The Venezuelan pianist Clara Rodriguez (who studied at the Royal College of Music and is now Artistic Director of the San Martin Festival of Caracas), strikes a blow for her country’s native music, which has so far scarcely made Europe aware of its existence. However, the pieces she has chosen by the enormously prolific Federico Ruiz (now in his mid-forties) present a fluent but stylistically eclectic composer who is likely to remain a peripheral figure except at home, where he is highly regarded.
It is difficult to know quite what to make of a writer who, in the 1970s, like many of his fellow-countrymen, was toying with dodecaphony (the Micro-Suite, only one of whose five tiny movements shows coherent thought) and then is illustrated moving to traditional harmonic systems in pianistically very effective waltzes (a popular form in Venezuela), to a dozen or so more or less conventional improvisatory-sounding trifles, several influenced by ragtime and South American popular dances, and most recently to such concert works as Triptico tropical – a curious concoction with elements of Caribbean styles, Brazilian rhythms and jazz – and a pretentious Nocturno, the most substantial piece here. There are examples of the Venezuelan joropo, which exists in various forms, and a quite intriguing merengue (here a 5/8 form found in more straightforward rhythm elsewhere in the Caribbean).
Rodriguez is an excellent pianist with vitality, clean technique and command of tonal nuance, who projects this music as persuasively as possible; it would be good to hear her in something of greater consequence. '