British Works for Cello and Piano - Volume
3
Edmund RUBBRA (1901-1986)
Cello Sonata in G minor Op.60 (1946) [22:36]
Alan RAWSTHORNE (1905-1971)
Cello Sonata in C major (1948) [14:37]
Ernest John MOERAN (1894-1950)
Cello Sonata in A minor (1945-47) [21:50]
Paul Watkins (cello), Huw Watkins (piano)
rec. Potton Hall, Dunwich, Suffolk, England, 30 October-1 November 2013
CHANDOS CHAN 10818 [59:05]
The music is the winner here. It is all too easy to lump most British music
from the 20th Century into some kind of comfy-chair pastoral blandness.
Paul Watkins, in the third volume of his survey of British music for Cello
and Piano (see reviews of Volume
1 and Volume
2), shows how three widely differing works, written over a three year
period at the end of World War II, explode that myth. Watkins is a great champion
of British music and his playing throughout displays all the commitment and
passion – together with a rock solid technique – that one could wish for.
Of course, he is not the first to be such a determined advocate. Two of the
three sonatas here — the Rawsthorne is replaced by the Ireland which Watkins
performed on volume 2 of the series — were recorded for Marco Polo by Raphael
Wallfisch together with pianist John York.
The disc opens with Edmund Rubbra’s serious and powerful Sonata from 1946.
I like the detail that the liner lists the original dedicatees as part of
each work’s listing. The Rubbra’s is William Pleeth who had served in the
same regiment as Rubbra in the War. They became lifelong friends and as well
as this piece Rubbra’s Soliloquy was written for Pleeth who is mainly
remembered today as a founding member of the original Allegri Quartet and
teacher of Jacqueline du Pré.
This is a serious piece of absolute music. The source of
inspiration seems to be baroque models but not in the neo-classical sense
but rather as a tribute to the purity of form and contrapuntal skill that
period of music encapsulates. The Chandos recording is close and detailed
with the cello just given a hint of prominence over the piano. Clearly the
Watkins brothers are very used to working together and the unanimity of utterance
is very impressive. One observation I would make is that Paul Watkins favours
an intense, almost febrile style, that on occasion in this work seems not
to chime with the element of emotional detachment there is in some pages of
the work. Wallfisch is better in this regard, more inclined to use his vibrato
speed as an expressive tool so when he is playing high in the tenor clef it
is not always with the fast pressured vibrato Watkins mainly favours. The
more recessed Marco Polo recording, with much more acoustic around both instruments
does blur some of the piano’s contrapuntal writing for York – but these are
all matters of degree. As I wrote right at the outset – the music is what
emerges from either performance with its stature increased. Interestingly,
it is Watkins who is a fraction steadier in 2nd movement Vivace
flessible, but the closer recording give more bite to his playing. Both
players embrace the ‘flexible’ instruction well – Wallfisch a fraction more
mercurial but Watkins technically rock solid. The Finale is the most impressive
movement in an already impressive work; a theme, seven [brief] variations
and fugue quite superbly crafted. The skill is the way the sections merge
through the arc of the work from slow preludial theme, gradually gathering
speed to the Con Moto Variation 5 before slowing back to the closing Fugue
marked adagio e molto sereno. This is also the movement – as liner note writer
Calum MacDonald points out - which most clearly pays homage to its Baroque
source of inspiration. The fugue occupies just under half of the movement
– I particularly like the way Watkins pares back his tone initially – at a
much slower speed than Wallfisch – so the musical material slowly grows and
blossoms from a very austere beginning. Up until this point the two interpretations
have been very similar albeit that Wallfisch reaches the closing fugue a full
minute quicker than Watkins. I do not have a score to follow but cannot imagine
this due to any musical material being cut. The final fugue shows a huge divergence.
Watkins takes around 5:20 to cover the same section Wallfisch plays in under
3:00! Watkins' unit pulse hovers around 60 beats per minute with Wallfisch
up at 85. Interestingly both 'work' - the Wallfisch flowing speed tricks the
brain into halving the pulse to just over 40 but there is a sense of a 'modern'
andante rather than the grand traditional baroque adagios that pre-dated historically
informed practice. Given the way in which this piece does embrace
baroque styles from a mid-20th century perspective my instinct is that Watkins'
is the truer reflection of what Rubbra had in mind. I do have to repeat that
I have no particular insight into the composer's mind and both are very fine
performances. Overall, with this glowingly beautiful final fugue and a finer
piano - in instrumental and recording not performance terms - I would consider
this the version to hear. There have been other recordings on Somm, Dutton
and Guild - none of which I have heard.
The central work offered here is both the latest and the shortest. Alan Rawsthorne's
C major Sonata is a new work to me - but an exceptionally fine one. It is
a sad indictment of musical fashion that Rawthorne's greatest works were written
at a time when his brand of extended yet tonal music was deemed old-fashioned
at best. So no matter how compelling works such as this one it is hard not
to fear that appreciation of his music will never achieve a critical mass
of popularity. Using the Proms archive as a measure of this would seem to
bare out the theory. Only two works - one a film score excerpt - performed
since the millennium, no symphonies ever performed at the Proms and
only his two piano concertos having any degree of 'popularity' with nine and
eight performance respectively - although ignoring a single outing for No.2
in 2005 you have to go back another 20 years for that concerto's previous
hearing and 1967 for No.1. As an aside; while in the Proms archive I checked
Rubbra too. He has had five of his eleven symphonies as well as other
works performed including some in the last two decades, yet the abiding impression
is another composer whose star has waned certainly as far as the BBC planners
are concerned.
Yet listening to the hugely impressive Rubbra Sonata or the cogent and compelling
power of Rawthorne's sub fifteen minute Sonata you have to wonder why. Do
not assume from the C major heading that the latter will be a brief and breezy
ride. MacDonald describes it as, "a work of close thematic integration
and overwhelmingly serious import." The dedicatee of this Sonata was
Anthony Pini, another exceptional British cellist who combined being a principal
of various orchestras with an active chamber music career and teaching. His
recording of the Elgar concerto with Van Beinum is still worthy of consideration.
If there were passages in the Rubbra where I was not certain that Watkins'
high-octane playing always chimed with the essence of the work here there
are no such qualms. Indeed the concentrated intensity of the writing suits
the playing to perfection. From the work's opening bars there is a sense of
dark and uneasy forces at work. The quality of the Chandos recording and the
richly resonant Steinway D adds to air of foreboding. The storm breaks less
than two minutes into the movement with much of the musical argument initially
being taken by the piano. From this point on the movement is a study in distilled
and focused dynamism, the solo cello riding the storm of the pianist's accompaniment.
The ending comes with abrupt dismissal - this is one of those movements that
'feels' bigger than its four minute timeframe would imply. The second movement
adagio is the longest section of the work, but there is little lightening
of the mood. Even the central poco piu mosso returns to the struggles of the
work's opening and the abiding impression is one of dark pessimism - "inconsolable
sorrow" is MacDonald's term. The finale manages to break the gloom -
more through a sense of energetic exercise rather than a spiritual lifting
of the prevailing mood. A return to the earlier emotions is fractured by a
sharply descending unison figure for both instruments. In turn this leads
to a recollection of the opening material of the work. Just when it seems
that cyclically the music will return to the despair where it started in the
very closing bars there is at last a shift to the major and the work ends
quietly on a consoling unison tonic. Formally, musically and emotionally this
is an impressive and satisfying work. There have been several other recordings,
usually as part of a mixed British composer recital except for the Naxos disc
where it forms part of a survey of other Rawsthorne chamber works. As mentioned
before, since this is my first encounter with the work I cannot comment in
comparative terms - suffice to say this is a superb rendition by any standards.
The disc closes with the marvellous Moeran Cello Sonata. This was dedicated
to the composer's wife and cellist Peers Coetmore. Theirs seems to have been
an unusual marriage, with neither party particularly suited to the day to
day mundanities of married life. But the relationship did inspire Moeran to
two of his greatest late works; the Cello Concerto and this Sonata. The comparisons
I made here were again with Raphael Wallfisch on Marco Polo and the seminal
performance by Coetmore on Lyrita accompanied by Eric Parkin. Any keen Moeran collector
will have this latter version because of its historical significance (coupled
as it is to Coetmore's version of the concerto too). However, it cannot be
denied that neither the performance or the recording is a match for either
of the more recent versions. Coetmore's cello as recorded is rather tubby
but of greater concern is the sense of effort that detracts from the essential
vigour of the music. However, it is important to take on board the basic tempi
Coetmore adopts. There is one passage in the finale where she adopts a much
steadier speed than either Wallfisch or Watkins either of whom are much more
dynamic here. However, there is an implacable build-up in her slower tempo
that is very effective. Unfortunately, she no longer has the sheer technical
power to crown that procession with the kind of vehement dynamic outburst
that Watkins produces in his performance. It should be said that all three
pianists are very fine. This is the most overtly Romantic of the three sonatas
on the disc and the ardent lyrical nature of the music really does suit Watkins'
style perfectly. Wallfisch's special strength lies in the ruminative and reflective
passages, but he cannot match Watkins for sheer dynanism. In these later works,
Moeran seems to want to create an idealised Irish sound-world fusing soulful
ballads and wild jigs and reels. Returning to this work after some time it
did strike me what a powerful work it is. In many ways more impressive and
successful than the companion concerto.
Indeed, my abiding impression from this entire disc is of music that deserves
to be much more widely known. Great praise to the Watkins brothers for producing
such a convincing and enjoyable recital - I return to my opening comment underlining
the extraordinary richness and diversity expressed in these three works. This
is a typically polished Chandos production; detailed and rich recording in
24-bit (not SA-CD) at their favoured Potton Hall venue allied to excellent
tri-lingual liner notes.
I hope that the Watkins brothers are able to continue their evangelising of
these and similar works and transfer the success they have with this repertoire
on disc into concert-hall performances.
Nick Barnard
Rubbra review index
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