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Fanfare Magazine: Dave SaemannAnna Shelest is an invigorating and endearing artist. Technically she can do just about anything, and she is an absolutely superb colorist. Judging from the high prices asked for her previous CDs on Amazon Marketplace, Shelest seems to possess a cult following. She is the kind of emotionally trenchant performer that appeals to such an audience. In Spirit and Romance she has assembled an echt Romantic program that plays to her strengths. There are three transcriptions, four if one counts Liszt’s elaboration on one of his songs in his Petrarch Sonnet. Throughout, Shelest’s readings are marked by the most thoughtful and persuasive artistry. When you’ve listened to this CD several times, you will feel like you know Anna Shelest.Ferruccio Busoni’s Bach transcriptions are not revived often enough. His version of the Chaconne for solo violin is a massive contrapuntal statement. Shelest plays it with rare passion, eliciting an organ-like sonority. As on an organ, Shelest secures terraced effects matching the different stops. Underlying it all is a pinpoint rhythmic accuracy one would expect from a great violinist performing Bach’s original. Shelest brings out an element of religious faith merely hinted at in the violin version. There are colors at times like a cathedral’s stained glass.The next three works by or transcribed by Liszt all share the characteristic of being based on fervent love poetry. In the Sonetto 104 del Petrarca, Shelest provides an Italianate quality to the sound. She sustains the long line by permitting it to breathe, with a natural ebb and flow. A billowing vision of Petrarch’s Laura is conjured up. This reading has the warm-bloodedness that appeals to lovers of the Romantic piano, and is my favorite recording of the score. In Liszt’s transcription of Schubert’s song, Gretchen am Spinnrade, the ostinato here has a sort of coiled spring effect, propelling the music forward. Shelest follows a voice’s natural phrasing. A 1989 live account by Lazar Berman is more individual, but no more personal, than Shelest’s. Berman summons the tragic sense from the start, while Shelest allows it to appear dramatically only at the music’s climax. I would not be without either version. Perhaps the most famous recording of Liszt’s Isolde’s Liebestod is by Vladimir Horowitz. His is much faster that Shelest’s, treating the piece like one of Liszt’s Consolations. Shelest gives the work its operatic breadth. She brings out subtleties in coloration one rarely hears in the theater. There is a vaporous quality to her tone that emulates the feelings in Wagner’s text. Without question the work’s climax perfectly captures a consuming passion.The recital ends with Schumann’s First Sonata, one of that master’s thornier compositions. Its spikiness prefigures such later works as the Violin Concerto. Murray Perahia and Leif Ove Andsnes fuss with the piece to varying degrees, taming its oddities. Shelest embraces its strangeness. Her opening movement is the fastest I’ve heard. She emphasizes its symphonic character, with some resemblance to the Fourth Symphony’s initial movement. Shelest is comfortable with the gnomic quality of Schumann’s melodies here. We enter a magical tonal world in her second movement, the best I’ve heard. In the Scherzo and Intermezzo, two of Schumann’s character pieces have wound up in a sonata. The last movement seems literary in its juxtaposition of recurring themes with puzzling episodes, a sort of fatalistic rondo. Another recording of the sonata I like is Bernd Glemser’s, massive and brawny.The sound engineering for Shelest’s CD is very good, close up but reasonably full. She is a rare and fascinating artist, someone who makes her presence felt as easily as the rest of us breathe and eat. This album will shake you by your collar: Spirit and Romance indeed.