Alexander TCHEREPNIN (1899-1977)
Cello Sonata No.1, Op.29 (1924) [11:30]
Cello Sonata No.2, Op.30 No.1 (1924) [11:50]
Cello Sonata No.3, Op.30 No.3 (1919-1926) [11:38]
12 Preludes: The Well-Tempered Cello, for cello and piano (1925–26) [24:17]
Suite for solo cello, Op.76 (1946) [6:46]
Mystère, Op.37 No.2 (1925) [9:53]
Marina Tarasova (cello), Ivan Sokolov (piano)
rec. 2020/2021, Moscow, Russia
NORTHERN FLOWERS NF/PMA99144 [76:17]
The chamber music here, with one exception, charts the first half of the 1920s, a time when Tcherepnin became known for his involvement in the École de Paris. He had found success in the West almost immediately and Parisian acclaim was followed by visits to London, where his ballet Ajanta’s Frescoes, starring Anna Pavolva, was staged at Covent Garden.
The chamber music is vigorous and incisive and calls for performers of equal accomplishment. The first two sonatas date from 1924. The earlier opens with a gruff toccata and there’s plenty of ensuing motor rhythmic stress as well as reverie. Francophile brittleness marks out the finale which is both rhythmic and colourful. Apparently, he encodes the sound of thrushes here, in which case the ones he heard in Monte Carlo were especially vigorous examples. Sonata No.2 again benefits from Tcherepnin’s contrastive abilities and his willingness to take his performers to the brink. The opening movement is gaunt and terse, but the finale is full of firefly brilliance, demanding the crispest of bowing and articulation from the cellist and tremendous co-ordination control from the pianist. Marina Tarasova and Ivan Sokolov pass the test, remaining technically unscathed.
The Third Sonata had been begun in 1919 before the composer left his native Russia but it wasn’t until 1926 that he finished it. There are similar music box treble glints such as irradiated the first two sonatas but there’s also a greater weight of Russian melancholy, the writing moving from nobility to withdrawn lyricism but always motored by a bold and athletic sense of direction. When Tcherepnin unleashes his finales, they stay unleashed.
Composed between 1925-26, the 12 Preludes, known as The Well-Tempered Cello, were written for the young Gregor Piatigorsky who had only recently been appointed solo cellist of the Berlin Philharmonic by Furtwängler and as a consequence had already made his first 78s. Tcherepnin favoured his own invented nine-note scale which he employs here and the concision of these pieces allows for strong contrast and characterisation. There are strongly nationalist elements too, his writing for the piano being equally distinctive. Much later, in 1946, he returned to the instrument in the form of the Suite for Solo Cello. It’s a crisp, taut affair, and a work I always associate with the Gallic flair of Tortelier, who recorded it so memorably. The dancing second movement and the folksy vitesse of the finale are the best two movements but if you are wearied by strenuous and serious-minded solo cello works (no names), then this one is like mountain stream water. The little Mystère, is nevertheless urgent and intense. There’s an alternative version for cello and chamber orchestra.
The perfectly fine recording was made at an unnamed location, somewhere in Moscow – was it the Victor Popov Studio, Academy of Choral Arts, where the duo recorded Weinberg sonatas for Northern Flowers? The notes are themselves well judged but have been rendered slightly chaotic by discussing works that aren’t performed and not much discussing one that is. I suspect that the writer was poorly briefed as to the full contents.
Tarasova and Sokolov form a fine, ensemble-solid team. They dig beneath the notes and are unflappable even in some of the more extreme registers - say in the finale of the Third Sonata. They make an excellent case for the music.
Jonathan Woolf
Previous review:
Steve Arloff
