as well as this. The secret of Vallina’s success is that, in spite of all the cascading notes, he is able to keep the basic waltz rhythm alive and flowing - better than some conductors of the original waltz that I could mention. I should need to hear Vallina in a wide range of music before pronouncing (or not pronouncing) the fatal words »a great pianist«, but it’s a long time since I heard a new artist who holds out such hope for the future and I shall follow his career with the greatest interest.

Christopher Howell

AUSTRIA

Project Martha Argerich

Karl Löbl

Viena Kurier, Sunday 9th of June 2002

»…Vallina performs Schumann's Carnaval and Rachmaninov's Chopin Variations with a touching meditative projection and emotional warmth ;in a way,at the same time,clear and brilliant.His Blue Danube,in the crazy paraphrase of Schulz-Evler, achieves bravura and Viennese style.«