20th Century: The American Scene
Aaron COPLAND (1900-1990)
Violin Sonata (1943) [19:34]
Elliott CARTER (1908-2012)
Four Lauds for solo violin (1984-2000) [22:51]
John CAGE (1912-1992)
Six Melodies for violin and keyboard (1950) [13:14]
John CORIGLIANO (b.1938)
Violin Sonata (1963) [23:21]
Tai Murray (violin)
Ashley Wass (piano)
rec. July 2013, RBB Studio 3
EASONUS EAS 29253 [79:01]
There are quite a few discs with titles similar to this one, exploring
the twentieth-century violin tradition: American Scenes and the
American Album are just two. This latest entrant fuses two concepts
- the twentieth-century and Americana - in its title. Four composers are
featured, with two major sonatas book-ending the programme.
Tai Murray and Ashley Wass start with Copland’s 1943 Sonata, a work
that will be for many associated with Isaac Stern but which has in recent
years had a distinguished number of recordings to its name. Gil Shaham and
André Previn’s traversal as well as that by Anne Akiko Meyers
and André Schub, for RCA on their American Album, are two
of the more durably recommendable. However, the Murray-Wass duo prove to
have a well-characterised instinct for this music, with the violinist unafraid
to bring a little grit into her tone. This gives the music a fulsome quality,
as well as a taut charge in the finale that will prove appealing. The other
sonata is John Corigliano’s immensely likeable 1963 work, cast in
four movements. Again the duo has a resolute sense of rhythm. They enjoy
Corigliano’s extrovert, driving material, relishing in particular
the long-lined lyricism of the Andantino, which prefaces the slightly
more uneasy third-movement Lento. The most engagingly played movement
is probably the finale where the pawkily singing lines and witty exchanges
between the colour-conscious piano – all bass and treble glint –
are matched by the fiddle’s flightiness.
It is invariably a challenge to balance a programme such as this and for
the central pieces the duo has selected Elliott Carter’s Four
Lauds and John Cage’s Six Melodies. Carter’s piece
was written over a number of years, from 1984 – a piece dedicated
to Petrassi – to the Rhapsodic Musings of 2000. These brief
virtuosic pieces are at their best when reflective and slow. The notes suggest
the second (the Petrassi piece) is aggressive but whilst there are elements
of unease it seems to me more, in this performance at least, allusive and
full of spare paragraphs. The most overtly romantic, unusually so in fact
for Carter, is the third Laud. If you submit to Cage’s Six
Melodies of 1950 you will find that the composer’s instruction
to play without vibrato and with little bow weight creates a breathy gamut
of inflexions, under the spell of which you will fall. Less sympathetically,
you may find the performance rather jagged, and the lack of structural design
of the piece a hindrance.
The studio recording was made quite close-up but it certainly captures the
rapport between the two musicians quite as much as their energising commitment.
Jonathan Woolf
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