Chamber Hannah Nepil on a new pairing of Prokofiev’s violin sonatas:
Andrew Mellor listens to Mark Simpson’s ‘Night Music’ on NMC:
‘What emerges is a fully fleshed-out picture in which these sonatas become part of a coherent whole’ REVIEW ON PAGE 54
‘Simpson has an awful lot of music inside him and plenteous discipline when it comes to writing it down’ REVIEW ON PAGE 56
Abrahamsen ‘Works for Wind Quintet’ Abrahamsen Landskaber (Landscapes). Wind Quintet No 2, ‘Walden’ Ravel Le tombeau de Couperin Schumann Kinderszenen, Op 15 (both arr Abrahamsen) Ensemble MidtVest Dacapo F s %%%
The Ophelia of Hans Abrahamsen’s let me tell you (2013), the contemporary ‘work of the moment’, surrenders to the deadly whiteness of snow. Here’s some useful context to where that whiteness came from. With Landscapes (1972) Abrahamsen was clearing the decks. In directing the musicians of his wind quintet to play senza espressivo and not stray from each of the three movement’s specified dynamics, the effect is of a resounding, inviting neutrality. With those decks cleared, Abrahamsen could deliver Walden (1978), a piece of ‘meticulously detailed minimalism’, to quote Jens Cornelius’s booklet-note, that imposes rigorous but organic procedures upon a narrow range of tonal material. Those procedures result in music that reflects the changes and chances – the predictable unpredictability – of what you might see if you sat in a forest looking in one direction for a long time. Here and in Landscapes, the performances have space and purity to match (far more so, in the case of the latter, than Dacapo’s 2001 version). At the end of the ’80s, when Abrahamsen felt his brand of New Simplicity was spiralling into complexity, he stopped writing original music and focused on transcriptions. In his 2005 rewrite of Schumann’s Kinderszenen you immediately miss a piano’s improvisatory push and pull. But there are payoffs aplenty in the capering oom-pah suggestions of ‘Hasche-Mann’, the wistfulness of Tomasso Lonquich’s clarinet in ‘Träumerei’ and the ensemble-borne lilt of ‘Kind im Einschlummern’. 50 GRAMOPHONE AUGUST 2016
Even more relevant is an underlining of the childish in music where much of the sense of sophistication comes from naturally urbane piano renditions. That’s apparent, too, in Abrahamsen’s quintet arrangement of the orchestrated movements of Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin. You can’t quite hear the twisting tune of the Forlane in this performance, but elsewhere all the score’s curious mixture of bite and nostalgia is absolutely and deliciously conveyed. Andrew Mellor Walden – selected comparison: Wind sols (DACA) 8 224155
Brahms Cello Sonatas – No 1, Op 38; No 2, Op 99 Marie-Elisabeth Hecker vc Martin Helmchen pf Alpha F "-1)" s %%%
forwards or conceding the musical argument without any grandstanding. That pays rich dividends in the more extrovert and fantastical Second Sonata (a sister work, in spirit, to the Third Symphony). Helmchen’s majestic swell of sound in the centre of the Adagio affettuoso makes as much musical and colouristic sense as Hecker’s forceful pizzicatos. Any new recording of these two sonatas is up against competition ranging from du Pré and Barenboim to Alban Gerhardt and Markus Groh, and 53 minutes of music is not exactly generous (others offer Brahms transcriptions or Schumann cello music). But if you’re after a thoughtful and musicianly pairing of these two works alone, you won’t be disappointed. Richard Bratby
Dowland Lachrimae, or Seaven Teares
When Brahms played through his First Cello Sonata with its dedicatee, Josef Gänsbacher, the cellist apparently complained that he couldn’t hear himself over the piano. ‘Lucky you,’ muttered Brahms. There’s no such problem on this new disc from Marie-Elisabeth Hecker and Martin Helmchen. As Hecker calmly, eloquently shapes her low-lying opening melody, Helmchen’s off-beat piano chords don’t so much drive the rhythm as hang from her line – helped by a recording that places the cello ever so slightly forward. That’s no bad thing. Brahms may have followed Beethoven’s cue in describing these pieces as sonatas for piano and cello, rather than the other way around, but there’s no question that balance can be an issue. Not here; both instruments come through clear and unforced, enabling Hecker to take the lead in shaping a performance of the First Sonata that’s essentially lyrical and poetic. She doesn’t dominate, mind. The booklet-notes make much of the fact that Helmchen and Hecker are husband and wife, but this is real duo playing, with each player stepping
Phantasm with Elizabeth Kenny lute Linn F $,% s %%%
How to describe Dowland’s Lachrimae, or Seaven Teares? Seven pavans for five-part viol consort with lute, each a subtle transformation of the pavan known in its song version as ‘Flow my tears’, would be a start, but hardly does justice to its patient flow of exquisitely drawn and closely summoned emotion. These are not ‘division’ variations but a sequence of new pieces, each related to its companions by the falling motif that opens the song but also by numerous significant cross-references between them. In Laurence Dreyfus’s words, they are ‘an extended process of reflection on a poeticmusical theme’. Phantasm’s performances are totally convincing and absorbing. Drawing richly on their depth, intensity and homogeneity of tone, their acuity to the music’s everactive emotional flux leaves them unafraid to use forceful gestures of articulation and dynamics to make a point. This keen gramophone.co.uk