THE WALKER FUND
PRIZE OF YOUNG CONCERT ARTISTS IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE MUSICAL HERITAGE SOCIETY
presents the recording debut of MARCY ROSEN
CELLIST
RICHARD STRAUSS (1864-1949)
Sonata in F Major, Op. 6
[1] Allegro con brio
[2] Andante ma non troppo
[3] Allegro vivo
EDVARD GRIEG (1843-1907)
Cello Sonata in A Minor, Op. 36
[4] Allegro agitato
[5] Andante molto tranquillo
[6] Allegro. Allegro molte e marcato
Marcy Rosen, Cello
Susan Walters, Piano
It is probably little more than an accident of chronology that the two works on this record happened to be written in the same year: 1883. But there are other, more significant, similarities between the Strauss and Grieg cello sonatas. Both works are familiar to cellists but can hardly be considered "warhorses." Both are by composers not particularly renowned for their chamber music. Both are unique in the catalogs of their creators: neither Grieg nor Strauss wrote another cello sonata, although both men had long careers ahead of them (indeed, Strauss lived on for 66 years). And finally, it must be said that both works betray a certain insecurity with large forms on the part of their makers. In Strauss' case, this was likely because of his youth and relative inexperience, while Grieg's inventive, rhapsodic musical sensibility was never particularly formal. It is for their parts, then, rather than their sums that we value the sonatas. And, measure for measure, the works offer ample rewards for performer and listener -- ingratiating melodies, skillful harmonies, effective writing for piano and cello, and, in both cases, a distinct, sentimental charm that inspires affection. These are pieces that one can love, not merely admire.
music -- he also wrote a piano quartet and a violin sonata -- is juvenilia, but it must be remembered that it is juvenilia by a youth of extraordinary talent, one who had already completed a symphony, a string quartet, two piano trios, several overtures, songs, and choral works. Indeed, when, in the last years of his life, Glenn Gould recorded the early Strauss piano intermezzos, he called them "minor miracles," adding that they were "as refined, as polished, as anything Mendelssohn did in his teenage years. And, with the exception of Mendelssohn, no 16-year-old has ever written with such craft and assurance -- I am not forgetting Mozart."
Richard Strauss began his Cello Sonata in 1880, when he was 15, and finished it three years later. Almost all of Strauss' chamber
The Sonata is cast in three large movements: an Allegro con brio, an Andante ma non troppo, and a concluding Allegro vivo. It is said that the great violinist Joseph Joachim (who inspired Brahms and Schumann to much of their best work) particularly admired the lyrical opening outburst. "With good reason," the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians adds, "for the work, though heavily overlaid with sequential repetitions, has a vitality that has ensured its survival." Grove adds that the Sonata is a "splendid work, in spite of its formal deficiencies." Throughout the Sonata, one finds an abundance of those long, luxurious melodies that became a Strauss trademark (with an emphasis, as ever, on the 6/4 chord in repose). The central movement is particularly haunting -- an extended song
particularly haunting -- an extended song without words.
It may be regretted that Strauss turned so completely from chamber music after the 1880s. There are no important works for small instrumental ensemble from the composer's maturity, and no piano music to speak of written after Strauss turned 21. On the other hand, those intricate, wonderfully crafted passages of chamber music worked into the operas -- the sextet for strings that opens Capriccio, for example, and myriad little "touches" throughout Ariadne auf Naxos -prove that Strauss remained a master of the idiom.
In contrast to Strauss, who was young, untried, and unknown in 1883, Edvard Grieg was 40 years old and Norway's most celebrated composer when he wrote his Cello Sonata (setting it, like the familiar Piano Concerto, in the key of A minor). This was once a very popular work: indeed, Pablo Casals and Harold Bauer played it more than 100 times throughout Europe in the first decades of this century. In her important study, The Cello, Elizabeth Cowling places the reason for the Sonata's disappearance from the repertoire squarely on the finale.
"Unfortunately the third movement is not up to the level of the first two, being far too repetitious," she wrote. "It is a long sonata
form without sufficient material to make it interesting .... Is there any reason why either the first or the second movement might not be played alone on a program? The beauty of them deserves some performance."
While many listeners will find more to admire in the finale than Ms. Cowling does, few would argue that the Sonata makes its strongest impression in the first two movements, which would indeed stand well on their own (as distinctly Griegian Fantasiestucke, perhaps, or the Norwegian equivalent). The opening Allegro agitato is impetuous and exciting, and the gentle Andante molto tranquillo provides a welcome -- and gracefully melodic - respite. And the finale, an Allegro leading into an Allegro molte e marcato, is, no doubt, rather repetitive; but the theme is a sturdy one and it holds the listener's attention for most of its dozen minutes.
If Grieg's large works -- the piano concerto, the three violin sonatas, this cello sonata -sometimes seem to lack formal coherence, few would sacrifice the wealth of spontaneous melodic invention that informs them, which startles us again and again with its richness. While neither the Strauss nor the Grieg cello sonata is without flaws, both are engaging additions to the repertoire, one-of-a-kind representations of important composers in an unfamiliar idiom. We would be the poorer
without them.
Tim Page
Tim Page is the chief classical music critic for Newsday and the host of a radio program on WNYC-FM. His books include The Glenn Could Reader (1985) and Selected Letters of Virgil Thomson (1988). He is a faculty member of The Juilliard School.
Marcy Rosen is recognized as one of today's most important young American cellists. Miss Rosen first appeared as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the age of 18. She has since soloed with the Dallas Symphony, the Phoenix Symphony, the Caramoor Festival Orchestra, the Brandenburg Ensemble, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and the Jupiter Symphony.
As a winner of the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in 1986, Marcy Rosen made her New York recital debut in the Young Concert Artists Series at the 92nd Street Y and was booked in concerts throughout the US for three seasons. Her honors include the Mortimer Levitt Career Development Award for Women Artists, which sponsored her debut, and the Walker Fund Prize, which sponsored this debut recording. Miss Rosen made her first concert tour of Japan in 1988. In 1989 she performed her first European recital tour of Switzerland, France, and Italy.
A highly regarded chamber music player, Miss Rosen is a founding member of the Mendelssohn String Quartet, and is Co-Artistic Director of the Eastern Shore Chamber Music Festival. She has performed at the Santa Fe Festival, the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, and the Marlboro Music Festival, on seven national "Musicians from Marlboro" tours, at the Madeira Bach Festival in Portugal, the International Music Festival in Sofia, Bulgaria, the International Musicians Seminar in Cornwall, England, and the Lockenhaus Festival in Austria.
Miss Rosen received the Mischa Schneider Memorial Award from The Walter W. Naumburg Foundation in 1986, First Prize in the Washington International Competition for Strings, First Prize in the Fresno Young Artist Competition, and the G.B. Dealey Award. Born in Phoenix, Arizona, Miss Rosen's teachers included Gordon Epperson, Orlando Cole, Marcus Adeney, Felix Galimir, Karen Tuttle, and Sandor Vegh. She is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music.
Susan Walters was born in Fort Worth, Texas, and gave her first public recital at the age of six; at seven she appeared as soloist with the University of Mississippi Symphony, performing the Haydn Concerto in D major. She then played many recitals in the southeastern United States and made her first recording at the age of 11. Ms. Walters has
recording at the age of 11. Ms. Walters has since performed with more than 20 symphony orchestras and in recitals throughout the US. Her special love is chamber music, and in 1988 she founded the Golden Isles Chamber Music Festival on the coastal islands of Georgia. Ms. Walters studied at the Curtis Institute of Music (where she was accepted at the age of ten) and earned a Master's Degree from the Mannes College of Music. Her teachers have included Ozan Marsh, Seymour Lipkin, and Edward Aldwell. Ms. Walters resides in New York City with her husband, pianist Jeffrey Moore.
Young Concert Artists, Inc. is a nonprofit organization, founded in 1961 by Susan Wadsworth, dedicated to discovering and developing the careers of extraordinary young musicians. The Mortimer Levitt Library of Young Concert Artists is a collection of recording debuts sponsored through YCA.
It includes the debuts of violinist Ani Kavafian (MHS 3760M-LP), pianist Stephanie Brown (MHS 4200M-LP), pianist Daniel Adni (MHS 4512XLP), flutist Marya Martin (MHS 4666KLP), trumpeter Stephen Burns (MHS 11035KCD), violinist Daniel Phillips (MHS 7206A-LP), the Mendelssohn String Quartet (MMD 60102A-CD), cellist Carter Brey (MHS 7502W-LP), and violinist Sung-Ju Lee (MHS 7400L-LP), along with the forthcoming debut of clarinetist Daniel McKelway performing Brahms' two Clarinet Sonatas.
