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Contents:
The repertoire for two unaccompanied stringed instruments has never been very large, although the combination has exercised the minds of many composers over the centuries, whether the result – excepting double-basses - has been music for two violins, for violin and viola, for two violas, for viola and cello, for two cellos or – as in the music on this album – for violin and cello. Of those six combinations, it is the first and last which have tended to produce the most significant compositions – always excepting Mozart’s Duos K 423 and 424, for violin and viola – and in the case of the combination of violin and cello this ought not to appear so surprising. This is because the range available to the composer, from the bottom C of the cello to the highest register of the violin, is not only particularly wide but also that within which a composer’s imagination and creativity appears to work at its most natural. In the earlier decades of the twentieth-century, and perhaps following the lead of the Concerto for Violin, Cello and Orchestra by Brahms (first performed in 1887), the Duo Opus 7 of 1914 by Zoltán Kodály, the Sonata for Violin and Cello by Maurice Ravel from 1922 and the Sonatine by Arthur Honegger (1932), are among the most well-known of such works. Conceivably, the Choros No 2 by Heitor Villa-Lobos (originally written in 1924 for flute and clarinet, but transcribed by the composer four years later for violin and cello) should come into this category. In concerto terms, the Double Concerto for Violin, Cello and Orchestra by Frederick Delius, composed in 1915-16 but not first performed until 1920, should also be mentioned. However, reverting to chamber music, and the conception of the duo as a medium in itself, the music on this album suggests that the repertoire in the early decades of the 1900s was more extensive and wide-ranging than is usually considered, and demonstrates – in the two recent compositions expressly written for the Duo Zappa – that the medium continues to offer considerable opportunities as well as challenges for composers of today. In discussing the music in this recital, we shall take the original works in chronological order of composition. The Russian composer Reinhold Gličre was born in Kiev in January 1875, but unlike many of his younger contemporaries he did not leave Russia at the time of the 1917 Revolution (in 1905, following the aborted uprising, he – like Rachmaninoff – lived in Germany for several years, before returning home). By 1917, Gličre was firmly established as an important composer, teacher (his students included Miaskovsky and Prokofiev) and ethnomusicologist, if not on the level of, say, Bartok, Kodaly or even Vaughan Williams. Gličre was always fascinated by the folk music of the Caucasus, and would often incorporate folk melodies or original melodies modelled on folk-types in his music. He is perhaps best known as a composer of orchestral music – his vast Third Symphony, Ilya Mourometz, dating from 1912, is arguably his masterpiece, and is – outside of the ballet The Red Poppy – his most famous orchestral work, but Gličre’s chamber music is very rarely encountered. On the evidence of these Eight Pieces Opus 39 written in 1909, this is a pity, for they form a colourful and impressive set of genre pieces, indicative of a composer totally at home in a difficult medium, able to weld an attractive suite embracing elements of baroque forms alongside later ones. The titles of the movements are self-evident, but we should also mention other of Gličre’s duo compositions, such as the twelve Duos for two violins and ten Duos for two cellos. At the time of his death in 1956 at the age of 81, Gličre was working on a Violin Concerto, no doubt intended as a companion piece to his large-scale (circa 45 minutes) Cello Concerto of 1947. The life of the Czech composer and pianist Erwin Schulhoff could hardly have been more different from that of Gličre. Born in Prague, the capital of Bohemia, in 1894 his gifts were encouraged by his well-connected family. As a boy, he impressed Dvořák, no less, and after several years at the Prague Conservatoire he was sent to Vienna and to Leipzig as a composition pupil of Max Reger. He also took lessons from Debussy and, as a gifted pianist, Schulhoff also won the Mendelssohn Prize in 1913. When World War I erupted in July 1914, Schulhoff became eligible for military service. He was conscripted a year later, serving in the Austrian army at the Italian Front. The experience of close warfare left profound and lasting impressions on him as man and artist, and upon demobilisation he returned to Prague before settling in the new Germany of the Weimar Republic. Within a few years Schulhoff’s brilliance as a pianist established him as a leader of the post-war avant-garde; he was also attracted to jazz and often played in night-clubs in Berlin and Dresden. His experiences had left lasting impressions which led him, in the 1920s, to join the Communist Party and later to return to Prague. But the rise of National Socialism in Germany and Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938 put Schulhoff in peril: he was both a Jew and a communist. Hitler’s pact with Stalin in August 1939 saved Schulhoff, but only for two more years: when Germany attacked Russia in 1941 he was arrested and sent to the Wulzburg concentration camp where he died in August 1942, just 48 years old. Schulhoff wrote much music, including eight symphonies (with two more unfinished), two piano concertos, orchestral works, an opera, ballets and – notably in the 1920s – much chamber music, including this Duo for violin and cello, which dates from 1925. It falls into four movements, its musical language inhabiting a fascinating correlation between late Debussy and relatively early Schoenberg (by then, Schulhoff had made a deep study of Schoenberg’s music) albeit uttered in a manner which speaks purely personally. Despite these influences, the natural expression of a Bohemian composer shines through – most notably, of course, in the ‘gypsy’ stylisation of the second movement and the hectic conclusion of the finale. The works by the young contemporary Swiss and Italian/Croatian composers on this album were written in 2004 and 1998 (Roter Raum) especially for the Duo Zappa. Martin Wettstein was born in Zurich in 1970, the son of the composer and outstanding teacher Peter Wettstein. Martin studied initially in Zurich, later taking composition lessons with Edison Denisov and piano studies with, amongst others, Homero Francesch in Zurich and Naum Starkman in Moscow. As a pianist, he has played with various orchestras in Switzerland, notably the Zurich Tonhalle, and also as a chamber-musician with many partners. His compositions include choral and vocal music, orchestral works and music for the theatre, as well as chamber music, including Verdis Traum for string quartet, premiered at London’s Wigmore Hall in 2002, music for cello and piano and a set of interdependent movements for violin, cello and piano, Zyklus (1998) from which the present duo, Roter Raum (Red Room) is taken. Martin Wettstein’s orchestral music has been performed at the Zurich Conservatory under the baton of Massimiliano Matešić, whose own Duo for violin and cello is also heard in this collection. Wettstein’s Zyklus was suggested by the image of contemplating the oracle, having imagined a man to be in a dark room, the atmosphere full of foreboding. Attempting to transform the experience, a sequential cycle of colours depicting life, love, friendship, enmity and death flood the room, each changing the emotional atmosphere and character. Blue is for life, red is for love, gold is for friendship and so on. The Roter Raum of love is a clear structure of theme, development and recapitulation – although the recapitulation is not strict. The image of ‘red’ in the work’s title thus represents a vivid, vibrant character – such as one might expect from a composer whose work takes him frequently into the modern theatre – colour and life springing vivaciously to mind in a score infused with today’s Impressionism. Massimiliano Matešić was born in 1969 in Firenze, Italy. He studied composition in Florence and later conducting in Germany as well as at Aspen, Colorado in the United States. He is now much more well-known as a conductor, and freely admits that his conducting duties leave him with little time for original composition, although he has written various chamber music pieces – such as a Fantasia for Violin and Piano and a recent Piano Quartet. He has also composed a number of songs, which he regards as among the best works in his output. The Duo 2004 was written in response to a commission by the Norbert Schenkel Foundation, and is dedicated “to Daria and Mattia”. Like Wettstein’s Roter Raum, Matešić’s Duo is also in one movement, but stands alone as a piece and is somewhat longer, playing for a fraction over ten minutes. The composer’s musical language is rooted in late-20th century mittel-European styles, to the newcomer seeming to absorb a subtle blend of elements from Alban Berg and Bela Bartók, but transformed into a striking idiom that acknowledges the ethnicity of the composer’s provenance. The Duo falls into three parts – at first, a lengthy ostinato figure on the violin accompanies an important cello theme whose motivic and rhythmic elements permeate the work. Variants of this material build to a strong climax, and a general pause leads to the second slower section (Sospeso), built essentially upon the first part of the cello themes. The ostinato figure, still relatively unobtrusive, heralds the beginning of the final section, in which the instruments exchange their roles – the atmosphere however returns to that of the opening of the composition, leading to an impressive coda. The writing for the two instruments is full and rich, creating at times the illusion of more than two players.
The final work in our collection is a fascinating transcription of the
Passacaglia in G minor, from George Friedrich Handel’s Harpsichord Suite No
7, HWV (in the Handel Werke Versichnis) 432. The transcription was made by
Johan Halvorsen (1864-1935), a fine composer, conductor and violinist. He
was also a nephew by marriage of the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg. This is
one of the most successful of all duo transcriptions of Handel’s music, and has
enjoyed something approaching popularity in the still relatively rare repertoire
for violin and cello.
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DDD 59:57 Recording: © RSI 2002-2005
