Ravel: Sonate posthume; Tzigane; Enescu: Impressions d'enfance; Sonata No. 3

George Enescu (Composer), Maurice Ravel (Composer), Peter Nagy (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Peter Nagy
• Composer: George Enescu, Maurice Ravel
• Audio CD (November 25, 2003)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Ecm Records
• ASIN: B0000CNVFL
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #162,812 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

This record pairs two composers linked by personal and stylistic association with two performers ideally suited to their music technically and temperamentally. Both composer were attracted to gypsy music, as is shown in the works included here: one early and one late work each. Both were members of Fauré's composition class at the Paris Conservatoire, and it seems likely that Ravel's violin sonata--written in 1897 but not published until 1975--with its lush, impressionist texture and soaring, high-flying violin line, was inspired by Enescu's playing and first performed by the two of them, as was Ravel's second, famous sonata three decades later. However, Enescu was not involved with Ravel's Tzigane, dedicated to the young Hungarian virtuoso Jelly d'Aranyi, perhaps because by 1924 he had turned away from pure bravura gypsy fiddling. His own Third Violin Sonata is influenced more by specifically Roumanian folk music; some of the melodic lines, harmonic progressions and general air of melancholy have an almost Oriental character. The 10 Impressions are fascinating, depicting moods, situations and visual scenes, complete with sound effects like squeaking birds, cuckoo clocks, and whistling wind. The main interest of this record, however, is in the playing, and it is spectacular. Kavakos, multiple prize-winner in Europe and America, is a stunning virtuoso but seems uninterested in mere technical display, tossing off the most hair-raising fireworks, from bravura bowings to double harmonics, with casual ease. His tone has a uniquely personal expressiveness; dark, pure, focused, and variable, it can glow intensely or float delicately. Identifying naturally with the idiomatic rhythms, harmonies, and character of the music, he plays with great warmth and passion--a sort of controlled abandon. This must be one of the best Tziganes on record, and Nagy, a splendid pianist and partner, almost sounds like a orchestra. --Edith Eisler

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Masterful readings of Enescu's two masterful compositions for violin and piano, July 14, 2007

By 

Discophage (France) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Ravel: Sonate posthume; Tzigane; Enescu: Impressions d'enfance; Sonata No. 3 (Audio CD)

I thought I was fairly knowledgeable in the music of George Enescu, and I had multiple versions of his Violin and Piano Sonatas, including of course his famous 3rd, "Dans le caractère populaire roumain" (in the Rumanian Folk Character), one of the composer's great masterpieces and one of the finest pieces written in the medium in the first 50 years of the 20th century. However, I had never encountered his "Impressions d'Enfance" (Impressions from Childhood) Op. 28 before chancing on this disc. Possibly from its title I had surmised that it was an unsubstantial, trifling piece, maybe of pedagogical intent - and I must not have been the only one to think so, as it had been quite seldom recorded, much less than the 3rd Sonata, although it has been better represented on disc since the late 90s.

We were all erring. It is an absolute masterpiece, of equal stature with the 3rd Sonata. Composed in 1940, in a time of war, and first performed by Enescu himself and Dinu Lipatti at the piano, the "Impressions d'Enfance" is a nostalgic and comforting reflection of the ageing composer (he was turning 60 then) on his childhood, and especially a conjuration of his memories from the famous Gipsy fiddler Nicolas Chioru. It is a suite of 10 pieces playing without break, with evocative titles - ""The Strolling Fiddler", The Old Beggar", "Brooklet at the Far End of the Garden", "Bird in Cage and Cuckoo Clock on the Wall", Lullaby", "Cricket", "Moon through the Window Panes", "Wind in the Fireplace", "Storm Outside, in the Night", "Rising Sun" - and the music is descriptive, but it is much more than that: Enesco puts to full use a wide array of incredible Gipsy-inspired violin effects, trills, sul ponticello and ricochet bowing, harmonics, ornate melismatas, while the piano part is thick and showered with grace notes, glissandos and arpeggios, giving it a very "aquatic" texture. Special highlights are "The Strolling fiddler", appropriately written for unaccompanied violin, first rhapsodic then finishing like a Bach sonata, the "Bird in Cage" with its incredible high-pitched trills and glissandos, the Cricket sound played with saltando bowing, the "Wind in the Fireplace" with its "quasi sul ponticello un poco flautato, non vibrato" playing. It is a journey through the afternoon, evening and night, ending with the rising morning sun in an exultant D major.

Well, since discovering the piece, I've caught up, and those who've already encountered the Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos (for instance from his recording of Sibelius' Violin Concerto on BIS: Jean Sibelius: Violin Concerto in D minor (Original Version); Violin Concerto in D minor) will not be surprised that he has an edge over most of the (fine) existing competition - which includes Patrick Bismuth on Zig Zag (Violin Sonata / Tzigane), Philippe Graffin on Avie (In The Shade of Forests: The Bohemian World of Debussy, Enescu & Ravel) and Mihaela Martin on Bis (Enescu: Impressions) - except perhaps over Gidon Kremer (Enescu: Impressions d'Enfance; Schulhoff, Bartok: Violin Sonatas). Not only does Kavakos command an admirable purity of tone and show precise attention to the myriad details of dynamics and tempo, he puts them at the service of wonderful poetry (his old beggar and bird in the cage exude a heart-rending nostalgia and sadness) and sonic imagination (his cricket must be heard to be believed. He doesn't just play "saltando" as Enesco instructs but - like Kremer - adds to that a pinched sound that brings wonderful color and character). Only in the "Brooklet" do I find that he and Nagy are markedly less evocative than Kremer and Maisenberg, whose eerie harmonics and hazy piano ripples work wonders, and the sul ponticello effect of the "Wind in the Fireplace", as fine as it is, is simply no match to the eerie and terrifying sounds Kremer pulls out of his fiddle. Kavakos finds in pianist Peter Nagy an equal partner. But ECM must be chided for not cuing the various movements of the suite, making it sometimes difficult, without a score, to know when the new evocation starts.

Kavakos and Nagy turn out a fine reading of the 3rd sonata, marked by its very spacious pacing (compare Kavakos to Enescu himself, recorded in 1943 with Dinu Lipatti at the piano, once available on a Philips Legendary Classics 2-CD set, or to Yehudi Menuhin's premiere recording of the piece in 1936 (Menuhin Plays Enescu, Szymanowski, Prokofiev, Ravel): 9:39 to respectively 7:24 and 7:58 in the 1st movement, 9:41 to 7:26 and 8:21 in the 2nd). The approach highlights the brooding and quasi neurasthenic side of the first movement, even in its more playful moments. Kavakos' non vibrato harmonics in the second movement have a mesmerizing, other-worldly quality and the broad tempo makes the music a moving meditation (but not quite the hauntingly obsessive nightmare evoked by Ami Flammer and Jean-Claude Pennetier, at an even slower tempo, in their 1988 recording for the small French label Thesis, now unavailable), though the center part, with its virtuoso Gispsy high-pitched chirping, has plenty of dash. Kavakos' tone remains admirably fleshy even in the big climaxes, here and in the finale. The latter, taken at a basic tempo very similar to Enescu's own, has the strong pulse and appropriate flavor of a Rumanian rustic dance. Throughout Kavakos displays admirable imagination in his rendition of the myriad articulation and expression details minutely written down by Enescu.

This reading may not display the same kind of daring personality as Sherban Lupu (1985, Continuum, Enescu: Violin Sonata No.3; Bartok: Sonata for Solo Violin; Ysaye: Violin Sonatas Nos. 3 & 6), Patrick Bismuth (see link above) or Patricia Kopatchinskaja (Rapsodia:: Patricia Kopatchinskaja) but neither does it have their excesses. Though stylistically situated on an opposite pole, it is in its own way as classically poised as the superb 1967 account of Isaac Stern (Franck, Debussy, Enesco: Violin Sonatas).

The inclusion of Ravel's Tzigane as a filler makes sense stylistically, even if it doesn't amount to a program as coherent as Mihaela Martin's all-Enescu recording on Bis (she adds the Second Violin-Piano Sonata, see link above). Kavakos plays Tzigane with big tone, passion and expression but also - many fiddlers get so carried away with the Gypsy niceties of Tzigane that they forget the importance of that quality, and that it is the prim Ravel who wrote the piece, not a Gipsy - discipline. On headphones though Kavakos' breathing is a minor nuisance in the introductory cadenza. I have no particular insight on the interpretation of Ravel's youthful Violin Sonata, and I'll just take it as a welcome bonus to the whole disc.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Recommended Without Reservation, April 19, 2004

By 

Lawrence A. Schenbeck (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ravel: Sonate posthume; Tzigane; Enescu: Impressions d'enfance; Sonata No. 3 (Audio CD)

This recording has given me more pleasure than just about anything I've heard in the last half year. The performances are superb, the unique repertoire makes an indelible impression. And it is engineered to demonstration-level standards. You won't believe the variety of colors and gestures these two musicians coax out of their instruments, individually and collectively. It is obvious that they have a deep rapport with each other and a strong commitment to this music.

Although the Ravel selections are handled with aplomb, for me it's really the works by George Enescu (1881-1955) that form the heart of this album. Listen once to his Sonata No. 3 "dans le caractere populaire roumain" and you'll never get it out of your head. It's Romanian folk music from the far hills, as remembered and interpreted by a master musician who could see it both from "within" and "without" -- Enescu makes it feel both familiar and utterly mysterious. The Impressions of Childhood are equally complex, sophisticated yet charming. That was one clear-eyed child: there's not an ounce of sentimentality in these memories of birds singing, a night storm, the little stream "at the bottom of the garden." A wonderful CD.