This is about as attractive a programme for a single CD of Stravinsky’s music as could be devised. The inclusion of the ‘Chorale’ is particularly canny. Naxos doesn’t claim it as a first, but I’m not sure it ever has been recorded in this form. Actually it is just the concluding section of the Symphonies of Wind Instruments, published by Stravinsky in a piano arrangement in advance of the rest. Its startlingly plain appearance on the page, devoid of dynamics and expression marks, virtually constituted an early manifesto for neo-classicism, and Peter Hill likewise makes plainness and absence of interpretation the watchwords. And not only for this piece.
His cool detachment and scrupulous observance of the notation works well in the Sonata, although not everything in the last movement is as rhythmically steady as it might be. I also like his poker-faced, Satie-esque approach to the little Five-Finger Pieces. I do feel the Piano-Rag Music would benefit from a wider dynamic range (as the composer allowed himself in his 1934 recording) and although the Tango is quite sexily paced, the matt coloration doesn’t entirely sustain my interest. The Serenade is curiously flat and introverted, perhaps in deliberate reaction against the many unsanctioned markings in the widely available edition of the score by the composer’s son Soulima. Here Hill’s interpretative neutrality follows Stravinsky’s precepts but not his practice; there is far more light and shade in the composer’s playing, and far more character, often in fascinating tension against an apparently expressionless exterior. What a pity it is only currently available in Sony’s 22-disc compilation (7/91).
Some very big names have come more spectacularly to grief in the Petrushka Movements than Hill. Even so, it cannot be said that he is really on top of the piece in the way the likes of Pollini and Lortie are, and he therefore cannot match their dynamic sweep or ability to mimic the colours of the orchestra. Naxos’s recording is clear and natural, a little on the dry side, as befits Hill’s view of the music.'