There is some titular confusion about this CD. Amazon.com lists it as "Gorecki: Solo Piano Works", but that title is nowhere to be found on the CD itself. And the CD isn't much better at describing its own contents. The cover lists only Gorecki's First Piano Sonata and his Four Preludes,and Arvo Pärt's For Alina and Variations for the Convalescence of Arinuschka. Galina Ustvolskaya's Twelve Preludes and Sonata No. 6 only receive mention on the back. That Ustvolskaya gets no cover credit is regrettable, and yet another triumph of marketers over artists; her two works far outshine the Pärt in every respect except simplicity, and take up almost half of the CD.

The Pärt compositions are so slight as to be almost non-existent. Those who know his style will be familiar with his aesthetic, but even they may not be prepared for the extremes to which Pärt pares away everything except the barest sound in For Alina. A simple modal melody is fragmented into tiny groups of notes--two or three at a time. Harmony

consists only of the simplest of bass lines, playing tonic or dominant only and in the same rhythm of the melody; all is as soft as possible. The result is quite beautiful, and somewhat reminiscent of a Picasso sketch that elucidates the response, "A child could have done that!" Ah, yes, but they didn't.

The relentless pounding of clusters in Ustvolskaya's Sixth Sonata might well evoke a similar response, although at the opposite extreme, "A child could have done that, but if he did, he'd be punished!" Pärt and Ustvolskaya are worlds away in their artistic result, but an abstract consideration of their technique reveals a predilection for simple rhythms and textures and a concern for sound rather than harmonic progression. Germanic development is seldom an issue for either composer--even in Pärt's Variations he seems to approach the idea with reticence. It is as though the variation allows him repetition, rather than the repetition that allows him variation.

More traditionally based are the remaining compositions: Ustvolskaya's Twelve Preludes, and Gorecki's Sonata No. 1 and Four Preludes. These pieces are all firmly based in the Prokofiev/Shostakovich school--music with its foundation in tonal harmony, but with the techniques of Primitivism and folk music having a profound influence. Gorecki's works will come as a surprise to those who know him only from the Third Symphony, the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. These are aggressive, violent pieces at the opposite extreme of that work; rather as if Prokofiev had re-worked Bartok's Allegro Barbaro because it was too gentle. [The CD notes, by Mark Swed, claim that "Gorecki ends his sonata with a pounding resonance that overwhelms any pianistic thunder in Prokofiev..." As much as I like the Gorecki and react to it viscerally, I must strongly disagree. Prokofiev's Seventh Sonata, for example, is a truly astonishing work by a fully mature and magnificent composer; Gorecki's is an enthusiastic work by a young and inexperienced composer (although he revised it twice, most recently in 1990) and any resemblance is a credit to Gorecki but not at Prokofiev's expense.]

The performance, by the truly remarkable pianist David Arden, is superb. I must admit a slight preference for the recording of Ustvolskaya's piano sonatas by Markus Hinterhauser on the col legno label (WWE 1CD 200019) which is both more brutal and more reserved at times.