Mixed Media

CD of the Month

Abracadabra

Music isn't witchcraft—but the way Beatrice Berrut brings her Bösendorfer to life, one could almost mistake it for it. She titles her latest album Abracadabra—and not because of her instrumental magic, but because of the orchestral pieces that the Swiss pianist presents on her CD in tried-and-tested or newly created piano transcriptions, ranging from Paul Dukas's L'Apprenti sorcier to the world-famous Hedwig's Theme, which John Williams created a century later for the Harry Potter movies.

The Danse macabre by Caille Saint-Saëns (in the arrangement by Franz Liszt) is of course a must in this collection of musical fairy tales, as are the final scene from Igor Stravinsky's Firebird and the concert paraphrases that Paul Pabst once devised for Tchaikovsky's ballet Sleeping Beauty: both arrangements with which Berrut demonstrates her technical skill. She hints at her compositional ambitions in Untold Tales: piano fantasies that will surely be further developed. And in between, small but exquisite: the magic spells that the Sherman brothers conceived in 1963 for the Disney adaptation The Sword in the Stone.

Hartmut Regitz

Abracadabra, piano: Beatrice Berrut; www.ladolcevolta.com