Even the explicitly so-titled Webern piece needs to be understood not as variations on any particular theme, but as various ways of conceiving the whole notion of musical variations. As it happens this is the most successful of the Swiss pianist’s performances; she phrases expressively and seems to be aware of Peter Stadlen’s important facsimile edition containing the composer’s pencilled performance suggestions. She also gives a nicely gradated account of Silvestrov’s Elegy, whose lyrical 12-note idiom is more anonymous than his later style. Her comparatively low-pressure accounts of the Boulez Notations are no match for Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s, however. And she misses something of the fanatical intensity of Ustvolskaya’s sonatas (Ivan Sokolov’s, on Triton, are the best recordings currently available in the UK; for the absolute genuine article you have to hear Oleg Malov on MDC7876, only available direct from Megadisc Classics at Visserij 41, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium).

David J. Fanning
(From: Gramophone, July 1997)