Early Italian Cello Concertos
Giovanni SAMMARTINI (1700-1775)
Concerto in C major [11:11]
Antonio VIVALDI (1678-1741)
Concerto in G major, RV414 [10:15]
Giuseppe TARTINI (1692-1770)
Violin sonata No. 7 in A minor, B.a1 – Adagio [3:11]
Concerto in A major, GT 1.A28 [12:59]
Leonardo LEO (1694-1744)
Concerto No. 2 in D major, L. 10 [15:26]
Giuseppe TARTINI
Violin sonata No. 6 in e minor, B.e1 – Andante cantabile [3:08]
Elinor Frey (cello)
Rosa Barocca/Claude Lapalme
rec. 2021, Rosza Centre, Calgary, Canada
ANALEKTA AN29163 [56:11]
As I was unpacking the parcel from MusicWeb, my wife spotted this recording and commented that it would be good, to which I agreed. I had not heard any recordings by Canadian-American cellist Elinor Frey, but knew that a number of my colleagues have sung her praises (review ~ review). On this recording, she uses two different cellos, of different sizes and tuning. The larger is used for the Vivaldi and Leo, the smaller for the Sammartini and Tartini.
The choice of Giovanni Sammartini to open the recording was somewhat discouraging, as my previous experiences with his music were quite uninspiring (even Fabio Biondi and Europa Galante
couldn't make it interesting), and so it was here as well. Elinor Frey in her booklet notes mentions “dazzling … passagework” and “deeply expressive melodies”. That’s far from what I heard – nothing dazzled me, and what melodies there were, were rather mundane.
But Vivaldi wouldn’t let me down, would he? Certainly, it was more engaging than the Sammartini, but that is not really saying anything. It was while listening to the Vivaldi that I realised that a stylistic decision had been made by the artists, that being to emphasise the galant aspect of these works, rather than the Baroque. In musical terms, this would seem to be achieved by emphasising the gracefulness of the music, adopting relatively slow tempos and minimising dynamic variations. These artists are far more musically literate than I am, and I can accept this reasoning with the Sammartini, who is a true 18th century composer, with symphonies to his name. However, Tartini, Leo and Vivaldi, were born within a decade of Bach, Handel and Domenico Scarlatti – are they also considered to be galant composers? Surely not. This presented me with a dilemma. Do I write the review based on this premise, or on my gut feelings about how the music should sound? I went with the latter.
I didn’t have Concerto RV414 in my collection, but Vivaldi is Vivaldi after all, and while Stravinsky’s jibe of the same concerto written five hundred times might be a little cruel, there is a slight element of truth in it. I felt I could compare Frey with my favourite Vivaldi cello performances, those by Asier Polo (IBS – review). Chalk and cheese, I’m afraid. The vibrancy and expressiveness in Polo’s performances are absent here; grace and gentility in Vivaldi doesn’t do it for me. I checked the Naxos Music Library for some other versions of RV414, and found quite a few by well-known cellists, for example, Christophe Coin (Decca & Naive) and Ophélie Gaillard (Aparte), which were thirty seconds or so quicker and much more vibrant. In ten minutes, that is enough to make a difference to the overall effect.
No reason is given in the notes for the inclusion of single movements from two Tartini violin sonatas, transcribed for cello. As it is, fifty-six minutes is rather niggardly, and two more full concertos could have easily been included. After all, Vivaldi wrote twenty-seven and Leo six, to say nothing of Porpora, Platti and others. Certainly, the slow movement of the sonata presented here does nothing to lift my flagging enthusiasm.
Tartini’s violin concertos are renowned for their dazzling virtuosity, and while the cello wasn’t his instrument, his close friend, Antonio Vandini was a prominent cellist. The concerto here continues the trend established by the previous works: graceful yes, but steady and lacking excitement, certainly not what I would have expected from a Tartini composition. Even the final movement, marked Allegro assai (very fast) failed to stir. I listened to a recording by Severino Zannerini and I Solisti Veneti, and while the finale still wasn’t what I’d call “very fast”, it did have more forward impetus than the Frey: timing-wise, 3:47 versus 4:36 is quite a difference. There was also a variation in textures in the different passages, which I didn’t hear with Frey.
The Leo is the most characterful and interesting work on the disc, which didn’t surprise me. There is a marvellous recording of his six concertos on BIS, with Hidemi Suzuki as soloist, which for me, establishes them as possibly the best concertos written for the cello before those of CPE Bach and Haydn. But again here, Frey is significantly slower, more than a minute and a half than Suzuki – by now, I didn’t expect anything else. The Con bravura second movement (of five) lacks boldness and brilliance, the Allegro di molto finale is more grazioso. Sorry but it just doesn’t work for me.
The decision to finish the programme with another transcribed Tartini violin sonata slow movement is a poor one. It is taken very slowly, much slower than the tempo marking of Andante cantabile, and gives the recording a dirge-like ending.
So how to sum up? Certainly, the playing of the soloist and ensemble is technically very good, the timbre of Elinor Frey’s cellos is beautiful, and the sound quality is excellent. As I have said, for this to work, it requires the listener to buy into the galant proposition, and I didn’t. While it isn’t right to say everything sounded the same, there was certainly a degree of sameness in the limited dynamic range and overall slowish tempos. While Baroque music these days is not supposed to sound like Brahms, it’s not supposed to be devoid of feeling and expression either. I don’t like being so negative, but as a reviewer, I can only record my feelings and thoughts, and it would be dishonest to have expressed anything other than disappointment here.
David Barker
