Dmitri SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-1975)
Sonata for Cello and Piano in D minor Op.40 (1934) [28:41]
Sonata for Viola and Piano Op.147 (1975, cello version) [33:29]
Prelude (1955) from Five Pieces for Two Violins and Piano (arr. Two cellos and piano) [2:32]
Anouchka Hack (cello)
Katharina Hack (piano)
Gautier Capųcon (cello: Prelude)
rec. 2019, Jesus Christus Kirche, Dahlem, Berlin
GENUIN GEN20701 [64:46]
This is the debut CD of the Hack sisters, cellist Anouchka and pianist Katharina, and it presents an imaginative pairing of Shostakovich’s early Cello Sonata – composed and premiered by Victor Kubatsky with the composer at the piano in 1934, before Pravda’s infamous ‘Chaos instead of music’ attack – and the Viola Sonata (transcribed for cello and piano by Daniil Shafran) which Shostakovich composed 41 years later, in 1975, during the last months of his life, when he was already serious ill with lung cancer and experiencing paralysis in his limbs.
In a ‘Foreword’ in the CD booklet, Michael Naumann, who is Rector of the Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin, remarks that the reception of Shostakovich’s music has now been freed from the intrusive shadow of contemporary history and that his works are no longer seen as ‘contemporary war reporting’. However one responds to that argument, as a general observation about Shostakovich’s reception history, it is surely not relevant to the Cello Sonata which pre-dates both WWII and the Stalinist artistic purges which followed Pravda’s aggressive criticism in 1936, and which seems far-removed from the troubled forms and language of works such as the Fourth Symphony and Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk which Shostakovich was working on during the same year.
The Sonata is decidedly neo-Romantic, though not without flashes of idiosyncratic irony – though even the scherzo-like second movement is more witty than bitter. However, despite that fact that they profess to find the early Sonata ‘flowing and forward-pressing’ in contrast to the more ’celestial and almost otherworldly’ Viola Sonata, the Hack sisters adopt a distinctly ‘unflowing’ tempo for the first movement, the non troppo dominating rather than nuancing the Allegro. There is little Romantic passion or colour here. The cello’s tone is wiry, firmly centred but with a slightly grainy edge – not unpleasant, quite muscular, the middle register often contemplative, the C string dark and energetic – and the piano is coolly restrained, the staccato dry and the textures very transparent. But, the pace of the first subject denies the melody its songful impetus and also means that any relaxation for the more reflective and lyrical second subject brings the music to a halt: at best ‘dreamy’, at worst catatonic. Added to which, at times – despite the bright and very ‘present’ quality of the recorded sound – the cello’s pianissimo disappears into the ether. A ‘pause for breath’ is how the siblings describe this second theme, but I find this rendition unduly inert when rapture is required.
In the ensuing Allegro, the cello’s nasal penetrativeness serves the circling linear line very well, and the piano’s xylophone-like brittleness is fittingly crisp and clear. There is clarity and light here and a real sense of excitement, sometimes verging towards hyper-mania! I like the way that the accents push the music forward rather than hammer it downwards. The siblings describe the Largo as a ‘funeral dirge’, and that’s how they play it. I prefer the term, ‘lament’, or even ‘monologue’, which suggests a greater degree of lyricism and rather less of the utter bleakness and inert, weighty gloom that the cello conveys at the start here. Again, the tempo is on the slow side which I feel lessens the enigmatic eloquence of the unaccompanied cello’s ‘searching’ gestures at the start of the movement. Moreover, the searing cello melody which dominates the movement just doesn’t soar with sufficient song, dragged down as it is relentless heavy thuds in the low piano part, and lacking a soul-tugging vibrato to bear it aloft. The Hack duo seem to have the sought to convey the utter desolation of this movement, and the savage climax and etiolated close certainly achieve that end. But, in so doing, they bleach the human spirit from the music. The rondo finale is more persuasive, both kinetically charged and tinged with a light patina of sarcasm. The cello staccatos barely touch the string but still bite with an assertive snarl and bristle vigorously. There’s no doubting the virtuosity on display.
Given my own misgivings about their interpretation of the Cello Sonata, I approached the duo’s recording of the Viola Sonata with some caution, particularly since in their booklet article the Hack sisters suggest that it inhabits ‘the realm of eternity ... when times appears to stand still’ and that the ‘entire composition is permeated by an expression of the inexorable and unalterable, at times hopeless’: how much more sombre and wretched was the music about to become? In fact, I was pleasantly surprised. The interpretative and textual clarity feel more apt and the mood is spacious rather than static. In the Moderato, the sparseness of the textures invites the sort of crystalline precision for which the Hack sisters seem to strive, and the cello’s phrases are shaped with greater nuance. There is expressive range too, as they move from quasi-innocence, through haunting introspection to agitated animation – all grunting double stops and glinting piano octaves in the latter. The coloristic and textural palette is both diverse and discerning. The piano’s restatement of the cello’s initial pizzicato fifths juxtaposes a Hadean bass with eloquent rocking in the right-hand, against the cello’s quiet, grainy tremolo. The dialogues between the two instruments are intelligently articulated in the closing episodes.
If the Moderato is expansive, then the Allegretto dances and prances, ever restless, changeable and impish. The fluidity of the incessant, often quirky, shape-shifting is impressive. To return to previously mentioned contexts of mourning and elegy, the Adagio truly is a ‘requiem’. In the manuscript, at the top of the movement, Shostakovich wrote, ‘To the great Beethoven’, and this fifteen-minute dedication is built upon the theme from the opening of the Moonlight Sonata, rhythimcally displaced, harmonically unsettled and initially juxtaposed with the ‘funeral march’ from the Adagio molto of Shostakovich’s Fifteenth String Quartet. The Hack siblings introduce the musical revisitations with haunting beauty and gentleness; the cello’s high A string is particularly pure and strong against the piano’s expressive, arpeggiated Beethovenian echoes. And, when the cello’s solo cadenza commences, the climbs to the top are as searingly aflame as the double-stopped elaborations are intensely coloured. After the emotive peaks, the unravelling dissipation is more tender than tormented. The muted viola tone and the piano’s delicate attempts to restate the preceding material evince a quiet, restrained sadness.
If the final C major chord is a poignant but peaceful point of rest, it is not allowed simply to suffuse into the embracing silence of the hereafter. There is a final ‘lollipop’, the Prelude from Five Pieces for Two Violins and Piano – the former drawn from Shostakovich’s 1955 film score from The Gadfly, gathered by Lev Atovmyan into the latter compilation (and transcribed for two cellos by Musikverlag Hans Sikorski GMBH & Co. KG) – in which the Hack siblings are joined by cellist Gautier Capųcon. It’s beautifully played but unnecessary, after the emotional sincerity of the Adagio’s homage.
Claire Seymour
