29 mins
RECORDINGS
BACH Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin BWV1001–1006
Augustin Hadelich (violin)
WARNER CLASSICS 9029504874 (2 CDS)
Anticipated album where violinist fulfils solo Bach ambitions
For Augustin Hadelich, one positive outcome of the Covid-19 pandemic has been the opportunity to immerse himself in Bach’s solo works and fulfil his dream of recording them. The results both disappoint and excite.
Hadelich nods towards historically informed performance by employing a reproduction Baroque bow, but his contemporary right-hand technique leads to some aggressive, unhistorical execution, notably of the multiplestopping in the sonatas’ fugal movements and the Second Partita’s monumental Ciaccona. Further, ornamentation of repeated sections is minimal, appropriate rhythmic alteration fails to feature and some tempos are seriously questionable.
The first movements of the First and Second sonatas, for example, are freely interpreted but lose momentum through overexpansiveness, and the breakneck speed and sewing-machine approach to the First and Third Sonatas’ finales, the Third Partita’s Preludio and some of the First Partita’s doubles seem to transform them into mere finger dexterity exercises.
The above cavils aside, Hadelich’s left-hand technique is commendably secure and he produces from his 1744 ‘Leduc, ex-Szeryng’ Guarneri ‘del Gesù’ violin opulent sonorities that are not overwrought with vibrato.
He replicates the buoyancy of dance movements such as the Third Partita’s Gavotte en rondeau with suitably light articulations, delineates contrapuntal voicing clearly and shapes melodic lines elegantly, especially in slow movements such as the Sarabandes of Partitas 1 and 2 and the Third Sonata’s opening Adagio.
Structural detail and the implications of the underlying harmony are also intelligently conveyed throughout, along with a finely tuned sensitivity to dynamic nuance. The recording has a pleasing intimacy, clarity and warmth.
ROBIN STOWELL
BEYOND THE LIMITS C.P.E. BACH Complete String Symphonies Gli Incogniti/Amandine Beyer (violin)
HARMONIA MUNDI HMM 905321
Bach Jr’s inventive string symphonies sparkle in these performers’ hands
When Gottfried van Swieten, nobleman and diplomat, commissioned a set of symphonies from C.P.E. Bach, he told him not to worry that they might be difficult. Bach took him at his word and produced six works that are not just technically taxing occasionally, but also harmonically adventurous, spiced with chromaticisms, and structurally inventive.
The first one, in G major, launches forth in a high-spirited welter of semiquaver runs – scales, arpeggios and broken chords over three strings. The playing by Gli Incogniti (see December’s Session Report) is crisp, ebullient and dramatically coloured. The central-movement Poco adagio is delicate, with progressions of light, dry staccato quavers.
The pattern is broadly the same across all six symphonies, graced by constant invention. The final Presto of no.2 in B flat major starts dynamically on the dominant of E flat and seems reluctant to get to the home key. There are nicely weaving violin lines in the sombre Adagio of no.3 in C major; gentle, plangent playing alternates with stern dotted rhythms in Largo of no.4; the opening Allegretto of no.5 in B minor is full of dynamic contrasts, played with tenderness or gusto as required. There are juicy suspensions in the central Poco andante of no.6 in E major. The playing is packed with character and sensitivity, and recorded in a generous acoustic.
TIM HOMFRAY
BEETHOVEN Violin Sonatas: in A minor op.23, in F major op.24 ‘Spring’, in C minor op.30 no.2
Viktoria Mullova (violin)
Alasdair Beatson (fortepiano)
ONYX ONYX4221
A bright, fresh ‘Spring’ characterises violinist’s second Beethoven outing
For volume two of her Beethoven cycle, Viktoria Mullova has Alasdair Beatson as partner rather than Kristian Bezuidenhout. She employs a gut-strung 1750 Guadagnini and a Ralph Ashmead Classical bow, while he has an 1805 Walter fortepiano replica by Paul McNulty.
Ensemble is immaculate, as is rhythm in most movements – it twice gets strangely constipated in the Rondo of the ‘Spring’. The piano makes a nice sound but in the more dramatic moments which abound in the C minor, Beatson must perforce ‘play through the tone’ and it seems inadequate. Touches of portamento are signs that Mullova knows the ‘Spring’ best – her tone is lovely in the Adagio. She takes up the theme beautifully from Beatson’s rather plain opening in the Adagio of the C minor, another highlight. At times her E string is bright to the point of squeakiness.
Turn to Busch and Serkin and you hear witty touches in these two sonatas which do not come across here, where the scherzos are neat but poker-faced. The Andante scherzoso of the A minor is precise but could surely do with some humour. I am unsure what is offered here that is not more convincingly purveyed by good modern-instrument readings, Dumay–Pires, say, or Kavakos–Pace.
TULLY POTTER
BRAHMS Violin Sonatas: no.1 in G major op.78; no.2 in A major op.100; no.3 in D minor op.108 Hagai Shaham (violin) Arnon Erez (piano)
NIMBUS RECORDS NI 8106
Golden-age violin sound brings a warm sense of yesterday to the music
There’s a feeling of nostalgia to Hagai Shaham’s rendering of Brahms’s G major Sonata, due in part to his wonderful sound, perhaps somewhat old-fashioned in the best possible sense, with its warm, elegant vibrato, eloquent in the way it leans on key notes in a phrase and follows the shape of a passage. That nostalgic feeling also comes from Shaham’s judicious use of portamento, which gives a rich glow to the doublestopped theme of the second movement when it returns after the funeral march.
In the last movement Shaham, taking his cue from Brahms’s dolce markings, is gentle and wistful, before the reprise of the second movement reaches its stirring climax. In the A major Sonata his lyricism is balanced by robust declarations, bright-toned and urgent. The andantes of the second movement are pure song, and the opening melody of the flowing finale has a wonderful honeyed tone.
In the first movement of the D minor Sonata the exceptional rhapsodic playing of Shaham and Erez is equally mellifluous in melody and in oscillating quavers, before they move inexorably into vivid drama. The Adagio has both simplicity and nobility, and after the gentle third movement there is fierceness in the finale. The sound is close and well balanced.
TIM HOMFRAY
PARIS
CHAUSSON Poème for violin and orchestra op.25 PROKOFIEV Violin Concerto no.1 in D major op.19
RAUTAVAARA Deux Sérénades Hilary Hahn (violin)
Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France/Mikko Franck
DG 483 9847
Ravishing playing in this heartfelt tribute to the French capital
Chausson’s Poème is one of the most elusive of violin masterpieces. Its musical essence is the antithesis of a virtuoso showstopper, even if some of the big-name players of the past have tended to emphasise its Wagnerian, Parisian hothouse moodiness rather than take a lead from the work’s title. This is where Hilary Hahn really comes into her own, interweaving with the orchestra as though she is emerging from within its ranks rather than as an up-front soloist.
By avoiding the trap of emotionally overloading a score that is already expressively supercharged, Hahn and Mikko Franck tantalise the senses with a series of introspective musings.
To browse through more than a decade of The Strad ’s recording reviews, visit www.thestrad.com/reviews
Hilary Hahn is exquisite in new Rautavaara
Prokofiev’s First Concerto is stylistically more complex, ranging from half-spoken asides to full-on virtuoso chicanery. Again, one is more than usually aware of how soloist and orchestra interweave, especially in the central Scherzo, in which Hahn relishes the dazzling tonal colours of the music rather than focusing merely on its tour de force exuberance.
Most ravishing of all is the world premiere recording of Rautavaara’s Deux Sérénades, intended originally for Hahn. The scoring was not entirely fleshed out when the composer died in 2016, so it was left to former pupil Kalevi Aho to complete the orchestration.
Exquisitely written and played with beguiling intimacy and expressive candour, it sets the seal on one of Hahn’s finest releases to date.
JULIAN HAYLOCK
SPIRIT OF BOHEMIA DVOŘÁK String Quartet no.4 in E minor; String Sextet in A major op.48; Polonaise in A major Anna Kreetta Gribajcevic (viola)
Jens Peter Maintz (cello) Stepan Simonian (piano) Fine Arts Quartet
NAXOS 8.574205
Intimate, chamber-style performances capture the music’s gentle charm
Probably only too well aware of the music’s Wagnerian leanings (especially unmistakable in the opening movement), Dvořák never intended his 1870 E minor Quartet to see the light of day. Listening again to this expertly written but stylistically unsettled opus, recycled in part in the op.40 Nocturne and op.77 Sextet, one can scarcely credit that just five years later the Serenade for Strings displayed his unmistakable creative imprimatur as though it had been there from the start.
The Fine Arts Quartet successfully avoids the interpretative pitfall of special pleading and musical overinflation, suggesting instead a sense of where Dvořák might have travelled if he had continued along an essentially Germanic creative path (at times one can almost sense the young Schoenberg waiting in the wings).
The 1878 String Sextet, in which the Fine Arts players are joined by violist Anna Kreetta Gribajcevic and cellist Jens Peter Maintz, is played as an enhanced quartet rather than indulging in Brahmsian richness, which ideally suits the music’s gentle charm, especially in the inspired theme-andvariations finale. For the 1879
Polonaise, the quartet’s cellist Niklas Schmidt is joined by pianist Stepan Simonian in a delightful reading which, as with its companion performances, prefers drawing-room intimacy to explosive concert-hall rhetoric.
JULIAN HAYLOCK
EÖTVÖS Alhambra STRAVINSKY Le sacre du printemps Isabelle Faust (violin) Orchestre de Paris/Pablo Heras-Casado
HARMONIA MUNDI HMM902655
Hungarian composer’s mesmerising musical tribute to Spanish architecture
The structure of Peter Eötvös’s Third Violin Concerto Alhambra is fluid, although one senses a vestigial fidelity to old forms at certain transition points, one-and two-thirds of the way through the 24-minute single movement. Within the score are musical cryptograms honouring the violinist and conductor dedicatees who gave the concerto’s premiere in 2019 and made this studio recording shortly afterwards. And there is a declared tonal centre of G – for Granada – but these are red herrings for musicologists to dissect.
The sound engineering gives a hand to the mandolin next to the soloist, shadowing her at points and disappearing at others, though she is rarely left alone during what the composer says is not a rondo but ‘more like a stroll through the mysterious building of the Alhambra’. Something elegant and self-contained about Isabelle Faust’s Mozart and Berg is enshrined in the solo writing. On a fourth or fifth listening, the shape and focus of Alhambra began to take my imagination with it, beyond the ghosts of fandango and flamenco, into the covert naturalism that is Eötvös’s Hungarian inheritance from Bartók, a world of translated folk harmonies and sudden flashes of temper.
Recording in the Philharmonie de Paris, the Teldex engineers from Berlin have created a true studio Rite of Spring in complement: quite distinct in emphasis and graded in impact compared to live or as-live experiences, though Pablo Heras- Casado generates quite some momentum and heat through the first part. The album is worth hearing for Eötvös and Faust alone.
PETER QUANTRILL
THE CENTRE IS EVERYWHERE FINNIS The Centre Is Everywhere SCHOENBERG Verklärte Nacht GLASS String Quartet no.2 ‘Company’ Manchester Collective
BEDROOM COMMUNITY HVALUR38
Sonic magic and immaculate playing combine in an unmissable recording
This album could really take the idea of collective string sound as its theme, although the title borrowed from Edmund Finnis’s piece says it just as well. That score, for twelve solo strings, has a string ensemble sound like electronics – but only if played as well as here. It opens with a form of harmonic genesis, instruments dreamily swaying into coalescence and out again as if they haven’t fully learnt the language yet but have a feel for it. With the ensemble as a giant accordion, it breathes its way through a process of organic harmonic expansion, the hint of microtones or glissandos here and there as it thickens its way through Pärt-like incantation back to the barely audible harmonics with which it started.
‘Immaculate’ is one word for the performance of Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht, but it would suggest a performance that doesn’t have distinction and soul, which this absolutely does. It is an intense account that never shrieks, with extraordinary clarity that doesn’t get in the way of fluidity or line. Yes, fluidity is the watchword here – the very same Finnis asks for – and it applies to texture as well as ensemble. I feel sure I have never heard so many colours, achieved partially by the highly focused, ‘light’ and vibratomeasuring sound of each solo instrument. The result is breathtaking and beautiful.
As for Glass’s Company, perhaps I’m tired of the piece because I’ve got too used to hearing off-the-shelf performances of it, an all-too-easy work to programme. Here, the overall sound is deliciously smooth, like the surface of a Rothko, but the voices clear within it. Whatever sorcery has gone into the production of this record, it sounds miraculous.
ANDREW MELLOR
JARRELL Émergences-Résurgences; … Le ciel, tout à l’heure encore si limpide, soudain se trouble horriblement…; 4 Eindrücke Renaud Capuçon (violin) Tabea Zimmermann (viola) Orchestre national des Pays de la Loire/Pascal Rophé
BIS BIS-2482
Two concertos for star soloists couldn’t have more committed performances
These two recent string concertos by senior Swiss composer Michael Jarrell are often challenging in their musical language, but deeply expressive all the same, as though Jarrell has channelled the uncompromising aesthetics of the post-war avant-garde into vivid, microscopically detailed, exquisitely crafted storytelling, with compelling results. He explains in the booklet notes that writing a concerto is often about getting to know a particular artist: both concertos here are performed by their dedicatees, and it shows. Tabea Zimmermann plays as though an actor delivering a soliloquy in the viola concerto Émergences-Résurgences, brilliantly athletic in its nervy opening, full of pent-up energy, yet caressingly lyrical in Jarrell’s more sculpted melodic sections, and particularly effective in the extensive guitar-like pizzicatos in its slow second section.
Jarrell plays on the chiselled, strongly defined quality of Renaud Capuçon’s playing in his Fourth Violin Concerto, 4 Eindrücke, placing him firmly in the spotlight with breathless flurries of notes and obsessively frenetic scrubbings, all building to the barely controlled frenzy of the closing movement.
Magical sounds from Manchester Collective
ANDREW WILKINSON
He could hardly hope for more committed, perceptive performances, and both soloists receive brilliantly vivid support from the Orchestre national des Pays de la Loire under Pascal Rophé in Jarrell’s inventive, multicoloured orchestration, which is equally on show in the energetic orchestral work …Le ciel, tout à l’heure encore si limpide, soudain se trouble horriblement… which completes the disc.
Recorded sound is clear and authentic, though the soloists are occasionally somewhat submerged in the mix amid Jarrell’s teeming orchestral textures.
DAVID KETTLE
MESSIAEN Quatuor pour la fin du temps ROHDE one wing Left Coast Chamber Ensemble
AVIE AV 2452
There’s a wartime vibe in this well-coordinated Quatuor
Recorded live by the San Franciscobased Left Coast Chamber Ensemble in February 2020, this sprucely executed performance of Messiaen’s Quatuor has the probably unintended effect of referencing the circumstances of its wartime premiere in a rather airless acoustic that brings to mind the congested conditions of prison huts, with a rather clangy piano sound to boot. After a first movement where the individual lines struggle to emerge from the haze of birdsong and melody that Messiaen creates, things improve as the textures thin out, and the long stretches of unisons and octaves conceivably benefit from aural close focus, though Jerome Simas’s well-paced clarinet solo could do with more air around the sound.
The duo between Anna Presler’s violin and Tanya Tomkins’s cello in the ‘Vocalise’ is so tightly coordinated that we could be listening to a single player. Elsewhere, Tomkins’s first ‘Louange’ sounds just a little saccharine, but the melody of Presler’s final movement is exquisitely spun, with sincerity and purity in equal measure (though pianist Eric Zivian could be tighter in his double-dotted rhythm).
Rachel Podger and Christopher Glynn play convincing Mozart completions
Kurt Rohde’s one wing of 2019 makes a pertinent filler, inspired as it is by the angel music in Messiaen’s St François d’Assise; it is more spaciously recorded in a different venue from the Quatuor. Here the violin and piano (the well-focused Presler and Zivian) converse in florid reams of melody that only ‘meet’ each other tangentially –a musical allegory of the human relationship with the divine.
MATTHEW RYE
MOZART/JONES Violin Sonatas Fragment Completions Rachel Podger (violin) Christopher Glynn (fortepiano)
CHANNEL CLASSICS CCS SA 42721
Fascinating Mozart completions really go the extra mile
Rachel Podger has already recorded all of Mozart’s violin sonatas on eight CDs. On this one she goes the extra mile, with a set of fragments completed by Timothy Jones. Jones has made several completions of the four fragments on this disc, of which Podger plays two each of three sonatas as well as one of the Fantasia in C minor. In the third completion of the 1782 Sonata in B flat major he provides what he calls a ‘tragic scena’ in the development, which brings forth finely moulded melodic contours from Podger, with exuberant scales to follow. In the second completion he provides fireworks instead of tragedy, which Podger responds to energetically.
In the A major Sonata from 1784 (or possibly later) the fourth completion sets the players to scintillating dialogue, with many varieties of colour and moments of delicate reflection. The first completion is more complex and intimate. In the G major Sonata of 1789 (or later) there is an ‘easy’ first completion and a more complex second with a harmonically restless landscape to which Podger responds with a sophisticated tonal palette and a vocal flexibility of line.
The first completion of the C minor Fantasia (1782) has a strange and twisting path neatly negotiated by Podger. This is a fascinating collection, beautifully played and recorded.
TIM HOMFRAY
RACHMANINOFF Cello Sonata; How Fair This Spot; Élégie (Morceaux de fantaisie op.3 no.1), Melody (12 Romances op.21 no.9) FALLA Nana; Asturiana (from Suite Populaire espagnole) GRANADOS Orientale (from Danzas Españolas) CASALS Song of the Birds Pablo Ferrández (cello)
Denis Kozhukhin (piano)
SONY CLASSICAL 19439853782
Soulful Spanish–Russian fusion in a highly successful mainstream debut
Why the Spanish–Russian pairing in Ferrández’s first disc with Sony? As well as mirroring the performers’ nationalities, the connection is personal for the Spanish cellist, not long turned 30 – whose formative teacher Natalia Shakhovskaya studied with Mstislav Rostropovich, and whose prize at the 2015 Tchaikovsky Competition has been a career highlight so far.
Rachmaninoff’s How Fair This Spot absolutely does hit the spot, opening the disc with a profound sensation of calm and a sureness to the placing of every note, and Élégie caresses the ear with its beautiful, smoothly linked double-stops.
In the Sonata Ferrández wrenches the passion from every line. His well-observed and punchy articulation invigorates the Allegro scherzando – although playing the octave Gs and Fs practically col legno is a departure – and he puts heart and soul and a wonderfully full tone into the Andante. In some fortissimo passages it feels as if the full force of Ferrández’s 1696 ‘Lord Aylesford’ Stradivari cello is denied us, in spite of a generally well-balanced and warm sound.
The Spanish tracks, all roughly contemporaneous with Rachmaninoff’s, are vividly portrayed – the brooding cello line of Falla’s Nana with its melismatic phrase ends feels beautifully free, while in Asturiana, the cello’s soulful glissandos over the guitar-like, strumming accompaniment are soulful.
JANET BANKS
SCHOENBERG Pierrot lunaire; Phantasy for violin and piano op.47; Six Little Piano Pieces op.19 J STRAUSS II Emperor Waltz (arr. Schoenberg) WEBERN Four Pieces for violin and piano op.7 KREISLER Little Viennese March Patricia Kopatchinskaja (voice, violin) Meesun Hong (violin, viola) Júlia Gállego (flute) Reto Bieri (clarinet) Marko Milenković (viola) Thomas Kaufmann (cello) Joonas Ahonen (piano)
ALPHA CLASSICS ALPHA 722
Not just a violinist – PatKop’s singing alter ego is extraordinary
It was while recovering from a hand injury that violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja channelled her musical passions into learning the vocal part of Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire (see February’s Session Report), and she’s been performing the work since 2015. So, despite the unusual change of performance medium seldom encountered in classical music, it should probably come as little surprise how astonishingly accomplished the violinist’s vocal performance is – nor, in fact, that she approaches Schoenberg’s expressionist vocal gymnastics with the same fierce commitment and larger-than-life expressiveness that make her violin playing so extraordinary.
Her Sprechgesang is breathtakingly effective, and brilliantly supple too: she occasionally sings ‘straight’, more often slides around and between Schoenberg’s pitches, and on rare occasions leaves them behind entirely, wailing or screeching to hair-raising effect. She has a light, somewhat fragile tone that captures her character’s vulnerability and mischievous wit, yet she’s able to summon immense, unnerving power at the drop of a hat. Her ‘Galgenlied’, for example, is virtually spat out, and ‘Die Kreuze’ declaimed at the top of her voice. Indeed, all her vocal flamboyance serves the purpose of characterising her slippery, multipersonality Pierrot, seldom sincere, often sarcastic, occasionally furious and a lot of the time very vulnerable. She receives support that’s just as intense and committed as her own delivery from her international ensemble, captured in crystal-clear recorded sound that conveys every last articulation of their playing.
If you miss PatKop the violinist, however, she fills the rest of the disc with a searingly intense Schoenberg Phantasy, a masterclass in technical prowess and vivid storytelling in Kopatchinskaja’s vivid account, and an almost impressionistic reading of Webern’s Four Pieces. By way of stark contrast, all the players come together to devote just as much care and attention to a joyful and really rather moving Emperor Waltz in Schoenberg’s chamber arrangement.
DAVID KETTLE
A SICILIAN TRAVELLER TSINTSADZE Seven Miniatures on Georgian Folk Themes KOMITAS Armenian Folk Songs and Dances COLERIDGE-TAYLOR 24 Negro Melodies op.59 nos.10 and 20
BARTÓK Romanian Folk Dances SKALKOTTAS Greek Dances PIANELLI Variations on a Sicilian Folk Theme Alessio Pianelli (cello)
Avos Chamber Orchestra
RUBICON CLASSICS RCD 1051
Spirited arrangements from an innovative and idiomatic cellist
The island of Sicily has hosted many nationalities over the centuries, a melting pot of cultures admirably reflected in this enterprising release. Cellist Alessio Pianelli not only plays with élan and virtuosity, but has also made idiomatic arrangements of all the pieces. For example, the Sulkhan Tsintsadze Miniatures were originally written for string quartet. Yet how well they make the transition to cello and string orchestra – so much so that it would be great to see them published in this version. They cover a varied range of timbre and characters:
Wit and wonder from Patricia Kopatchinskaja and colleagues
Gandagan sports oscillating metres with false harmonics for colour, while Suliko has double-stops and pizzicato backing; Shepherd’s Dance is characterised by spirited delivery of swirling rhythmic metres that keeps you on the edge of your seat.
Similar tonal melodic and rhythmic elements feature in Komitas’s Armenian Folk Dances and Songs, whereas Coleridge-Taylor’s two spiritual melodies, Deep River and Pilgrim’s Song, celebrate the essence of suffering with noble simplicity. Pianelli allows his nuanced playing full scope in depicting these spirituals. In contrast, his own Variations on a Sicilian Folk Theme are witty, with teasingly brief references to Mozart’s The Magic Flute and Elgar’s Cello Concerto.
A more pungent musical language defines both the Bartók and Skalkottas. The latter are excellent arrangements from his monumental 36 Greek Dances for Orchestra.
Perhaps, though, the towering composition here is the well-loved Romanian Folk Dances by Bartók with its perfect assimilation of indigenous folk idioms, vividly projected in this fine recording.
JOANNE TALBOT
VIVALDI Concertos RV495 and 416, Cadenza from RV208 ROLLA Arpeggio in E flat major; Romanza nell’Otello TARTINI L’Arte dell’Arco PAGANINI Sonata per la Grand’ Viola SCIARRINO Di volo Nils Mönkemeyer (viola)
L’arte del mondo/Werner Erhardt
SONY 19439730032
Inventive viola arrangements the Red Priest would surely have enjoyed
According to its liner notes, this CD is intended to present ‘a brief survey of the Italian viola repertory’, albeit ‘not according to the letter but according to the spirit’, which explains why Nils Mönkemeyer has adapted two concertos written by Vivaldi for bassoon and for cello, joining them by a written-out cadenza from one for violin. I can’t imagine that the composer would have minded very much, as the music turns out to suit the viola very well. For all we know, he might very well have also approved of Mönkemeyer’s rather over-the-top interpretation, which includes lots of percussive attack, ponticello effects and some extreme bending of tempos, in the manner of the wildest wave of early music practitioners.
The excellent period-instrument orchestra L’arte del mondo is with him most of the time, but Mönkemeyer’s agogic liberties in the Paganini Sonata occasionally nonplusses even them. Some passages in harmonics come across rather smeared in the sonata itself, but conversely, those in Sciarrino’s piece – wittily interpolated therein as a cadenza – are clean as a whistle.
In a selection from the set of 50 variations on a Corelli gavotte that Tartini wrote to explore bowing techniques, Mönkemeyer – kept in check by the ostinato bass – articulates the most intricate figures with the greatest clarity. His trademark sweetness of tone, though, comes across best in the two Rolla pieces, particularly in the unaccompanied romance transcribed from Rossini’s opera Otello.
CARLOS MARÍA SOLARE
MIRROR IMAGES SÖDERLIND Elegy no.2 op.68 BACH Partita no.3 nE major BWV1006;
Cello Suite no.5 in C minor (arr. Vicci) IMOGEN HOLST Suite for Solo Viola
FLORENTZ Vocalise YSAŸE Sonata in A minor op.27 no.2 Violeta Vicci (violin, viola and voice)
ALDILÀ ARCD010 / GRAMOLA CD98010
A remarkable concept album by a unique and imaginative solo performer
Concepts are for artists rather than audiences, and Violeta Vicci thanks a lot of people in the acknowledgements, but her second album, recorded back in 2018, leaves the impression of a complete musician and an original mind. Of Catalan and Swiss descent, now resident in London, she moves from an angular violin Elegy (1966) by the Norwegian Ragnar Söderlind to a plain-spoken account of Bach’s E major Partita via the first of six improvisations linking this unique mixed salad of composers.
The Bach would sound underpowered in other contexts, but the studio engineering strikingly anticipates a lockdown aesthetic of homespun simplicity and one-to-one communication. There is no shortage of albums dedicated to ‘unjustly’ neglected English music for strings, yet until now, not one has featured the concise four-movement Suite for Solo Viola written by Imogen Holst in 1930: offbeat, Bartókian, completely unpredictable and closing in style with a gigue featuring some nifty pizzicato/ arco shifts from Vicci.
I won’t spoil the vocal surprise, but Vicci sings as well as she plays. Her Ysaÿe Second Sonata is projected as a space of melancholy introspection, effectively using pure tone in the ‘Danse des ombres’ to echo the soulful intimacy of her Bach. She returns to the viola for a final, remarkably deconstructed account of the Sarabande from the Fifth Cello Suite, outlining its proto-modernist contours with the sparest, simplest phrasing.
On this evidence, Vicci is an artist of ideas with all the gifts to fulfil them.
PETER QUANTRILL
The Baroque Violin & Viola: A Fifty-Lesson Course Walter S. Reiter
VOL.1: 312PP ISBN: 9780190922696 £81 VOL.2: 360PP ISBN 9780197525128 £29.99 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Back in the 1970s, if a violinist wanted to learn about the Baroque violin and how it was played, they could, in addition to reading the old treatises, consult David Boyden’s 1965 History of Violin Playing from its Origins to 1761. In the preface Boyden claimed that as a history of violin playing ‘it is, as far as I know, the first book of its kind in any language’. For those first players, this extensively researched book was indispensable.
Judy Tarling’s 2000 Baroque String Playing for Ingenious Learners was addressed directly to players from the point of view of an experienced violinist. Her text is liberally supplemented with extracts from old writings but also offers her personal views and a great deal of practical advice on a wide field of subjects.
Walter Reiter’s new two-volume work The Baroque Violin and Viola: A Fifty-Lesson Course is presented as an offer from a tutor of long experience to share his knowledge. As the implied teacher–pupil relationship suggests, this is a very personal approach, as evidenced by an introductory list of inspirational quotes and the periodic insertion of highlighted paragraphs of comment, advice and aphorisms, and numerous specially devised exercises. The author’s intention in these written lessons is to prepare and inform the student in advance so that the limited time of a face-to-face lesson can be put to more productive use.
Volume One is in two parts, the first of which deals with ‘The Basics’ – choosing an instrument and bow and how to handle them both, including the technique of ‘chinless’ shifting, but also some fundamental musical topics. The second part addresses the nature of interpretation and discusses ornamentation and rhetoric. Volume Two takes us on a journey through the solo violin music of the Baroque era, with generous background information and detailed examination of repertoire from Fontana to Bach. Throughout the lessons the cultural references are broad, including sculpture, painting and philosophy, reflecting the author’s conviction that our music making is enhanced and inspired by an awareness of the whole contemporary cultural scene. The topics of study likewise range wide. Lesson Six offers relaxation exercises to help with ‘chinless’ playing and in Lesson Five, pursuing the theme of ‘searching for our vocal roots’, there are four exercises in imitation of the human voice, which include trying to reproduce Italian vowel and consonant sounds on an open string.
In Volume Two, inserted into the series of lessons, there are three ‘interludes’ where the violin is partly set aside. The Florentine interlude tells the story of Count Bardi’s Camerata, whose attempts to rediscover the music of ancient Greece led to the creation of a new musical language, from which the first violin sonatas sprang. In the Roman interlude, Exercise 98 proposes that, by imitating the gesture, posture and facial expression of Bernini’s sculpture The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa and totally identifying with its emotional essence, the student can transfer this heightened state to their performance of the sonatas studied in the previous chapters. The less fanciful, but wholly relevant, Versailles interlude paints a colourful picture of life and manners at the court of Louis XIV as an introduction to the highly idiosyncratic world of French Baroque music.
Presentation of the nuts-and-bolts details of performance is clear and level-headed, although the beat-by-beat analysis of the chosen repertoire can be heavy-going. The instruction, at the end of the last lesson, to ‘stress the start of (both) slurs, releasing the pressure on the bow afterwards to allow the notes to flow freely with a natural diminuendo’ should by that stage be redundant. Also, there are more misspellings and wrong dates than can escape mention. David Boyden’s book was accompanied by an LP, Judy Tarling’s by a CD. Walter Reiter’s books have a companion website.
SIMON STANDAGE
Fractal Fingering: A scaleable concept of finger geometry for the double bass David Allen Moore
68PP ISBN 9789163945359 ALMUSIK AB €30
I feel privileged to be able to write this review as I feel close to the work done by David Allen Moore, who has made enormous efforts to produce this remarkable volume. The list of amazing teachers and players he thanks reads like a who’s who of modern bass playing. Moore has taught on courses that I run on several occasions, and has blown everyone’s minds with the concepts presented in this book. Jan Alm published the volume and his eye
for clarity means the ideas are beautifully presented.
Before developing his ‘fractal fingering’ system, Moore studied all the notable methods available. He also spent time pondering the unique playing style of Edgar Meyer, who performed with noticeably different fingerings that seemed not to be influenced by Simandl, Nanny, Billè, Petracchi or Rabbath. Moore then began to work out a language that allows the player to organise information from any method.
In Moore’s introduction he states: ‘The fractional approach models the organisation of the fingerboard into layered hierarchical levels of increasing complexity.’ He also talks about providing the player with a ‘grammar’ for technique that can be used to construct a fingering, to make it expansive, economical, appropriate, or even just easier and reliable. The concept of ‘scaleable self-similarity’ is one that may be less familiar to many bassists. The idea of dividing up the open strings into certain equal measurements which create the same harmonic pitch is well known. Taking this idea several steps further shows that the intervals contained between those harmonics are the same distance apart. The volume begins with a guide to understanding the ‘nodes’, and develops into wonderfully clear exercises such as expansions, fan expansions, frames and forms. The frames are carefully explained and then expanded into double string templates and the remarkable arpeggio template.
David Allen Moore
Moore has constructed definitions and a language to help explain his ideas. I have found it fascinating to couple his written examples and explanations with him actually demonstrating them in the online Discover Double Bass series. Some of my favourite exercises, which really are unique, are the fan expansions where your hand position is stable but your fingers, and thus hand shape, expand, giving you far more possibilities than normal. Rabbath also does this, but Fractal Fingering gives this expansion a context that explains the structure and thought behind the choices made. The forms are also very helpful and the exercises augment and build on the muscle memory learnt from the ‘node’ exercises. I could go on but I would truly recommend reading this book and seeing for yourself.
CAROLINE EMERY
The Hardanger Riddle Paul Adam
332PP ISBN 9780957191372 ENDEAVOUR PUBLISHING £9.99
Basing a thriller around the world of stringed instruments might appear unlikely, at least initially, yet this is already the third in Paul Adam’s outstanding Cremona Mysteries series –a follow-up to Sleeper (US title The Rainaldi Quartet) and Paganini’s Ghost. If you are already familiar with the first two novels you will be glad to hear that violin maker Gianni Castiglione and his detective friend Antonio Guastafeste are back on the case, this time on the trail of a highly distinctive Hardanger fiddle that disappears after its Norwegian owner, a luthier (and pupil of Gianni’s) is found floating in a canal in Cremona.
Without giving too much away, it is the carving of a captivating young woman on the violin’s scroll that becomes the centre of the investigation and leads the two friends to Norway, where evidence is gathered at Grieg’s home in Bergen and Ole Bull’s summer residence in Lysøen (the Island of Light) on the way to a page-turning denouement. Readers of The Strad will be relieved to hear that Adam has clearly researched the colourful background of the Hardanger fiddle – there is an early reference to the instrument’s understrings, for example – and that when musical matters are being discussed or used as a means of propelling the plot forwards, they are integrated seamlessly into the narrative flow. So often, little details can go by the board in a venture of this type, yet Adam’s eye for accuracy ensures that even when, for example, the melodic pitches of the ‘Morning Mood’ from Peer Gynt are spelt out, they are spot on.
Throughout, one senses that Adam’s work for television and film (not to mention a further dozen published thrillers) have enriched his powerful instinct for storytelling, reminiscent of the great Desmond Bagley. Like Bagley, the story’s structural template appears to melt away as each event follows another with a tantalising sense of inevitability, ensuring that this is a book that is exceedingly difficult to put down.
JULIAN HAYLOCK