As long as you don’t conflate Fitelberg with his famous championing
of the slightly younger Szymanowski, you won’t be disappointed
by this disc. If, however, you expect that, due to their friendship,
some of the latter’s compositional evocation might have infiltrated
the former’s writing, you will be searching in vain. A look
at the dates of composition will alert one to the reality, which
is that Fitelberg, who was an adept violinist, but is now a
forgotten composer, wrote these violin pieces well before such
an influence could become apparent, if indeed it was ever likely
to become so.
The two violin sonatas were written seven years apart. The First
(1894) is unpublished and 54 bars of the exposition are missing
in the score, and have been reconstructed by Romuald Twardowski.
Given that Fitelberg was only fifteen when he wrote it, one
shouldn’t expect too much. It’s a well constructed work, adeptly
written for his own instrument, and not neglectful of a strong
piano writing – a feature that is to emerge more forcefully
still in the later sonata. The ethos is vaguely Wieniawski-Sarasate,
but far less virtuosic than either, and more amiable. There
are hints too of Franck in the central movement, which has an
ardent expressive quality. The finale is vital and replete with
a fair amount of panache, though the B section rather stops
things in their tracks for a while.
The Second Sonata followed in 1901. Again it’s in three movements,
and was dedicated to Natalia Neuhaus, with whom Fitelberg had
a child. She was the sister of Henryk Neuhaus, and cousin of
Szymanowski, which is how Fitelberg came to meet the composer
whose music he was so splendidly to promote. This is an obviously
more mature work, though once again it owes something to Franck,
not least in the tempestuous and difficult writing for the piano,
very well surmounted here by Soyeon Lim. Its late-Romantic ethos
is pervasive, both in turbulence and lyricism.
The other works are a mixed bunch. The Berceuse is a Slavic
lullaby whilst the Mazurka is an engagingly virile affair, though
I can imagine its opening paragraphs being dispatched with rather
greater panache than they are here. This is the extent of the
authentic violin and piano works, so we also have the Chanson
triste which is for piano solo and the Recitative,
which has been arranged from its clarinet original to violin
by the soloist here, Andrzej Gebski. It was written during the
composer’s seven year sojourn in Russia and is a bipartite,
generously lyrical effusion.
Acte Préalable’s recordings are generally enjoyable, well recorded,
excellently annotated, and frequently feature novelties from
the Polish repertory, as here. Both Gebski and Lim play highly
capably, and do much to bring this unpretentious, youthful music
to life.
Jonathan Woolf
.
Andrzej Gebski (violin) 
