Paul Huang, Helen Huang - Mirrors: Poulenc, Pärt, Prokofiev (2025)
Paul Huang, Helen Huang - Mirrors: Poulenc, Pärt, Prokofiev (2025)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 250 Mb | Total time: 56:18 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Naïve | # V8617 | Recorded: 2024
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 250 Mb | Total time: 56:18 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Naïve | # V8617 | Recorded: 2024
The two main violin sonatas on this 2025 release share a grim quality that has perhaps resulted in their being less often performed among the chamber output of the two composers, Poulenc and Prokofiev. There is nothing in the music that explicitly refers to war, yet there is a tense quality, especially striking in the sonata of the normally gallant Poulenc, that surely marks their origin during World War II, and violinist Paul Huang ominously says that, in addition to the title of Arvo Pärt's Spiegel im Spiegel, the music "is almost like a mirror image of the time we are living in now." The first movement of the Poulenc Violin Sonata has a mood perhaps unique in the composer's catalog, with moments of lovely melodic repose appearing amidst the nervous figuration. The work ends with one of Poulenc's rare truly dark passages. Regarding his Violin Sonata No. 1 in F major, Op. 80, Prokofiev said of the scalar passages that end the outer movements that they should be like "wind passing through a graveyard." This is truly haunting music, and, again, not quite like anything else in Prokofiev. The readings by violinist Huang and pianist Helen Huang (the two are not related) enter fully into the moods here and deliver a hypnotic performance of the central interlude, Pärt's Spiegel im Spiegel ("Mirror, or Mirrors, in the Mirror"), a work that someone should present in conjunction with the artwork of Yayoi Kusama. The album is beautifully recorded and may serve as a souvenir of the late producer Adam Abeshouse; it was one of the last projects on which he worked. This is an album that lives up to its large ambitions and seems to meet its historical moment in a way that few releases do.–James Manheim
Performer:
Paul Huang, violin
Helen Huang, piano
Tracklist:
Francis Poulenc
Violin Sonata, FP 119 (1942–43, rev. 1949)
01. I. Allegro con fuoco
02. II. Intermezzo. Très lent et calme – modéré, sans lenteur
03. III. Presto tragico
Arvo Pärt
04. Spiegel im Spiegel (1978)
Sergei Prokofiev
Violin Sonata No. 1 in F minor, Op. 80 (1938–1946)
05. I. Andante assai
06. II. Allegro brusco
07. III. Andante
08. IV. Allegrissimo - Andante assai
Exact Audio Copy V1.8 from 15. July 2024
EAC extraction logfile from 2. July 2025, 21:26
Paul Huang, Helen Huang / Mirrors
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–– CUETools DB Plugin V2.2.6
[CTDB TOCID: Cmp9NmlRwvgNc0ogLVSahbU9tH4-] disk not present in database
Submit result: Cmp9NmlRwvgNc0ogLVSahbU9tH4- has been uploaded
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Paul Huang, Helen Huang - Mirrors: Poulenc, Pärt, Prokofiev (2025)
Thanks to the original releaser