Lost Times
Camille SAINT-SAËNS (1835-1921)
Sonata for Bassoon and Piano in G, Op.168 (1921) [12:07]
Claude DEBUSSY (1862-1918)
Sonata for Violin and Piano in G minor (1916/17/2021) [13:35]
Nadia BOULANGER (1887-1979)
Trois Pièces for Cello and Piano (1914/2021) [5:48]
César FRANCK (1822-1890)
Sonata for Violin and Piano in A (1886/2021) [27:24]
Theo Plath (bassoon)
Aris Alexander Blettenberg (piano)
rec. December 2019, SWR Studio, Kaiserslautern, Germany
CAVI-MUSIC 8553037 [60:14]
Theo Plath has a particular penchant for the music of the French Impressionists and Late Romantics. He tells us this in his booklet note, but it is also patently obvious from his playing, which shows a powerful sensitivity towards the style and character of this music. The problem is, Plath is a bassoonist, and French composers of the late 19th/early 20th century found the bassoon sufficiently not to their liking that few of them ever wrote anything for it as a solo instrument. In fact, the only authentic work Plath has been able to include in this programme is the Sonata by Saint-Saëns, his last ever work, and the third of five projected but never completed sonatas for the members of the woodwind family (oboe, clarinet, bassoon, flute, and cor anglais).
From the Saint-Saëns Sonata it is immediately apparent that Plath not only has a real feel for this music, but also has an astonishing facility on the instrument which overcomes its somewhat limited emotional and expressive scope. This is strongly revealed in his cleverly-restrained account of the jaunty second movement and his elegant handling of the lyrical opening of the third. This is a very fine performance indeed, with Plath’s intelligent and poised playing ideally complemented by pianist Aris Alexander Blettenberg.
The remainder of the programme comprises transcriptions of works for other solo melody instruments and piano by Plath himself. In the case of the three short pieces by Nadia Boulanger, he did not have much transcribing to do; these were originally composed for cello, and one assumes very little alteration needed to be made for them to fit the bassoon. The first, Modéré, exploits the instrument’s upper range in a soulfully sinuous melodic line accompanied by delicately glittering piano figurations. Here Plath evokes much of the character of a cello with a subtle vibrato and a taut intensity as the instrument moves up to the very highest parts of its range. The second, Sans Vitesse et à l’aise, has a free-flowing feel to it, with nicely-moulded phrases which move, again, up to the instrument’s highest register before subsiding into the warmth, mellowness of its middle range. Plath paces the breaks between these phrases to perfection, so that where the cellist might be changing bow, he is, almost imperceptibly, taking a breath, all the while keeping up a wholly natural musical flow. The third, Vite et nerveusement rythmé with strong hints of Ravel, shows Plath’s ability to cast off the bassoon’s generally genial image by drawing something quite exotic from the instrument.
The remaining works present Plath with a more serious objective; to take staples of the violin repertory and make them into idiomatic bassoon music. It is certainly difficult to shake off he memories of a violin when, in the Debussy Sonata, we hear the bassoon muddling up the texture by sounding generally an octave lower. With help from Blettenberg, who oozes Debussyian atmosphere, Plath is able to present a convincing case for his transcription; indeed, there are times when his powerful understanding of the music is more than enough to overcome those occasional oddities of sound. I admire his ability to bend pitch in much the manner of a violinist. In the end, I find this a most revealing performance of the Debussy Sonata.
It is with the Franck Sonata that things do not quite work, which is perhaps surprising given that a version for cello and piano has long been in existence and is fairly often performed with considerable success. But here we run up against the basic issue of a bassoon in music of this period; it is too precise in its pitch, too genial in its mood, and too restricted in its range of tone colours. Despite Plath’s remarkable ability to transform the bassoon into something more rich and varied than we might expect, even he cannot draw from the instrument that sense of screwed-up intensity and emotional release which works so well on the violin as it builds op to the climax of the last movement. Elsewhere, this is a very compelling performance, especially in the two central movements, but I have to confess that, for me, the real star of the show here is Blettenberg whose pianism in the Franck is pretty amazing.
Marc Rochester
