Pál HERMANN (1902-1944)
Complete Surviving Music – Volume 1
Clive Greensmith (cello)
Kateryna Poteriaieva (violin)
Alina Shevchenko, Roman Marchenko (piano)
Sofia Soloviy (soprano)
Lviv International Symphony Orchestra/Theodore Kuchar
rec. May 2018 and October 2020, Lviv National Philharmonic Hall, Lviv
Text and translations included
TOCCATA CLASSICS TOCC0443 [69:49]
I wrote a little about Pál Hermann in a review of Etcetera’s exploration of a variety of his chamber music and songs (see review). Both discs present Hermann’s setting of the Rimbaud poem Ophélie and the
Cello Concerto, though there is a major footnote to be added. Toccata has recorded an orchestration of the song and a reconstruction of the Cello Concerto: Etcetera presented just the surviving opening movement of the Concerto, for cello and piano.
I think it’s wise to start there. Budapest-born Hermann was a busy cellist, a much-admired soloist who made recordings in the 1920s. After Clive Greensmith and Beth Nam premiered the first movement of the piano reduction of the 1925 concerto – which was subsequently recorded by Etcetera – the fully orchestrated version of the movement turned up, as these things are wont to do. So, Toccata has re-engaged Greensmith, for 14 years cellist of the Tokyo Quartet, and Hermann’s grandson, Paul Van Gastel, invited the composer Fabio Conti, born in 1967, to expand and complete the work. All the solo cello writing and most of the melodic material in the remaining four movements (this is now a five-movement concerto) derive from Hermann’s other works. I am indebted to Robert Elias’ sleeve notes for making these details clear.
What this is not is a reconstruction of the Concerto, which plainly doesn’t exist. It’s one composer sifting the works of another to form, via recycling of existent material, a plausible hybrid. In the previous recording I noted that the work was an example of Hermann’s ‘eloquent and radiant romanticism harnessed profitably to Kodály’s ever-present influence.’ I think what the original orchestration also shows is the influence of Dvořákian passagework amidst the lyric richness. Thereafter we have to follow Conti’s narrative as he provides a series of presentiments of Herrmann’s eventual tragic fate; songful, melancholic, March rhythms, evocations of a train transport, focused lyricism with a vein of sadness, where the orchestration is attractively light. For the finale Conti mines youthful, folksy material, not least in the winds. Greensmith, who has since premiered the work in Lviv and in Bellingham, Washington State, plays with graceful warmth, and sympathetic phrasing.
Kammersonate for violin with string orchestra opens with a stately processional in Baroque style and throughout there are small elements that wouldn’t be too out of place in Warlock’s Capriol Suite that was composed four years earlier. This is a charmer of a piece, light, unstuffy, and very neatly played here by Kateryna Poteriaieva and the ensemble. Előjáték, for two pianos, is an overture apparently intended to open an unknown stage work. Brief though it is – just over three minutes – it is full of incipient urgency. The
Suite for Piano, played by Alina Shevchenko, dates from c.1924 and is the only work here that has been definitively recorded before, on that Etcetera disc. With hints of bell tones and Hungarian folkloric ripeness this is a colourful, rhythmically vivacious affair that encodes some Debussian impressionism and Ravelian influence in the slow finale. This performance is rather more expansive than the one on Etcetera, giving the themes a little more time to breathe. Ophélie was written at the end of the 1930s and whilst conceived for soprano and orchestra exists only in the form recorded on Etcetera, for soprano and piano. Into this breach steps Conti once more, emphasizing colouristically and harmonically the work’s very clear French resonances. Sofia Soloviy is the sensitive soloist.
Theodore Kuchar directs the Lviv International Symphony Orchestra throughout, and with exemplary results in the city’s Philharmonic Hall. Though two of the works bear a collaborative slant there is much to ponder in this disc, which happily adds to the meagre surviving corpus of works by Hermann. Happily, this is volume one in the series so more Hermann is on its way.
Jonathan Woolf
Contents:
Cello Concerto (1925, reconstructed by Fabio Conti, 2016–17) [36:29]
Kammersonate for violin with string orchestra (1930) [9:11]
Előjáték (‘Overture’) for two pianos (1921) [3:26]
Suite for Piano (c.1924) [12:25]
Ophélie (c.1939, orchestrated by Fabio Conti, 2018) [8:19]
