CD Review: Plaisanteries

Oberösterreichisches Volksblatt, April 12th 2019

Franz Schubert once thought there was no such thing as jovial music. But perhaps just interpreters who serve up deadly serious music as jovial. The twenty-five-year-old pianist Hanna Bachmann from Vorarlberg is one of them and is able to prove it impressively on her new solo album which is her second CD.

With the title „Plaisanteries“ (=jokes, fun) she spars with Mozart, Prokofiev and Beethoven and in doing so coaxes so much humour from these works, one would never have suspected. Her piano playing skills instills astonishing maturity and that is exactly what is needed with pieces of such intellectual magnitude from their creators; fresh colours, exciting phrasing, and an eruptive energy ringing out and everything with the slightest blink of an eye. Bachmann is inspired by artistic impulses from Elisabeth Leonskaja; at the outset the Russian Maestro Kirill Petrenko himself gave her a helping hand into the scene in which there are numerous pianists. 

After all Bachmann has not only placed her visiting card in the European music centres but she already had an American debut in Mexico in 2018. Her CD makes one curious as to her very promising perspectives in the future. For the time being one sits up and listens and is entertained by Mozart’s eight variations, his last piano piece ‘Ein Weib ist das herrlichste Ding’, by Prokofiev’s ironic ‘Sarcasms’ op. 17 and Beethoven’s 33 famous Diabelli Variations op. 120 which have never been so masterly arranged as well as appearing so comical.