Ernő Dohnányi: Sonata for Violin and Piano; Janáček: Sonata for Violin and Piano; Tchaikovsky: Souvenir d’un lieu cher; Saint-Saëns: Introduction et Rondo Capriccioso. Bruno Monteiro, violin; João Paulo Santos, piano. Et’cetera Records. $15.
Songs: Spirit of Hope. Shira Karmon, soprano; Paul Gulda, piano. Gramola. $19.50.
The piano is often an accompanist but never a mere accompanist when played with sensitivity – and when performers are sensitive not only to their own musical roles but also to the piano’s supporting one. The balance of violin and piano in sonatas does vary widely and is ultimately determined by the composer, but performers have wide latitude for exploring their partnership and communicating the music through balance, dominance of one player or the other, or a fluid relationship. Fluidity is the dominant impression of Bruno Monteiro and João Paulo Santos on a new Et’cetera Records CD featuring four late-Romantic works that handle the violin/piano duality very differently while remaining within their time period’s emotional landscape. Dohnányi’s C-sharp minor sonata, his most significant chamber work for violin and piano, is post-Romantic by date (1912) but thoroughly Romantic in sensibility. The three-movement work is interestingly structured – the first movement is essentially completed in the finale – and requires moods ranging from the anxious and unsettled to the serene and lyrical. It also requires finding emotional connection without a slow movement – it does not have one. Monteiro and Santos clearly feel the ways in which the music strives for warmth despite this lack: the first Allegro is marked appassionato and the second ma von tenerezza. The violin/piano interplay is well-balanced throughout and always nuanced. The same is true of the reading of Janáček’s sonata, which dates to about the same time period as Dohnányi’s (1914-1922). Here the canvas is more troubled – the composer was well aware that he was creating during wartime – and there is greater contrast between the violin and piano lines: in the second of the four movements, for example, there is a fairly bright tinkling effect in the piano beneath a broadly conceived lyrical violin portion, the instruments not so much in competition as they are proceeding on different paths that eventually connect. This sonata has a more-modern sound than Dohnányi’s, especially in the third movement (originally planned as the finale), and the work actually ends with an Adagio that makes the contrast between instruments quite clear: the piano’s sustained material is continually interrupted by violin urgency, and it is only toward the end that the instruments are in accord. Janáček (1854-1928) was a full generation older than Dohnányi (1877-1960), but his work has a more-modern feel about it thanks to its broken melodies, agitation and short rhythmic figures. Monteiro and Santos handle all these elements with understanding and sensitivity, and the sonata here emerges with a cohesiveness that it does not always seem to possess. Monteiro and Santos also offer a lovely version of Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir d’un lieu cher, an 1878 work whose first-movement Méditation was originally planned as the slow movement of the violin concerto, until Tchaikovsky decided it was too slight for that purpose. The charming Souvenir, dedicated to the “dear place” to which its title refers (Brailivo in Ukraine), starts as a quiet piano solo and gains in expressiveness, if not volume, when the violin joins the keyboard. Monteiro and Santos beautifully capture the gentle wistfulness of the first movement, the strongly contrasted and instrumentally rather competitive Scherzo, and the rocking motion of the warm, almost berceuse-like concluding Mélodie, producing a performance pervaded by just the sort of pleasant memories that Tchaikovsky had and presumably wanted to evoke in listeners. Souvenir d’un lieu cher is so uncomplicatedly lovely that it is surprising it is not heard more often. On the other hand, Saint-Saëns’ 1863 Introduction et Rondo Capriccioso is heard very frequently indeed, and it makes a delightful conclusion to this recording. This work too was originally planned for a violin concerto – the composer’s first – but was so successful when performed on its own that Saint-Saëns had it published separately. Here the instrumental juxtaposition strongly favors the violin – no surprise given the original plan for the work – and Monteiro makes the most of the spotlight, which is even brighter in the violin-and-piano arrangement (by Bizet) than in the original violin-and-orchestra scoring. Santos by no means fades into the background here, but he very rightly allows Monteiro to be front-and-center throughout and provides effective backup that, if anything, showcases the violin to an even greater extent. This performance sounds as if Monteiro and Santos, far from struggling in any way with the virtuosic demands of the piece, were tossing it hither and thither and simply having fun with it – resulting in a reading that is in fact great fun to hear from start to finish.
Matters of balance and expressivity are different when the piano is supporting or melded with the human voice rather than a nonvocal instrument. Here too, however, the relationship is a highly varied and variable one, with the prominence typically accorded to the voice but with keyboard participation sometimes accentuating the words, sometimes commenting on them, sometimes even contradicting them. The variegated songs on a centuries-spanning Gramola CD titled “Spirit of Hope” show this clearly. The composers here range from the exceptionally well-known to the virtually unknown, and the atmosphere of the songs varies widely as well, the disc’s overall title being barely sufficient to hold everything together. What does unite these disparate works is the sensitivity with which they are presented by soprano Shira Karmon and pianist Paul Gulda – with three of Gulda’s own pieces included within the total of 25. Topic focus aside, there are some fascinating musical matters here, such as Beethoven’s two settings of An die Hoffnung – the comparatively straightforward Op. 32 and the more operatic Op. 94, which uses more of the text by Christoph August Tiedge. Karmon’s vocal delivery of the two versions respects their differences, while Gulda’s support in both cases underlines, in its turn, words that move through uncertainty and questioning to eventual comfort in hope. Other familiar composers here include Mozart (Die ihr des unermesslichen Weltalls, the first of six movements from Eine kleine deutsche Kantate, K. 619), Schoenberg (Brettl-Lieder No. 2: Einfältiges Lied), and Berg (an arrangement of Hier ist Friede, Op. 4, No. 5). The composers’ very different styles and concerns are brought into comparable focus both by Karmon’s attentive handling of the words and by Gulda’s systematic attention to the keyboard parts. The disc as a whole bears the very personal stamp of the performers, as is clear from the arrangement of the tracks, which are not chronological, not arranged by any particular handling of the overarching topic, and not even grouped clearly at all times: the two Beethoven settings are separated by Trost (1846) by Salomon Sulzer (1804-1880), and the first Gulda composition – the very intense and impressive Strife – is separated from his other two entries by I Am a Simple Man by Marwan Abado (born 1967). The good thing about this rather helter-skelter arrangement is that it allows for listeners’ differing reactions to the material as well as the presentation. The two numbers by Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990), for example, date to very different times in Bernstein’s compositional career: So Pretty to 1968 and Silhouette (Galilee) to 1951; and they appear between the Berg entry and Gulda’s Strife. The result of all this is a voice-and-piano journey toward hope rather than to it, with occasional reminders of just how difficult it can sometimes be to retain hope and express it (8 Jewish Folk Songs from 1947 by Szymon Laks [1901-1983]). Unsurprisingly, the CD is by and large voice-dominated, but the crucial piano elements are presented with considerable skill and understanding throughout, resulting in an effective collaborative recording that showcases the intimate relationship, sustained over many years, between the keyboard and its partner in expression.
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