Alexander Kniazev plays Franck and Ysaye

Franck & Ysaÿe: Music for Cello and Piano

Alexander Kniazev (cello)

Plamena Mangova (piano)

Fuga Libera FUG587

The notes for Alexander Kniazev’s disc of borrowed music open with an incomprehensible justification for the practice of transcription. In truth, no argument is necessary: if these musicians wish to take music written for violin and play it on the cello, they are welcome. In practice, some transfer better than others, as demonstrated by this recital.

Kniazev is far from the first cellist to play César Franck’s evergreen Violin Sonata and, as a transcription, it works well. The long lyrical lines of the Sonata, composed for the young Eugène Ysaÿe in 1886, are rendered well on Kniazev’s instrument and there isn’t too much rapid fingerwork to get caught up in. Kniazev’s performance slows the opening Allegretto to a grandiose showcase of his remarkable sound, a torrent of extraordinarily rich legato tone redolent of the Oistrakh and Rostropovich. It really is something to behold - whenever the Sonata obliges, Kniazev opens the taps and that sound comes out. It results, however, in a monolithic performance, basking in the glory of these edifices but revealing disappointingly little of the music’s drama and narrative. Pianist Plamena Mangova often has to make do with unsympathetic tempos which disrupt the flow of Franck’s keyboard writing.

Franck’s song Nocturne of 1884 is successful without the words, but two pieces by Ysaÿe reveal the more problematic aspect of transcription. Both the Berceuse and the Poème élégiaque were composed for violin and orchestra, though both are more commonly encountered in versions for violin and piano. Ysaÿe’s often virtuosic writing pulls Kniazev away from his comfort zone and, in all honesty, the transcriptions sound uncomfortable. In addition, Ysaÿe music was often specifically composed around the possibilities of his own instrument. A funereal episode in the Poème élégiaque is a case in point: Ysaÿe asks the violin to detune the bottom string by a whole tone, producing an unexpected and unusually deep sound. This section lies well within the reach of the cello, and the effect is lost.

The disc is very clearly recorded, somewhat to the detriment of the impressionistic Berceuse. While I’ve no problem with musicians looking further afield for repertoire, I really wonder why Kniazev and Mangova chose to record two of Ysaÿe’s violin works, when both his Sérénade and Méditation for cello and piano have (to the best of a my knowledge) never been recorded. Then there’s a darkly intense Sonata for Solo Cello, which Kniazev might have excelled in. Maybe next time?

Proms are not the only festival: A report from Verbier

Here's a reminder that the Proms are not the only big draw for soloists looking for some summertime fun.  The Verbier Festival runs for a couple of weeks from the end of July in the Swiss mountain resort of the same name and attracts a starry roster of famous musicians.  Friend of Devil's Trill Philippa has sent me this short report on the 2011 festival:

"I had a great time in Verbier and the Festival was as good as ever – something happening all the time from 9am until late – open rehearsals, master classes for voice, piano, violin, cello and chamber, free concerts every day given by members of the Verbier Festival Academy (mostly all with solo experience), interviews with some of the stars (Anne-Sophie Mutter was interviewed by James Naughtie), and of course the concerts in the main venues – the Eglise and the Salle de Combins.   Also every evening there was a free Jazz concert in the main square.

"Alfred Brendel was there for a few days – not performing but he took some of the master classes for voice and piano.   Violinist Joshua Bell was in good form in the three concerts he performed in.   It was good to hear him play works I’d not heard him play before.   On 25th he played Vieuxtemps's Violin Concerto No. 5 and also Ysaye's Poeme de L’Amitie for two violins with Renaud Capucon.   In the Gala concert on 26th he just played the first movement from Ysaye's Sonata for 2 violins with Leonidas Kavakos and, on 29th, he played in the Brahms Second String Quintet.  Martha Argerich played in the Gala concert on 26th – a brief appearance with Evgeny Kissin where they played Lutoslowski Variations de Paganini for 2 pianos.   This was a rather moving concert which had opened with Yuri Bashmet and Kissin playing Brahms Viola Sonata No. 2 – Bashmet then played an encore which he dedicated to his father who had died the previous evening.   He left the stage with tears glistening on his cheeks."  

Review: Wojciech Koprowski plays Ysaÿe

Eugène Ysaÿe - Six Sonatas for violin solo, Op. 27

Wojciech Koprowski (violin)

CD Accord ACD 147-2 

Judging by the number of new recordings of Eugène Ysaÿe’s Sonatas for solo violin, it seems that this remarkable cycle of violinistic high-wire acts is taking hold among young string players.  It may be that young violinists are seeing them as a short cut to credibility; the demands made of the musician are certainly as great as anything else in the solo violin repertoire and they are not simply flashy showpieces.  Within them lies a world of reference (both to Bach and to Ysaÿe’s great violinist friends) as well as a technical time-capsule preserving in perpetuity the sound of their composer, one of the greatest of all violinists, who sadly peaked just before the advent of recorded sound.

Polish violinist Wojciech Koprowski, born in 1987, brings a staggeringly assured technique to these pieces, playing throughout with a clarity and beauty of tone.  In the First Sonata, the most overtly Bachian in form and movement, Koprowski is precise and ultra smooth.  The voices of the Fugato are excellently defined, played with minimal vibrato, and without prior knowledge you’d not know this was just one instrument.  Koprowski is also excellent at the more introverted moments of the more celebrated Second Sonata, particularly in the Danse des ombres movement.  It’s fair to say that you won’t hear a more immaculate recording of these works; every double stop is precisely tuned and ever voice clear.

There is, however, a lack of fire and movement in the faster movements, which can tend to sound a little metronomic.  For all his technical command, he rarely engages with the score’s implicit demand to reproduce Ysaÿe’s idea of style and sound.  Ysaÿe smothers these pieces with an unprecedented level of performance instruction, carefully managing every detail from rubato to fingering.  Yet Koprowski’s are thoroughly modern performances, rarely employing the more antiquated style of shifts and slides familiar from the few recordings of Ysaÿe’s playing which are known to exist.

Koprowski doesn’t exploit the sense of fantasy in these pieces; the fluttering whole tone passages of the First and Fifth Sonatas are clean rather than mysterious and in general the more transformative moments in these works remain rather prosaic.  In all, he’s tidier but less alive than Thomas Zehetmair in his recording for ECM (ECM4726872), who is thrilling and intelligent in equal measure in these works.  It’s possible that some may prefer Koprowski’s total beauty of sound to Zehetmair’s more aggressive approach, but no one more clearly makes the case for these great masterpieces of the violinist-composer tradition than Zehetmair does.

This review originally appeared at Musicweb-International.