Sergei PROKOFIEV (1891-1953)
Violin Sonata No. 1 in F Major Op. 80 [27:09]
Violin Sonata No. 2 in D Major Op. 94bis [23:08]
Five Melodies Op. 35bis [11:25]
Levon Ambartsumian (violin)
Anatoly Sheludyakov (piano: Sonata 1 & Melodies),
Alexander Ardakov (piano: Sonata 2)
Recording details not supplied
PHOENIX USA PHCD184 [61:51]
As a young violinist, growing up and studying at the Moscow Tchaikovsky
Conservatory, Levon Ambartsumian witnessed what might be called the
Golden Age of Soviet violin playing. He studied with Leonid Kogan and
Igor Bezrodny who shared First Prize with Julian Sitkovetsky at the
first post-war competition in Prague in 1947. It was also the era of
Gidon Kremer, Victor Tretyakov and Vladimir Spivakov.
It was Kremer who encouraged Ambartsumian to include music composed
by his Russian contemporaries in his recital programmes. The violinist’s
many recordings – some as conductor of, or soloist with, the Moscow
Chamber Orchestra which he founded in 1989 – have often presented
works by Alfred Schnittke, Pēteris Vasks, Alexander Arutiunian,
Mikhail Bronner and Alexander Tchaikovsky. For this disc the Armenian
violinist has reached back further into the Russian repertoire of the
twentieth century, to music for violin and piano by Sergei Prokofiev.
And further back into his own career, too, for the First Sonata was
recorded some years ago, in Moscow. It was the rediscovery of a DAT
tape, thought to be lost, that prompted Ambartsumian to gather together
these past recordings of the First and Second Sonatas alongside a new
recording of the composer’s Five Melodies.
As listeners will no doubt be aware, not all three works began life
as compositions for violin and piano. The Sonata No. 2 in D is a transcription
of the composer’s 1943 Flute Sonata; the new arrangement was premiered
a year later by David Oistrakh and Lev Oborin. The Five Melodies
were originally composed for Russian mezzo-soprano Nina Koshetz, who
premiered the vocalises in New York in March 1921. Four years later,
Prokofiev re-arranged them for violin, with guidance offered by the
Polish violinist Paul Kochanski, who gave the first performance.
The two sonatas conjure diametrically opposed worlds: the first sombre,
stark, driven by anxiety and anger; the second bright, polished and
marked by elegance, wit and ease. The opening of the Andante assai
of the F Major sonata is weighty (the composer’s dynamic marking
is piano). The bare piano octaves and gritty violin G-string
trills inject a looming ominousness, evoking a barely supressed brutality
which is enhanced by the growling oscillations in the piano’s
booming depths. Ambartsumian displays rich power in the double-stopped
oratory, but also melancholy grace in the searching melodic lines. It
is the contrast between this otherworldly elegance and the thunderous
fifths motif in the piano bass which is so troubling. We are offered
some lightness when carillon chords support the violin’s racing
scales, but Ambartsumian’s feathery spinning is eerie rather than
ethereal.
There is nothing ethereal, however, about the spiteful stabbing which
opens the Allegro brusco: instead there is sarcasm, bitterness
and defiance worthy of Shostakovich. Ambartsumian wonderfully digs into
the grain of the string. Then he embarks on a melodic argument which
seems to dare the piano to silence it, its dotted rhythms a bravado
snub, and which eventually breaks free, racing in a toccata-like spinning
line, full of confidence. There is gentleness of gesture too, though,
and when the two instruments do finally come together, the sparkling
trickles of Alexander Ardakov’s beautifully spilling piano accompaniment
seem to inspire the violin to pick them up and carry them aloft to the
stratosphere.
The piano’s running sextuplets in the Andante are a ghostly
thread, above which the violin’s melody searches in beautifully
shaped lyrical excursions. Ambartsumian’s tone is gentle and consoling,
both narrowly centred and emotively resonant. There is a hypnotic otherworldliness
about the repetitions, extensions, oscillations and echoes. The players
effectively balance Stravinskian abstraction and Romantic feeling. The
final movement is exuberant but not exactly merry: there is an edge
of anxiety even when the gestures are at their most perky. Matching
snappy staccato in the piano, Ambartsumian’s pizzicato has real
bite and precision; one senses that the violinist appreciates exactly
what Prokofiev was trying to communicate through his exploitation of
different violin techniques. As the variations unfold, anger returns,
as do the scurrying scales. Paradoxically, the wisps both trouble, with
their restlessness, and console with their delicacy.
The darkness is brushed aside by the fluency and clarity of the first
theme of the D major sonata’s Moderato. Ambartsumian’s
silky tone and the understated elegance of Anatoly Sheludyakov’s
accompaniment immediately assuage the previously evoked apprehension
and anger. The players’ attention to detail is admirable: every
accent, dynamic and comma is observed and judiciously delivered –
and here such accents suggest vivacity rather than viciousness. I could
literally feel the melodiousness relaxing neck and shoulder muscles
that had tensed during the First Sonata! The development section generates
joy and excitement as the lyrical theme and spiky triplet gesture compete
animatedly, before Sheludyakov’s skilfully puts on the brakes
in the transition to the return of the first theme.
The Presto seems to skate and twirl on air, though the scurrying
does not lack for precision and bite, and there is a winning boldness
about the extravagant leaps of the second theme. The contrasts of sweet
lyricism and mercurial flightiness in the slower central section seem
to deliberately tease the listener and when the opening episode is reprised,
the pinging pizzicatos and clanging piano accents issue a cheeky thumb-of-the-nose
as the music races away. Ambartsumian is quite restrained in his use
of vibrato in the Andante. That creates a cleansing freshness,
but also means that when vibrato, and the slightest portamento, are
applied, they make an expressive mark. The improvisatory, jazzy chromaticism
is magically mellifluous, but Sheludyakov nudges us from our reverie
with his sensitively assertive reprise of the theme. One senses that
the players are having a good time in the Allegro con brio!
Which just leaves the Five Melodies. The Andante has
a strong sense of direction and a persuasive pulse, despite the movement’s
somewhat inconclusive close. The duo push forward, propelled by the
piano’s rocking accompaniment, through the Lento which
is definitely not ‘troppo’ but which has melodic
confidence and character – an assurance which explodes exuberantly
at the start of the Animato, ma non Allegro, before it is halted
by more reflective ruminations. I may be wrong (my own edition of the
Melodies is perhaps not definitive or accurate) but I think
that Ambartsumian alters the register of some of the violin’s
lines in the Allegretto leggero, taking them up and down the
octave, as well as stealing some of the piano’s insouciance at
the closing cadence: but, if so, such liberties certainly make for lightness
and light-heartedness. The concluding Andante non troppo showcases
Prokofiev’s lyrical pathos alongside his irreverent vivaciousness:
it is a beautiful summative miniature.
There are many recordings of these work from which to choose. The purchaser
of this recording can be assured of enjoying Russian masterworks delivered
by a master from the Russian tradition.
Claire Seymour
