The striking cover
painting of cellist Steven Honigberg
by Robert Liberace (and executed in
2003) shows the musician elegantly dishevelled,
the burnish of his cello’s varnish glamorously
mimicked in the draped curtain behind.
Recital over, he stands before us, alert
but tired but with his bow cockily held
between his finger and trouser belt.
It’s a suitable riposte to Augustus
John’s Suggia portrait; less the cellist
as exemplar of gorgeous perfection,
more as the rumpled man of action, concert
over.
He has taken on, with
his pianist wife, a Chopin recital programme
with the Sonata as the lynchpin and
some august cellist predecessors as
editors or transcribers in the shorter
works and arrangements. These latter
are engagingly played. The Duo does
what it can for Glazunov’s awkward sounding
arrangement of the Op.10 No.6 Etude,
but the companion Etude is better and
rather more idiomatic though still afflicted
with a certain dutifulness. Neither
of these arrangements, by the way, forms
part of Chopiniana or Les
Sylphides. In the C sharp minor
Nocturne we can contrast the Honigbergs
with the original transcriber Piatigorsky,
who recorded it in the 1930s with Ivor
Newton. The former are attractively
emotive and manage to heighten the temperature,
but when one turns to Piatigorsky we
hear phrasing that seems to phrase across
the bar lines and, at almost the same
tempo as the modern duo, to inflect
with the supreme legato of a singer.
In the Nocturne most associated with
Feuermann, the E flat major (the Popper/Feuermann
to be exact), the Honigberg Duo are
slightly slower than the razor sharp,
colouristically dazzling Feuermann.
The bigger pieces, the Introduction
and Polonaise Brillante and the Meyerbeer
Duo, are persuasively played.
The Sonata hasn’t captured
the imagination of the world’s cellists
as it might and is susceptible to a
kind of overwrought drama that does
it no favours. It simply can’t sustain
an all-out metric mauling (see Maisky/Argerich)
but does respond to control of architecture
and dynamics. This is particularly true,
of course, of the long first movement.
There were moments when this performance
didn’t quite elide the more discursive
moments there, but the Scherzo is incisive
and the Largo quite unself-regarding
with a good, alertly played and sensitively
argued finale. The duo proves itself
clear-eared chamber partners.
Sonics are good and
the booklet well produced and the duo
does itself justice in this effective
release.
Jonathan Woolf
Steven Honigberg (cello) 