The word “Reflections” in the subtitle of Britten’s Lachrymae
is an important one, as this is a rather more complex affair
than a simple set of variations. Anyone interested in the procedures
the composer adopted should seek out Paul Hamburger’s chapter
in Benjamin Britten, a commentary on his works from a group
of specialists, edited by Donald Mitchell and Hans Keller
and published in 1952. The Dowland song is If my complaints
could passions move. As he was later to do in another Dowland-based
work, the guitar piece Nocturnal, Op. 70, Britten only
presents the theme in full at the end. This melancholy, spectral
piece is one of Britten’s lesser known works, but it is a beautiful
and satisfying one. Its closing pages are in particular, profoundly
moving.
George Rochberg’s sonata appeared in 1979, but the composer’s
widow is quoted in the booklet as saying that the work was begun
much earlier. The musical language is less advanced than Britten’s.
Indeed, we read in the booklet that Rochberg was ostracised
by the American musical establishment of the day for his decision
in the early 1970s to return to tonality and to what he called
“the art of beauty”. His Viola Sonata is certainly a
beautiful work. The first movement is primarily fast moving,
its dotted rhythms sometimes playful, sometimes rather more
dramatic. It closes quietly and most effectively. A series of
sombre chords supports the viola’s melody at the beginning of
the slow movement, marked Adagio lamentoso. These two
movements run for almost eighteen minutes, but the finale, marked
Fantasia: Epilogue has a duration of only three, and
this, I think, is the work’s only weakness. Is it meant, in
some way, to sum up what has gone before? Difficult, as the
two preceding movements are really quite different, one from
the other. The ending is certainly atmospheric, and there is
plenty of incidental interest and beauty on the way, but the
overall form of the work leaves one wondering.
Arvo Pärt’s spiegel im spiegel is probably the most
familiar work in this collection. I never know whom to feel
sorriest for when I hear this work, the pianist, condemned to
repeat endlessly similar arpeggios without the slightest recourse
to rhythmic variety, or the instrumental soloist whose scales,
beginning with just two notes and adding a note each time, must
seem equally interminable. That it casts a powerful spell is
undeniable – and it certainly lingers in the mind long after
it is over – but it is not a piece that this listener wants
to hear very often.
Death haunts the pages of most of Shostakovich’s late works,
and of his Viola Sonata in particular, completed only
a few weeks before he died. The first movement opens with a
rhythmic pizzicato figure across the viola’s strings, and this
has an important role to play in the movement, returning at
one point in the piano with an eerie viola tremolando figure
high above it. This is music that goes beyond melancholy, despondency
or even despair; it touches, in a way difficult to describe,
something far deeper in the human experience. The second movement
is a scherzo, and there are certainly high spirits here, though
they are muted and equivocal, making one seek, as so often with
the composer, the exact message behind the notes. The finale,
an Adagio, is as long as the other two movements put
together. After the opening viola solo there is a lightly disguised
but unmistakable allusion to the opening of Beethoven’s Moonlight
Sonata. This deeply moving meditation on mortality finally
comes to rest on a long, held major chord. Is this acceptance?
Has the composer, after a lifetime of struggling with demons
– political, personal, musical – at last come to terms with
what lies ahead? Getting to know this masterpiece, bleak and
spare though it be, is an enriching experience, the essence
of art.
This disc carries a dedication in honour of William Primrose
and Yuri Temirkanov, the last-named once Music Director of the
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and, incidentally, the artist responsible
for the quirky line drawing of Shostakovich on the front cover
of the CD booklet. There is a really excellent and personal
booklet note by Peter Minkler, and the disc is beautifully recorded
with just the right distance between the musicians and the listener
and an ideal balance between the two instruments. The performances
themselves are very fine indeed, with Lura Johnson offering
her soloist particularly commanding and imaginative support
from the piano. The only performance I have any doubts about
is that of the Pärt, which seems dangerously and unnecessarily
slow. The textures are unsupported when both instruments are
playing in the higher register, and there are times when Minkler
seems worryingly short of bow at the end of long held notes.
Collectors who would prefer the Hindemith Sonata to Pärt
and Rochberg should try to find Paul Silverthorne’s very fine
1994 disc on Koch on which he also plays the Britten and the
Shostakovich. Otherwise I warmly welcome this most beautiful
recital of four very different, yet complementary, twentieth-century
viola works.
William Hedley
Peter Minkler (viola); Lura Johnson (piano) 
