A dramatically energized reading of Mendelssohn’s Op. 17 ‘Variations Concertantes’ gets this album off to a rollicking start. Gabetta and Chamayou have worked together for almost two decades, and their musical chemistry is readily apparent in the opening minute as the main theme is playfully tossed between piano and cello. With each new variation Mendelssohn adds in new challenges, each of which Gabetta and Chamayou toss off with disarming ease. More impressive still (here and throughout the album) is how effortlessly they inhabit Mendelssohn’s impulsive shifts in mood and color. Sample Chamayou’s mastery of those dizzying runs in the Allegro con fuoco variation and how both performers bring such agitated energy to the seventh variation, all leading in to a beautifully shaped concluding section that revels in open-hearted lyricism as the music tapers away to its gentle close.
Chamayou plays a fortepiano by Julius Blüthner (No. 726, Leipzig 1859), with Gabetta playing the 1717 Stradivarius ‘Bonamy Dobrée-Suggia.’ The instrumental sound is beguiling, adding a more heterogenous series of colors to the palette. Cellist Christian Poltéra and pianist Ronald Brautigam (BIS) have also recorded these works on period instruments, yet Poltéra’s interpretations strike me as technically perfect but rather literal, something Brautigam’s characterful playing cannot disguise. Gabetta is certainly operating on a higher imaginative plain.
Mendelssohn completed his first cello sonata in October 1838. His 1837/38 Gewandhaus season included a series of ‘historical’ concerts in which Mendelssohn introduced his Leipzig audience to works by Bach and Handel, Haydn and Mozart, Salieri and Volger. These classical models seem reflected in the sonata. Daniel Müller-Schott and Jonathan Gilad (Orfeo) offer a reading of poised classical elegance that is deeply satisfying. But Gabetta and Chamayou also give us a sense of those classical antecedents, while also uncovering the music’s more Romantic leanings, especially in their ardent, deeply felt Andante.
In between the two sonatas Gabetta and Chamayou play a little known ‘Assai tranquillo,’ a gift from Mendelssohn to cellist Julius Rietz, written in July 1835. The work only became known in 1962 and was finally published in 2002. Its tender regret is wonderfully conveyed in this performance.
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Mendelssohn’s second sonata is far more daring, its four movements symphonic and Romantic in conception. The opening sonata form movement has an energy and melodic contour reminiscent of the composer’s ‘Italian’ symphony. The Allegretto scherzando that follows inhabits the same world as Mendelssohn’s Midsummer music (which he was working on at the same time), Gabetta and Chamayou reveling in the music’s dreamy mischievousness. The composer’s preoccupation with Bach is heard in the third movement, the opening rolled chords, chorale-like, creating a solemn mood, answered by recitative-like musings from the cello. The virtuosic music of the final movement builds to moments of ecstatic rhapsody, especially as rendered by these two gifted players.
Gabetta wanted to include four present-day “Songs Without Words,” by Jörg Widmann, Heinz Holliger, Francisco Coll, and Wolfgang Rihm. It is a fascinating idea that makes the album uniquely compelling (and a full 83 minutes). While I clearly sense Mendelssohn’s spirit in the works by Widman and Coll, the Holliger and Rihm works are more radical departures, and I am not sure I would revisit them very often. Surely others will appreciate this music more than me – it certainly received enthusiastic and engaged advocacy from Gabetta and Chamayou.
Excellent liner notes, including pictures of pages from the scores heard on the album. The recordings, made in the Philharmonie de Paris in October 2022 and June of this year, have warmth, clarity, and tremendous presence. Warmly recommended.
Mendelssohn, Holliger, Rihm, Widmann, Coll: Works for Cello and Piano
Sol Gabetta, Cello
Bertrand Chamayou, Piano
Sony, CD 19439934002
Related Albums Recommendations
Mendelssohn – Müller-Schott & Jonathan Gilad | Mendelssohn Songs Without Words – Baremboim | Widmann String Quartets – Leipziger Streichquartett | Coll Violin Concerto – Patricia Kopatchinskaja
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