Brilliant continues
to license some interesting material
and to harness it, often, in comprehensive
box sets. This Grieg chamber music collection
has picked up on Dorian, Olympia and
CRD issues and the results are rather
mixed though seldom less than attractive.
The Violin Sonatas are played by the
Czech pairing of Ivan Zenatý
and Antonin Kubalek and I have to say
that unfortunately theirs are the weakest
performances in the set. I’ve heard
good things about Zenatý but
here he seems inhibited, particularly
in the C minor. His rather steely tone
and fast vibrato, coupled with a penchant
for slow tempi and etiolated phrasing
are not to these works’ advantage. For
all the delicacy he and Kubalek cultivate
(and they do – there’s a great deal
of sensitivity and pliancy) there are
moments of torpor – in the first movement
of the C minor – and places, such as
the Allegro con brio of the First Sonata,
when he is simply too slow. Listen to
Grumiaux or to Shumsky and you will
hear far greater elasticity, drive and
use of colouristic and expressive devices.
The Cohen/Vignoles
recording of the Cello Sonata is much
better; it’s alert, decisive, and catches
the agitato instruction very well. The
recording is well balanced and attractive
and captures Vignoles’ excellently weighted
chording in the second movement as well
as it does the rather Piano Concerto
style writing at the conclusion of the
First. Perhaps the most intriguing disc
is devoted to the Quartets – the familiar
G minor and the much less familiar (and
incomplete) F major in this completion
by his colleague and friend Julius Röntgen.
The acoustic accorded the Raphael Quartet
is arresting; their opening chords leap
out in the Second Quartet. The extant
parts are the first two movements whilst
the last two were left in sketch form
only. Big, broad and lyrical with melodies
spun seemingly across bar lines there
are some refreshing things in the first
movement as indeed there are in the
flighty, fighting Scherzo – with its
beautiful lyrical trio section. Röntgen
filled in Grieg’s sketches for the Andante
adding a few passages where the sketches
are absent but in the finale he has
indulged in some wholesale reworking,
adapting older sketches intended for,
but never used in, the First Quartet.
Grieg’s hand can most seen in the Adagio
– agitated in places, thinning to lone
voices in others. The First Quartet
receives a perfectly acceptable performance
but turn to the classic Budapest Quartet
reading from 1937 and you can hear what
real rhythmic incision and tumultuous
romantic tonal variety can do with this
work. The Raphael are not ungenerous,
exactly, but they don’t really plumb
the depths. There are a couple of bonuses;
a ‘prentice work from his Leipzig days
- a Fugue for Quartet (not the kind
of thing one would expect from him)
but expert enough and an Andante con
moto for Piano Trio, all that survives
of a projected Trio
The notes cover the
compositional ground very adeptly but
the performances are rather variable.
Jonathan Woolf
Robert Cohen (cello)