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Recent CDs by the new kids on the string-music block
bring a couple of immediate responses. First, those of us with a
passion for this music have nothing to worry about. The future appears
to be in good hands (and bow arms). Second, Friedrich Nietzsche’s
contention that there are two kinds of art, and artists, Apollonian
and Dionysian, retains the same relevance at the dawn of the 21st
century that it had when he defined it, in the middle of the 19th
century. On recorded evidence, new artists hitting today’s string
scene are easily categorizable as one or the other. There are purveyors
of techniques so accomplished and interpretations so lofty that
they exude an Olympian, otherworldly coolness that can, on its own
elevated terms, be quite transporting (the Apollonians); and others
who, as adept at their instruments, hit the repertoire like forces
of nature and all but set scores ablaze (the Dionysians).
For me, Emmanuelle Bertrand, a young French
cellist whose Harmonia Mundi CD (HMN 911699) is devoted solely to
20th-century works for solo cello, holds pride of place among the
latter. Her technique is so assured, her grasp of the music so thoroughly
thought out, and her sense of the shape of a work so consummate
and tasteful that you might, for a moment, think her Apollonian.
But her expression—the full range of which can be heard in her astonishing
traversal of Hans Werner Henze’s 1949 Sérénade—is
shot through with what another philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard,
called "thoughts that wound from behind." While its surfaces
are immaculate, there’s a barely contained ferocity throughout the
piece, and, in the weird Tango, a patent dance with the devil.
The concluding Toccata of George Crumb’s Sonate
and, even more, the fire-breathing Capriccio of György Ligeti’s
Sonate also take no prisoners, and leave no doubt that this is a
young artist who responds to the most ferocious technical challenges
in kind. But notice, as you listen in wonder, that not only is every
note clear, individualized, and as superbly voiced as a scale from
a Marchesi voice pupil, it has both a purpose and a highly precise
place in the grand scheme of things. The pieces that frame her program—Henri
Dutilleux’s supple Trois strophes sur le nom de Sacher, which
she prepared with the composer and lived with for a decade before
recording, and Nicolas Bacri’s Suite No. 4, dedicated to her—trade
in equal parts sensitivity and sensibility, and, as Bertrand says
in her accompanying note, venture to "talk" with the cello.
The immaculate yet entirely natural acoustics of the recording,
the glory of Harmonia Mundi’s New Interpreters series, is
no less than this singular artist deserves.
Two other young cellists seem destined for prominent
careers but, at least on CD, stake their claims with more standard
repertoire. The current toast of the New York musical establishment
and American music press, 18-year-old Alisa Weilerstein is
making her recording debut with a recital disc, accompanied by her
mother, pianist Vivian Hornik Weilerstein. In fact made in London
nearly three years ago, the recording shows off the vibrant, robust
tone and generosity of musical spirit cited by critics at her recent
Weill Recital Hall debut. The CD is still a work in progress in
the EMI Classics Debut series (5-73498-2), but her technical virtuosity
is established from the start, with Paganini’s "Variations
on One String on a Theme by Rossini," which has some truly
jaw-slackening moments
for the listener. Her musicianship is thoughtful throughout, particularly
in works as challenging from the interpretive standpoint as Janácek’s
Pohádka. Still,
there’s often more edge on the sound she elicits from her Matteo
Goffriller cello than mere interpretive choice would account for,
and it’s hard to see how EMI’s long-delayed release of this CD properly
memorializes an artist who has clearly made significant artistic
advances since. The hard truth is that, despite the consistently
fine playing, there’s nothing on this CD that isn’t available in
better recordings elsewhere, making this a fans-only souvenir from
a perilously early date in Weilerstein’s career.
Three items that appear on both Weilerstein’s program
and that of her fellow EMI artist (and age contemporary) Korean
cellist Han-Na Chang provide telling comparisons. Fauré’s
Après un rêve,
Saint-Saëns’ “The Swan” (also the title of Chang’s EMI CD [5-57052-2]),
and Dvorák’s “Silent Woods” reveal in Chang’s playing both a richer,
more refined tone and a considerably greater
rhythmic freedom, notable assets in this well-known fare. Chang’s
disc peaks with its longest number, Respighi’s Adagio con variazione,
which gives glorious testimony to her ability to lend indelible
characterization to smaller gestures while providing the kind of
inner propulsion that allows her to shape music meaningfully and
satisfyingly. What I missed in this CD was the enormous yet focused
energy that enlivened the one live performance of hers that I’ve
heard. But that—her real Dionysian asset—was not likely to emerge
on a CD, with the Philharmonia Orchestra, led by Leonard Slatkin
the most restrained of American conductors. The arrangements, too,
tend to obscure one of the most interesting, individual string sounds
of the day behind a veritable veil of viscous, "beautiful"
sonorities.
While young violinists continue, against all odds,
to emerge onto a scene that already appears overcrowded, none of
them seems likely to challenge the hegemony of Russians Maxim Vengerov
and Vadim Repin, and, among Americans, the remarkable Hilary Hahn.
Still, there are some interesting artists among them who may yet
make significant careers.
Three appear in Harmonia Mundi’s New Interpreters
series. Most recently, David Grimal weighed in with the interesting
pairing of César Franck’s and Richard Strauss’ sonatas (on
HMN 911681) performed on the "ex-Roederer" Stradivari
of 1710. There is technical assurance throughout and a command of
form, but to my taste, Grimal still fails to put a personal stamp
on these pieces.
Ukrainian Graf Mourja (HMN 911701), playing
a Testore violin, emerges an even stronger player, with a yet more
interesting program (Ravel’s Tzigane and Sonata, Schnittke’s
Sonata No. 1, and Szymanowski’s Notturno e Tarantella), but
there’s an intrusive sense of this powerful young musician making
musical points more than making music.
 
My vote for "most likely to succeed" among
this group is German violinist Isabelle Faust, who performs
an all-Bartók recital (HMN 911702) on the "Sleeping
Beauty" Stradivari of 1704. Gramophone named Faust its
Young Artist of the Year for her first CD of Bartók sonatas
(HMN 911623) in 1997, and the new CD, which contains the Second
Sonata, the First and Second Rhapsodies, and the Popular Romanian
Dances, represents a step beyond that impressive debut. There’s
beauty aplenty here, but none of it sleeping. Faust doesn’t merely
revel in the endless technical challenges but greets them, open-armed,
for the communicative possibilities they offer. This truly Dionysian
Faust’s bargain with the devil is that she will play everything
she approaches as though her life depends on it (and in fact her
career might), and with the force of her whole being. Her even newer
recording of the three Schumann sonatas (CPO 999-597-2) evinces
the same trenchant commitment to the music and an astonishing freshness
of approach throughout.
After decades of neglect, the Elgar Sonata seems to
be on the minds, programs, and CDs of a number of young violinists
these days. It receives two lovely readings, both much worth investigating,
by two of the brightest lights on the contemporary English scene.
Tasmin Little mines it for its emotional intimacy, reserving
more fiery playing for its companion piece on the CD, Arnold Bax’s
Second Sonata (Global Music Network GMNC0113). Daniel Hope,
another darling of the British press who seems to have come by his
early fame honestly, couples it with the Walton Sonata and Gerald
Finzi’s Elegy in F for Nimbus (NI56666). His reading seems gauged
more toward maximizing the piece’s manifest beauties, but he’s not
above showing off.
While both of these violinists are clearly artists
to watch, their recordings of the Elgar are necessarily overshadowed
by relatively recent interpretations by two of the greatest violinists
of our time: the Apollonian Midori, for Sony Classical (63331),
and the Dionysian Vengerov,
live (to understate the case) in his new, and final, recording for
Teldec (4509-96300-2, coupled with the Dvorák Concerto).
 
For my money, the label to watch is Black Box. The
British newcomer publishes a lot of string music, and I’ve found
its CDs of the Prokofiev Works for Cello and Piano (BBM 1027),
with the vastly under-appreciated Raphael Wallfisch, and
Transformations: 20th-Century Works for Violin and Piano (BBM
1025), with the astonishing, febrile Russian violinist Roman
Mints, recordings to live with. I’ve played them far more times
than mere critical listening requires.
Black Box’s latest find is the 14-year-old Kazakh
violinist Amir. In the CD Amir (BBM 1042), this enthralling
young dynamo leads with the bon-bons one expects in a debut disc,
played with a pungency and verve that could come only from a Dionysian
love of making music for the sheer, ecstatic pleasure of it. (The
Vieuxtemps Tarantella, played with a white heat, is lift-you-out-of-your-chair
stuff.) But as things move closer to home, with Kazakstan composer
Evgeniy Brusilovski’s aptly entitled The Wild Horse—as well
as the Folk Dances of Polish composer Grazyna Bacewicz and
the Shostakovich Duets, both performed with Amir’s uncle and teacher,
Marat Bisengaliev—the music making begins to exhibit a depth beyond
Amir’s age, as well as some bona-fide emotional profundity. More,
please.
Finally, another Four Seasons? No, two (or
is it eight?). For EMI (5-57015-2), the estimable Korean violinist
Kyung-Wha Chung dispatches a ravishingly beautiful but musically
pointless version the catalog hardly needed. At the other interpretive
extreme, Baroque violinist Giuliano Carmignola is the soloist
in a new Sony Classical CD (SK 51352) of the Seasons that
participates in the latest Vivaldi "revival"—this one
geared toward a renewed appreciation of the Venetian master as the
enormously important and influential (and tirelessly weird) composer
he actually was. Andrea Marcon’s Venice Baroque Orchestra is one
of the leading ensembles in this bold new venture, and in Carmignola
it has the perfect soloist, one who leaps tall technical hurdles
in a single bound, plays the solos with an originality that suggests
that the piece was written for this recording session, and brings
new sonorities and meanings to music that has, to put it mildly,
been "discovered"; although, like the pyramids or Taj
Mahal, ever-rewarding of a visit. If an entirely individual Four
Seasons weren’t enough—for this one is as earthily Italian as
music making gets—the crew throws in three previously unrecorded
violin concertos of imagination-defying difficulty and brings them
off with comparable flourish. With Vivaldi, there does appear to
be a change in the weather.
Excerpted
from Strings
magazine, July 2001, No. 95
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