American Record Guide

This is two young women having fun at their pianos. They needed an encore for their concert performances of Bach’s Goldberg Variations as arranged by Rheinberger. Chi- ahu “Chia-Chia” Lee fashioned an arrangement of Bach’s two-part Invention 8 for that purpose. That went well enough that she worked out the other 14 “(Re)inventions” over the next two years, and they found the funding to make this short but terrific album.

The arrangements are free and humerous. Sometimes they are so enterprisingly wayward that a listener can’t pick out Bach’s original notes to recognize immediately which Invention it was. None of it sounds Baroque, and I don’t care. This is a pair of modern pianists having a great time with pieces every young piano student knows.

I won’t spoil Lee’s surprises by saying more about her eclectic styles. It is necessary to get this and smile for yourself. Ahead of that decision, a promotional video on YouTube shows Lee and Vershinina discussing their interpretation and recording some of the pieces. It shows what Lee is tapping for her percussion effects in the piece in G minor.

On the strength of the great piano-playing here, I want to hear these musicians record their Rheinberger, too. A recording by Valentini and Liva (May/June 2024) was almost good enough, but they did not follow Rheinberger’s dynamics and there were some production slips. The cleverness and humor of Vershinina and Lee might make that excellent arrangement sound even better.

—Bradley Lehman