Cheng is known to the British catalogue for her recordings of Messiaen (9/96) and Adams and Riley (3/99). This new release is a personal anthology selected around the idea of dance. In some ways it compares with compilations such as ‘The Waltz Project’ (Nonesuch LP – nla) involving several pianists, for which Philip Glass wrote his Modern Love Waltz included here. Or the magnificent anthologies by Alan Feinberg on Argo (‘The American Virtuoso’, 5/93; ‘The American Innovator’, 1/94 and ‘Fascinatin’ Rhythm’ 11/95), all sadly deleted. Feinberg’s personality leaps out at all points: Cheng has less focus, and some of her selections from suites are questionable. I’m not sure why we need one waltz clipped out of Ravel’s Valses nobles or some of the other extracts. All the same Cheng provides some attractive discoveries, such as Sleepwalker’s Shuffle by William Albright, and she is charming in Mompou, Prokofiev and Poulenc (his naughty but clearly genuine homage based on the letters of Bach’s name).
Good to include something by centenarian Leo Ornstein and a reminder of Antheil for his centenary. But it is difficult to see how a collection taking dance as its point of departure could lack rhythmic vitality in several of the key styles represented. Debussy’s Golliwog’s Cakewalk is too far from the cake-walk idiom being satirised; Hindemith’s Shimmy is not strict enough and neither is Cowell’s Lilt of the Reel, which he himself played so vividly (Smithsonian Folkways); the Stravinsky Tango is just not Stravinsky unless it is completely dry and virtually without rubato. Cheng applies the same approach to everything. Some of her discoveries are uncompelling, and not everyone will want all these bits and pieces, however neatly played and adequately recorded. But that can be said of many compilations.'