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m u s i c CLASSICAL
Classical Caps
Shostakovich: Cello Concerto No. 1; Cello
Sonata. Han-Na Chang, cello; London
Symphony Orchestra, Antonio Pappano,
conductor. David Groves, producer;
Jonathan Allen, engineer. EMI 32422.
Music: ★★★★ 1/2 Sonics: ★★★★
Korean cellist
Han-Na
Chang was a
teenage prodigy;
today, she’s an
artist. As evidence,
here’s her
outstanding version of Shostakovich’s
first Cello Concerto, a work conceived
on a broad, symphonic scale and written
for Rostropovich in 1959. Chang
is joined by conductor Antonio
Pappano and the London Symphony at
the top if its considerable form, the
important horn solos brilliantly
played by Tim Jones.
But Chang is the star of this show.
Without neglecting the composer’s sly
humor, she’s vigorous in the virtuoso
first movement and really lets go in the
Finale, full of Shostakovich’s trademark
orchestral grotesqueries, flashy solo
work, and earthy rhythms. In the long
slow movement, Chang mesmerizes
with her caressing tenderness and ghostly,
hushed harmonics. In the following
melancholy, six-minute-long solo cadenza,
her outstanding technique and ability
to infuse each note with expressive
content are riveting.
The disc’s other half is given over to
a vastly different, earlier Shostakovich
piece, the Cello Sonata. Written in
1934, at about the time that Stalin’s
minions promulgated the notorious
“socialist realism” dogma for the arts,
it’s far more conservative in form and
content than his earlier, cheekier works.
But you can’t keep a good man down,
and there’s much lovely music here. The
long first movement gives Chang opportunities
to flaunt her big-toned lyricism,
and in the Largo she projects the longlimbed
melody with sympathetic
inwardness. Here, conductor Pappano
puts down the baton and skillfully joins
her on the piano.
With its vivid sound and powerful
bass, this is one of the best-sounding
versions of both works. The engineering
realistically captures the different timbres
of the horn solos—brazen at first,
warmer later on—with exactitude. In
the cadenza, the wide dynamics are
thrilling, the cello moving from roars to
whispers, with infinite gradations in
between. EMI’s also taken care to provide
venues that yield appropriate
acoustics for each work. DAN DAVIS
FURTHER LISTENING: Shostakovich: Cello
Concerto (Rostropovich); Prokofiev:
Symphony-Concerto for Cello and
Orchestra (Chang)
Shostakovich: Piano Trios Nos. 1 & 2.
Seven Romances on Verses by Alexander
Blok. Beaux Arts Trio; Joan Rodgers,
soprano. Da-Hong Seetoo, producer and
engineer. Warner 2564 62514.
Music: ★★★★ Sonics: ★★★★
When
the
Beaux Arts
Trio first performed
at the
Berkshire Music
Festival in 1955,
the pianist was
Menahem Pressler. He still is. I saw the
Trio in December 2005, and the 82 yearold
Pressler—now playing with two seasoned
chamber musicians (violinist Daniel
Hope and cellist Antonio Meneses) who
weren’t born when the Beaux Arts was
formed—has lost little of his technical
edge and none of his musical insight.
On its second Warner release, the
BAT takes on three Shostakovich works
that span the composer’s career. The concise
Trio No. 1 was written when
Shostakovich was only 17 but is easily
recognizable as his music, despite the
more traditionally Romantic-era feel of
the harmonies and ensemble textures.
The Second Trio, from 1943-44, is
among Shostakovich’s greatest—and
grimmest—works. Inspired by both the
premature death of a close friend and the
emerging details of the Holocaust, the
piece has a decidedly haunted quality. In
the finale, Shostakovich vividly represents
accounts he’d heard of Jews being
forced to dance before open graves prior
to being shot. The Beaux Arts doesn’t
sensationalize the horror but instead creates
an aura of cold cruelty.
Lastly, there’s the Alexander Blok
Romances, composed in the 1960s when
Shostakovich was already a sick man.
Each of the seven movements has the
singer accompanied by a different combination
of the three instruments—
singly, in pairs, and as a full trio. The
music, in the composer’s stark and concentrated
late style, is extraordinarily
evocative. Joan Rodgers’ creamy soprano
matches the sonority of the two string
players’, and she’s exceptionally responsive
to the texts.
The audio quality is superb, thanks
to Da-Hong Seetoo, to whom the
Emerson String Quartet entrusts its
sound. The piano is placed behind the
strings, allowing for a natural scaling of
the three instruments. Tonally, the
recording is exquisite. There’s no question,
for instance, that the spectral line
opening the Second Trio is the cello playing
high harmonics, rather than the violin
in its upper register. ANDREW QUINT
FURTHER LISTENING: Shostakovich: String
Quartets (Emerson); Dvorák/
Mendelssohn: Piano Trios (Beaux Arts)
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