Reviews
RECORDINGS
FONDATION GAUTIER CAPUÇON PRESENTS…
CHAMINADE Piano Trio no.1
POULENC Cello Sonata
SCHUMANN Papillons; Violin Sonata no.1
Sarah
Jégou-Sageman
(violin)
Jeein
You
(cello)
Martina
Consonni
(piano)
ERATO 5419764269
Promising artists emerge from Gautier Capuçon’s foundation
Last year French cellist Gautier Capuçon established his foundation to support and champion young artists at the outset of their careers. This release is the organisation’s second, featuring three of the 2022 laureates.
If Poulenc was in fact ‘half monk, half rascal’, as a critic once claimed, then cellist Jeein You (the youngest of the disc’s three players, still in her early twenties) doesn’t quite capture the latter quality. There could be more mischief, bite and whimsy, and a greater sense of knockabout interplay between the instruments in the first and third movements, but Poulenc the monk is released in the second-movement Cavatine: serene and with a touch of nocturnal magic.
Martina Consonni gives a suitably imaginative performance of Schumann’s solo-piano character pieces Papillons and partners Sarah Jégou-Sageman in the composer’s Violin Sonata no.1. For me, the first movement could take more of the ‘passionate expression’ that the score requests: it’s as if a more stirring performance is just around the corner. Jégou-Sageman’s playing is boldly confident, though, and in the second movement she deftly contrasts playfulness with profundity.
Chaminade’s unjustly neglected First Piano Trio (written when she was 23) receives a committed performance, convincing in both momentum and its strong lyrical thread. The sparkling scherzo is balanced by a finale that is truly full-blooded.
EDWARD BHESANIA
COLERIDGE-TAYLOR
Five Fantasiestücke op.5 DVOŘÁK String Quartet no.13 in G major op.106; Andante appassionato Takács Quartet
HYPERION CDA68413
A striking coupling of familiar and unfamiliar reaps rewards
It’s gratifying to see the name of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor on a high-profile release such as this. The two main works here come from the same year – 1895 – when Dvořák had recently returned from his directorship of the National Conservatory in New York and Coleridge-Taylor was a student at London’s Royal College of Music.
The title of Coleridge-Taylor’s Five Fantasiestücke may evoke Schumann, but the language is perhaps closer to Brahms, as might be expected of a pupil of Stanford. Coleridge-Taylor’s idol Dvořák is in the mix too, whether in the mournful song of the Prelude or the tripping central Humoresque. There’s also a Serenade that alternates sections in 5/4 and 6/4, an elegant Minuet and an irresistible closing Dance. Coleridge-Taylor entered the RCM as a violinist and his handling of string textures is innate, his harmonic imagination strikingly original. This isn’t the work’s first recording – that was made by Catalyst Quartet on Azica – but the skill and affection of the Takács make this recommendable on any terms.
Not that the Dvořák comes as any disappointment, for the Takács is steeped in his music. This is an ensemble of individuals, with the silvery violin of Edward Dusinberre singing over the rich-voiced inner parts provided by Harumi Rhodes and the quartet’s newest member, Richard O’Neill, all underpinned by the self-effacing but insistent presence of András Fejér – the only remaining member of the original line-up. Its corporate sound glows in the generous acoustic of Monmouth’s Wyastone Concert Hall. To close, an Andante appassionato that was originally intended as the slow movement of the A minor Quartet op.12: it’s a characteristically Dvořákian outpouring of song that rounds off the programme rather beautifully.
DAVID THREASHER
BRIDGES
D. CONSTANTINIDES Violin Sonata
Y.
CONSTANTINIDIS Suite sur des mélodies populaires grecques du Dodécanèse
PAPANDOPULO Meditation; Violin Sonata
TERZAKIS Sonate infernale; Sprüche im Wind Danae Papamattheou-Matschke (violin) Uwe Matschke (piano)
BIS BIS-2563
An enticing introduction to Greek violin works of the last century