Ivan SOKOLOV (b. 1960)
Chamber and Instrumental Music
Violin Sonata No.2 (2018) [24:12]
Reminiscence for Piano, four hands (2013) [6:31]
Thirteen Postludes for viola and piano (2018) [31:50]
Elegie for solo viola [6:20]
Karen Bentley Pollick (violin, piano, viola)
Ivan Sokolov (piano)
Rec. 24-27 September, 2019 Immanuelskirche, Wuppertal, Germany
TOCCATA CLASSICS TOCC0560 [68:54]
Three things struck me immediately on hearing this disc, firstly that I knew the opening of the violin sonata (I didn’t), secondly that it is SO refreshing to hear music which once might have been considered ‘old hat’ by misguided members of the ‘musical establishment back in the 1950s-60s and lastly what a prodigious talent Karen Bentley Pollick is to be proficient enough to record playing violin, viola and piano! The music has a late 19th century ring to it which, as I said I, find musically reassuring, for surely in music it is a true as in any other area of life that “if it ain’t broke why fix it?” Don’t get me wrong I do not mean that composers shouldn’t seek to push the boundaries but that doing so for no better reason than because it is thought that if they didn’t, they’d be written off is not a good enough one. This happened, regrettably, in the 1950s and many really good composers and music was lost to listeners at that time. This is the sort of music I would like to write if only I could compose; beautifully melodic, richly tuneful, restful in the extreme; just the sort of music to help you unwind which we need more than ever during these most testing of times. It was therefore, interesting to read that his music was initially “avant-garde (and) conceptual” and “A postmodern approach he termed ‘natural’, ‘simple’ or ‘pure’ appeared in the early 2000s…” after he had got tired of his early style.
Sokolov’s Violin Sonata No.2 tugs at the heartstrings in a way that all lovers of Rachmaninov will immediately recognise with an achingly beautiful melody at the core of the first movement that has a fragile edge to it. The second acts as a kind of bridge and the third sees a replay of that core theme that is developed in an equally delightful way. The final movement brings about a complete change of tone with an agitated introduction which continues throughout with echoes of the core theme hovering in the background though disturbed by this anxious mood while the soaring violin takes us up to a fortissimo closing.
Karen Bentley Pollick swaps violin for piano to join the composer in his Reminiscence for Piano, four hands. It is another piece in the Russian romantic tradition that seems to embody within it a palpable nostalgia for Sokolov’s mother country; Russians are renowned for missing the country of their birth more than many other races, when away from it. Such inspiration, however, makes for a superbly evocative work.
To explain the background to Thirteen Postludes for viola and piano would require copying verbatim from the accompanying insert for it is technically complex. Suffice it to say that Sokolov is “a synaesthete who hears keys as colours” and the description gives the colours attached to each one along with the mood he sought to evoke e.g. ‘angelic, red’, ‘Mahlerian, yellow’, ‘transcendental, medium blue’. These are the kind of pieces that make the music lover so grateful they enjoy this art form and for the wide-ranging inspiration that composers draw upon to power their writing. Mere words cannot hope to convey the depths that the composer can plumb and these short pieces are exemplars par excellence that music really can ‘reach parts that other’ art forms ‘cannot reach’.
The final work on this intriguing disc sees Karen Bentley Pollick stay with the viola for Sokolov’s
Elegie for solo viola. Once again it is more than a collection of notes but a profoundly felt work which depicts “‘the completion of a large and eventful life’” and at the end of the piece we ‘“hear the soul exiting the body, meeting its guardian angel’” and Sokolov enables the soloist to represent clods of earth being dropped onto the coffin lid; a truly extraordinary experience.
Ivan Sokolov is clearly a composer of astonishing talent whose emotions are displayed in the most powerful and deeply felt ways and I am so glad to have been able to make his musical acquaintance through this marvellous disc. I can only imagine what he can produce in orchestral terms which I am eager to discover. Add to his compositional talents a rich an expressive pianism which this record show in spades. It was a lucky thing for both him and Karen Bentley Pollick to have found each other back in 2004 since when they have developed a close understanding of each other’s musical abilities which further enriches Sokolov’s writing and their playing. As I wrote in the introduction it is unusual on a single disc for a musician to be recorded playing three different instruments as Pollick does and the biographical details in the notes takes over two pages to list all her awards and performance history; she is extraordinarily talented. The sound is exemplary as is to be expected from Toccata Classics and it is to their credit that these works are their first recordings. Thank goodness there are recording companies like them that are not solely motivated by profit for music and composers like Sokolov would certainly be the losers.
Steve Arloff
