MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger


Support us financially by purchasing this from

Rebecca CLARKE (1886-1979)
Viola Sonata, in cello version (1919) [22:05]
Frank BRIDGE (1879-1941)
Serenade H23 (1903) [2:41]
Spring Song H104 No 2 (c.1912) [2:18]
Scherzo H19a (c.1902) [3:42]
Cello Sonata H125 (1913-17) [21:03]
Ralph VAUGHAN WILLIAMS (1872-1958)
Six Studies in English Folk Song (1926) [8:09]
Natalie Clein (cello)
Christian Ihle Hadland (piano)
rec. 2017, All Saints’ Church, East Finchley, London
HYPERION CDA68253 [60:07]

Natalie Clein proves a dramatic, wholehearted interpreter of the cello version of Rebecca Clarke’s Viola Sonata. Recently Raphael Wallfisch and John York recorded it for Lyrita and not only do Clein and Christian Ihle Hadland drive through it two and a half minutes faster, they have been recorded in a much more immediate, forward acoustic, which only intensifies the vibrancy and intensity of their reading. These are two very different ways of approaching a work that in recent years has become something of a viola repertory piece; the soft-grained but subtly distanced Wallfish-York, or the almost overwrought Clein-Hadland. Yet if the younger pair maintained that dangerously exciting adrenalin their performance would buckle; they don’t. Their reflective, inwardly musing passages are just as powerfully phrased and just as compelling. Legato is ardently explored, the folkloric pizzicati in the central fast movement ricocheting with great youthful panache, and in the bipartite finale – Adagio then Allegro – she vests that opening section with a lovely range of colours before unleashing renewed passion. There’s real kinship at work here, performers and work at one; the sonata positively sizzles in this performance. Note too that Clein and William Foster prepared the cello part.

The companion sonata is Frank Bridge’s, composed between 1913 and 1917. Here the Clein-Hadland outrun by precisely the same amount – two and a half minutes - another older Hyperion pairing, the Nash Ensemble’s Paul Watkins and Ian Brown. Watkins, himself no slouch in the declamation stakes, with a raft of splendid Chandos British cello sonatas to his name, sounds positively becalmed next to the molten Clein. Some may not always find her intensely vibrated playing, here and also, perhaps, in the Clarke to their liking. It has to be admitted that sometimes it sounds too booming and intense. And, a stern critic might note that Watkins is more persuasive in the music’s nostalgia. Yet, for all that, Clein runs the gamut of emotions and there is a real personality at work. This applies to what some might consider Bridge’s morceaux but Clein’s not having it at all. The Serenade – you can here, and elsewhere, hear her anticipatory sniffs – is played with more ardour than is usually encountered in this early work. And she can hardly be accused of underplaying the Scherzo of c.1902 which is dispatched with a will o’ the wisp virtuosity that sizzles with flair and then has the wit to treat the B section with the coyly salon charm it requires.

Vaughan William’s Six Studies in English Folk Song close the disc, their compact charms conveyed with apposite refinement. I’d single out her phrasing in Spurn Point – absolutely lovely – and the piece that seems to convey something of Clein’s own sense of fearless commitment, As I walked over London Bridge.

The earlier Bridge Hyperion disc sported Eric Ravilious cover art. The label’s design team clearly has its own sense of wit as they’ve used another Ravilious for this one. The documentation is well up to Hyperion’s high standards and I can say without any hesitation that if you’re looking for high-octane performances of this repertoire, then make the Clein-Hadland duo your first port of call.

Jonathan Woolf

 



Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing