(++++) VOICES OF THE VIOLIN

Mozart: Violin Concertos Nos. 1-5; Adagio in E, KV 261; Rondo in C, KV 373. Gil Shaham, violin; SWR Symphonieorchester conducted by Nicholas McGegan. SWR Classic. $26.99 (2 CDs).

Mozart: Sonatas for Violin and Piano, K. 301-306. Peter Sheppard Skærved, violin; Daniel-Ben Pienaar, piano. Athene. $18.99.

Arthur Gottschalk: Sonata for Violin and Piano; Karl Blench: Sonata “in D” for Violin and Piano; Erberk Eryilmaz: Insistent Music. Duo Dramatique (Dominika Dancewicz, violin; Donald Doucet, piano). Navona. $10.

Grażyna Bacewicz: Concerto for String Orchestra; Maddalena Casulana: Non può il mio cuore; Barbara Strozzi: Lagrime mie; Akenya Seymour: Fear the Lamb; Liz Knowles and Elizabeth Moore: Treehouse / Jog for John #2 / Fore Street. Palaver Strings. Azica. $16.99.

     The exceptional expressive potential of strings tends to intrigue composers even when they are not especially drawn to a string-instrument focus. That was the case with Mozart, who played strings capably but was much more interested in and committed to the piano both in performance and compositionally. Nevertheless, Mozart’s works for strings have a firm place in the repertoire by virtue of – well, their virtues, which include Mozart’s usual exceptional melodic sense and the sheer beauty (as well as skill) with which he mingles and contrasts string voices with those of other instruments. Beauty of sound is paramount in the set of violin concertos offered by Gil Shaham and the SWR Symphonieorchester under Nicholas McGegan on a two-CD release from SWR Classic. Shaham does not try to make the concertos more virtuosic than they are, playing them with an affecting simplicity that allows the beauties of their themes to shine forth and their exceptionally well-designed alternation of focus between solo and tutti passages to achieve maximum effect. These are all lovely works, certainly more superficial emotionally than many of the piano concertos but exceptionally engaging nevertheless. They are the works of a teenager – a remarkable one, to be sure, but a teenager nevertheless – the last of them having been completed a month before Mozart’s 20^th birthday. And like a great deal of Mozart’s music from the mid-1770s, the concertos take a formulaic approach that Mozart makes his own through his lithe themes and the skill with which he interweaves them among instruments. The slow movements are all in sonata form, but the lyricism and frequent complexity of their thematic material makes them sound quite different from each other. The finales, all marked Rondeau except in Concerto No. 1, are far more varied than rondos would later become, each being thoroughly distinct from the others. Shaham is particularly skilled at differentiating similarly organized movements from each other, highlighting differences even while he and McGegan present the concertos – and the two related movements that are also included here – with a sure sense of form and of the style of Mozart’s time. The overall feeling communicated by these performances is one of pleasantness: it is simply a genuine pleasure to hear such well-made music played in such a well-calculated, delightfully flowing manner.

     Mozart’s comparative lack of intense focus on the violin extends to some of his sonatas as well. The sonatas K. 301-306, known collectively as the “Palatine” sonatas because of their dedication to Countess Elizabeth Auguste, Electress of Palatine and Bavaria, were actually presented by Mozart as sonatas for piano with violin. This was a not-uncommon form in 1778, when these sonatas were written, and it does not indicate that the piano dominates the violin to a significant degree – indeed, what it affirms is that matters are not the other way around, with the violin bearing the brunt of most of the material. Like the violin concertos in their solo-tutti balance, these six sonatas are all strongly focused on equality, with the piano and violin playing as partners and comrades, never as competitors. Peter Sheppard Skærved and Daniel-Ben Pienaar, who are frequent collaborators even though they have not made a recording together before, are ideally matched in presenting these works on a new Athene CD. Neither tries to outdo the other, and neither tries to make these comparatively slight works greater than they are. The sonatas bear the numbers 18-23 in Mozart’s violin-and-piano sequence, which is not the clearest portion of his catalogue. The first five are in two movements – again, a form in favor at the time these pieces were written – and only the sixth, No. 23, K. 306, is a three-movement work. It is also the longest and most substantial of the group, but no deeper emotionally than the others. In many ways, the outlier among these sonatas is No. 21, K. 304, which is in E minor and is the only minor-key sonata that Mozart ever composed for the violin-and-piano combination. Again, though, the minor key does not point to any particular profundity of thought or emotion, as it would later do in the piano concertos – here it is simply a different way for Mozart to color the music for a pleasing effect. These are intimate works pervaded by a sense of cordiality between the players – a sense of which Skærved and Pienaar are fully aware, and of which they take full advantage in these warm, congenial performances.

     Fast-forward to much more recent times and, not surprisingly, the violin-and-piano duality is quite different. A (+++) Navona CD featuring Dominika Dancewicz and Donald Doucet makes that abundantly clear in the presentation of three works that were all written as recently as 2019. The sonatas by Gottschalk and Blench were both commissioned by Dancewicz and Doucet (hence the strong use of the pitch D in Gottschalk’s work and the “in D” in quotation marks in Blench’s title), and both set the instruments nicely against each other. Gottschalk’s work has strong jazz influences and quotes, in modified form, several works of jazz; but it is the third and final movement, using a tune created by Gottschalk himself, that makes the strongest impression in its irregular rhythms and the clever ways the composer requires the performers to toss phrases back and forth. Blench’s sonata contains four movements; its moods are more varied and its harmonic language more dissonant than in Gottschalk’s sonata. Blench’s movement titles make his musical notions (if not notations) abundantly clear: “Parody,” “Obscenity,” “Serenity” and “Finality.” A little of the first two movements (the first of which contains a Vaughan Williams parody) goes a long way – these are the sorts of movements that are enjoyable to hear once but have little staying power, because of the obviousness of their approach (for example, the intense pounding piano and fiddle-style double stops in the second movement are scarcely obscene, but do not wear very well). The third movement is quiet, its intent of respite quite obvious. The finale, the shortest of the four movements, is the most interesting, combining elements of the other movements to good effect. This is insistent music – but it is the last work on the disc that is actually called Insistent Music, and it too was commissioned by these performers. Erberk Eryilmaz, here as in many other works, shows a fine ear for the folk music and playing styles of Eastern Europe. Melodies tumble over each other, with the piano’s percussive nature strongly emphasized, mingled with the violin’s ability to generate speedily delivered folkloric material along with drones, harmonics and other sounds that would not be out of place in an impromptu outdoor setting. A more-lyrical section with “weeping” violin effects above individual piano notes eventually gives way to a sweeping and hectic conclusion that makes up in intensity what it lacks in profundity. These are pieces that contemporary violinists and pianists may well want to consider for their own recitals – the Eryilmaz certainly makes a fine encore – although the disc as a whole is less trenchant than it is “dramatique.”

     Fiddling is also present on an interesting (+++) Azica release featuring Palaver Strings, a Maine-based string ensemble. This CD concludes with three tunes by Liz Knowles (born 1971) and Elizabeth Moore (born 1989), two of the pieces paying tribute to Irish forms in much the way that Eryilmaz acknowledges Eastern European folk idioms. The works are pleasant enough, and the playing warm enough, but other material on the disc is more substantial. In particular, Concerto for String Orchestra (1948) by Grażyna Bacewicz (1909-1969) is a well-proportioned three-movement work, impressive in its contrast between solo and small-group playing on the one hand, and the full ensemble on the other. The rather Stravinskian concluding Vivo shows especially fine command of orchestral writing. The remaining pieces on the CD are very different from each other and hail from completely different eras, making the disc a somewhat jarring listening experience despite the ensemble’s fine playing throughout. Like the Knowles/Moore work, Fear the Lamb by Akenya Seymour (born 1992) is a contemporary piece; unlike Knowles and Moore, Seymour writes for a specific political purpose, intending her three movements as a tribute to Emmett Till. Listeners who share her interest and take the time to find out what the piece is about and what its movements are intended to reflect will get considerably more from this work than will anyone coming to it simply as music without an agenda. The other pieces here are arrangements of much, much older material. Non può il mio cuore is by Maddalena Casulana (c. 1544-1590), and Lagrime mie was written by Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677). Casulana’s work is a brief madrigal about love and death, heard here in an instrumental arrangement; Strozzi’s considerably longer madrigal sets a love poem bemoaning separation from the singer’s beloved – here it features mezzo-soprano Sophie Michaux with the string ensemble. It is the fine, very warm playing of the strings throughout the disc that is the main attraction of this release, although the Bacewicz concerto on its own is certainly deserving of more-frequent performance.