Volume 25 Issue 6 - March 2020

STRINGS
ATTACHED
TERRY ROBBINS
Not many months go by without a new set of the Bach solo works
for violin or cello appearing, and this month sees two new
additions.
The American cellist Mike Block is a
member of the Silkroad Ensemble and
inventor of the Block Strap, an attachment
that allows the cellist to stand and walk
around while playing. His latest release,
Step into the Void (Bright Shiny Things
BSTC-0132 brightshiny.ninja), is a 3CD set
featuring the Complete Bach Cello Suites
with a live companion album featuring
phonograph performance artist Barry Rothman.
Normally with these releases the booklet notes mention a lifelong
study of the works and an attempt to define a personal approach to
the music before committing a performance to disc, but while Block
admits to doing “the obligatory study” of various editions and recordings
with the goal of creating his own consistent and historically
informed interpretation, he now opts instead for spontaneity preferring
to find different ways of playing them every time and not making
too many performance decisions in advance, instead letting the feel of
the audience and the acoustic space be his guide.
Certainly there’s a refreshing freedom and a sense of exploration in
his beautiful playing here, a feeling of “let’s see where this goes” with
delightful results. For this album he limited himself to two takes for
each movement in order to “stay in the moment” and “play from the
gut.” He also chose not to observe repeats in the dance movements
(i.e. 30 of the 36 movements – all but the opening Preludes) so the
two Cello Suite CDs are relatively short at about 37 and 50 minutes
respectively.
The third CD, recorded live at a sold-out show a few days after the
recording of the Bach Suites, grew from an earlier free-improvisation
performance with Rothman. Block asked if they could play a
completely improvised live duo concert with him using only material
from the Bach Cello Suites. The results are quite fascinating – with
less LP interaction than you might expect – although probably not to
everyone’s taste.
A bonus track of Block’s own pizzicato Prelude to a Dream
completes a quite special set.
Violinist Tomás Cotik’s brilliant recording of
the Bach Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin
(Centaur CRC 3755/3756 tomascotik.com) is
released this month to mark the 300th anniversary
of their composition.
The promo copy came with an extremely
detailed 32-page booklet which appears to
be a collection of the ten brief articles Cotik
wrote for The Strad magazine last year, and
which can be accessed through his website at tomascotik.com. Just
about every approach to performance issues is addressed – everything
from the physical instrument and bow through early treatises and
editions, to the implementation of slurs, dynamics, chords, vibrato,
pitch, ornaments, trills and much more.
Cotik uses a modern violin – albeit with softer and more resonant
strings than usual – with a Baroque bow, which he feels offers more
expressive potential, subtle nuances and transparent textures and
allows for “a lighter sound, quicker, more flowing tempi, and lively
articulations.” That’s exactly what we get here, with Cotik producing
a smooth but bright sound with a lightness and agility that is quite
breathtaking and never in any danger of becoming heavy-handed or
over-stressed. Slower tempos are relaxed but never allowed to drag;
faster tempos are dazzlingly brilliant, with faultless intonation.
The result is a very personal and distinctive sound and style, with
even the massive D-minor Chaconne never approaching the heavy
and ponderous tones of some recordings.
Interestingly, Cotik repeatedly returns in his writings to the need
not to be hide-bound by rules of interpretation; studying the music is
just the starting point of a journey where interpretation changes along
the way. He admits that many of those challenges “can ultimately be
solved only by each of you in performance – not to mention differently
every time” (my italics).
And perhaps, as with Mike Block, that’s the secret here; never settle
for one consistent interpretation and always let curiosity be a constant
inspiration. If Tomás Cotik ever revisits these works on record it will
be fascinating to hear the results, but it’s hard to see how they could
be better than this.
Manchester isn’t exactly a city you associate
with Baroque violin sonatas, but it’s front
and centre in Vivaldi – Manchester Sonatas,
an excellent new 2CD set from violinist
Mark Fewer and harpsichordist Hank Knox
(Leaf Music LM229 leaf-music.ca).
The manuscripts for this collection of
12 works by Antonio Vivaldi originated in
the private collection of Vivaldi’s contemporary
Cardinal Ottoboni, passing through several owners (including
Handel’s Messiah librettist Charles Jennens) before being purchased
by the Manchester Public Library in 1964. Even so, they were only
discovered in Manchester’s Henry Watson Music Library in 1973 by
musicologist Michael Talbot.
Apparently dating from the 1716-1717 period the collection contains
only four sonatas that were completely new – Nos. 5, 10, 11 and 12
– the remaining eight known to exist in earlier sources although
reworked in numerous ways here to fit the duo genre. The violin part,
while quite detailed for the period, still leaves room for embellishment
by the performer; the harpsichord part, meanwhile, does not even
feature a figured bass line most of the time, so Knox has full rein when
it comes to realizing the accompaniment.
Fewer’s playing is bright, assured and technically brilliant, with
Knox supplying a rich accompaniment that focuses more on harmonic
support than contrapuntal interplay of melodic voices. The sonatas
themselves are highly entertaining and inventive, featuring less of the
usual Vivaldi arpeggios, scales and sequences than you might expect.
The fast movements in particular are quite exhilarating.
There are no track timings, but the two CDs run to 68 and 63
minutes respectively.
There are quite lovely performances of the
Beethoven Violin Concerto & Romances on
a new CD featuring Lena Neudauer and the
Cappella Aquileia under Marcus Bosch (cpo
777 559-2 naxosdirect.com).
The ensemble, founded by Bosch in 2011
as the orchestra for the Heidenheim Opera
Festival, draws top-level musicians from
across Germany and beyond, with its size
based on the original chamber-symphony proportions of the Leipzig
Gewandhaus Orchestra. There’s a resulting clarity and transparency
to the playing that makes the concerto in particular less heavy
than in many performances, the quite dry and short opening timpani
strokes setting the stage for an idiomatic performance that never
lacks emotional depth. The timpani also features in the first movement
cadenza, Neudauer drawing on Beethoven’s own cadenza for his
piano transcription of the concerto. The Romances in G Major Op.40
and F Major Op.50 have the same delightful feeling of light and clarity
74 | March 2020 thewholenote.com