One of the many strands being pursued by the omnivorous Naxos
label at the moment is the viola repertoire. They have a number
of outstanding exponents on their books - one thinks of Martin
Outram and Heinrich Koll for instance, both of whose discs I’ve
reviewed - and now we have Igor Redotov who proselytizes with
fervour on behalf of twentieth century Soviet or Russian or
‘Soviet Russian’ music.
This is fine retrieval work. It’s always dangerous to
quote a label’s ‘world premiere recording’
status claim because some obscure LP will be duly brandished
to contradict it. I’ve done it myself in reviews, raking
over some obscure American Columbia tricolour 78 made in 1923
to dispute such a claim, in that pedantic, pernickety way of
mine.
But until one hears to the contrary the Kryukov, Krein and Bogdanov-Berezovsky
are making their first ever appearance on disc in these first
class performances. The music spans the years from 1920 - when
Kryukov started his Sonata, though it was revised in 1933 -
to Krein’s 1973 work. So there’s a good half century
covered, in a birth span from 1872 (Vasilenko) to 1915; Frid,
who is still alive at the time of writing.
Kryukov studied with Miaskovsky and subsequently became a professor
of composition himself. His Viola Sonata was written around
1919-21 (there’s a dispute between the booklet notes and
the jewel case) and definitively revised in 1933. One can feel
something of Miaskovsky’s influence in its lyricism, so
too something of the French school and of Scriabin. It’s
a one movement work, and concise, and manages to balance the
tempestuous with Romantic effusion very successfully. It was
dedicated to Vadim Borisovsky, one of the giants of Russian
viola players, and he was also the dedicatee of Sergei Vasilenko’s
sonata. It too is cast in one movement though it’s clearly
divided fast-slow-fast fugal. This is a charming work though
not one that sought to grasp the nettle of modernism. It has
a Grieg-like freshness and passages that could have come straight
from Kreisler’s Pugnani pastiche.
Frid’s sonata was written in 1971. Melancholic and a touch
remote, its central moment offers a powerful contrast by virtue
of its attaca vivacity. This, itself touched by something
more than a little manic, is urgent, destabilising and wholly
tonal. The slow finale is very expressive with an improvisatory
sense and an almost vocalised wash of lyricism, in which the
viola finally ascends to a hard won silence. A couple of years
later Yulian Krein wrote a sonata that has easeful warmth about
it. Plenty of energetic figuration drives it on, and whilst
there are some Scriabinesque moments the overriding melos is
a tuneful, very traditional lyricism. It’s dance patterns
however that act as the motor for the last of the quintet of
viola sonatas. This is Bogdanov-Berezovsky’s three movement
opus which alternates energetic and terse writing to advantage
- even to the extent of causing Redotov to grunt in the fray.
The theme and variations central movement has variety and elegance,
and a whirlwind quality of vitality that leads onto the final,
quiescent movement.
The five sonatas are played with urgent and powerful commitment
by Redotov and his two colleagues, Leonid Vechkhayzer and Gary
Hammond. Naxos’s recorded sound, in the two venues, is
highly sympathetic. These somewhat obscure works are well worth
getting to know.
Jonathan Woolf
Igor Redotov (viola) 
