Skip to main content

Cello Sonatas

Ignaz Moscheles and Johann Nepomuk Hummel were among the most notable virtuoso pianists and composers from the generation between Beethoven's and that of Chopin, Liszt & Schumann. This 2006 CD showcases a cello sonata by each of them, performed by Jiři Barta on the cello with Hamish Milne at the piano.

Hummel's op. 104 Sonata in A major was composed in the mid 1820s. John Warrack's booklet notes characterise it as "less a piece for virtuosos than for musical companions, amiable and graceful." Moscheles' op. 121 Sonata in E major dates from rather later, ca. 1850, by which time the composer might have been considered a vaguely unfashionable elder statesman. The work was dedicated to Schumann, who had long been a fan of Moscheles'.

This later Sonata is also tuneful, but has more substance & drama than Hummel's. It's in four movements, with the middle two, a perky Scherzo and a 'Dumka'-style 'Ballade' being my favourites. Filling out the disc are three pieces Moscheles adapted from J.S. Bach's 'Well-Tempered Clavier', with the addition of a cello part. Moscheles, according to Warrack, was, like Schumann, a notable promoter of Bach's music. For me, this is a straightforwardly enjoyable disc of relatively undemanding music.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

All Wrapped Up

Here's another of the compilation cassettes I bought this summer, having taken home a Denon twin-deck hi-fi cassette player from the local charity shop. All Wrapped Up is a 1983 compilation of singles by The Undertones, with Side One filled with A-sides, and B-sides on Side Two. A cassette must be the least desirable medium for such an arrangement, with a long rewind required if one just wants to hear the hits repeatedly. The Undertones were unapologetically provincial and anti-fashionable, with their songs sharply-written slices of life that pointedly avoided any mention of politics, or of the then-continuing violence in their native Derry. My favourite tracks are the obvious choices: 'Teenage Kicks', 'Jimmy Jimmy', 'Here Comes the Summer', 'My Perfect Cousin' & 'Wednesday Week'. Their later singles showed increased sophistication but lack the some of the straightforward charm of their earlier work. The B-sides, not unexpectedly, are mo...
Post a Comment
Read more

In Heat

Having acquired the soubriquet "the walrus of love", Barry White thereafter became something of a figure of fun, something that misled me (and presumably others) into disregarding his music. Only within the last few years have I begun to pay it more attention. After picking up a copy of his '74 album Can't Get Enough last summer, which I loved, I sought out some of the music by his protegés Love Unlimited. From a Discogs seller I ordered well-used copies of Under the Influence of... ('73) and In Heat ('74) for only £6.25. The only unappealing thing about In Heat is its awful title. The songs and the singing are strong; the arrangements rich & warmly enveloping. As one would expect from White, the thematic focus is firmly fixed on amatory matters. The opening number 'Move Me No Mountain' (the only one on the record not written by White) offers a refreshing rebuttal to the kind of lyrical hyperbole in songs like 'Ain't No Mountain High E...
Post a Comment
Read more

Complete String Quartets

While the string quartets of Nikolai Yakovievich Myaskovsky (1881-1950) were all published in the Soviet era, a few of them had pre-revolutionary origins. Two quartets he wrote in 1911 and '09 while a conservatory student re-surfaced some twenty years later designated as Quartets Nos. 3 and 4.  An even earlier "schoolboy" piece was later re-worked more radically as Quartet No. 10, premiered in 1945. Myaskovsky partook of an ample share of the turmoil and tragedy of his times: he was wounded and shell-shocked after service on the front line in World War I, and his father, who had been a high-ranking military engineer, was brutally murdered by a revolutionary mob. Despite that, his music, even at its most sombre, hasn't the black bile or biting sarcasm of Shostakovich's, or of his friend Prokofiev's. Of the works collected here, in excellent early '80s performances by the Taneyev Quartet, only Quartet No. 1 has any significantly metallic tang of early S...
Post a Comment
Read more