Sonic Alchemy
Yu Eun Kim (violin), Mina Gajić (piano), Coleman Itzkoff (cello)
rec. 2022, Sono Luminus Studios, Boyce, USA
Sono Luminus DSL-92261 [68]
How do we even measure time?
This is the question asked at the beginning of the booklet accompanying this absorbing disc. It supposes that time is a construct of man and that time, as we understand it, has not always been the same. To quote from the booklet, “Our ideas on time have changed throughout the centuries and will probably continue to do so. The works on Sonic Alchemy are of composers who offer a new perspective on how we can perceive time, each in their own way.”
Mozart may seem a strange bedfellow for the two contemporary composers we have here, but there is an obvious link with Pärt’s Mozart-Adagio for piano trio, a re-working of the slow movement from Mozart’s Piano Sonata in F major, K. 280, in which Pärt seeks to subtly blend the styles of the two composers into a single natural whole. It is framed by Mozart’s two Piano Fantasias K.397 and K. 480, which are both performed as written.
The disc opens with Vasks’ Balta Ainava (White Scenery) for solo piano, an evocative piece which is written sensa misura. There is no tempo written into the score, the performer is instructed to play “very sweetly and softly”. Gajić responds with an unsentimental approach, which perfectly allows the music to speak for itself, her tone clear and pellucid. This is followed by Pärt’s Fratres in the version for piano and cello, in which the composer’s method is based on a fixed relation between two voices. This is where I noticed a tendency for Gajić to overuse the pedal, which somewhat muddies the textures of her part. This is a shame because Coleman Itzkoff is a wonderfully lucid partner. This overuse of the pedal also creeps into her playing of the Mozart Fantasias, which are a bit heavy and a little too rigid, lacking in, well, fantasy. No competition here for the likes of a Mozart spécialiste, like the wonderfully sensitive Maria João Pires. Still, they do not feel out of place in this programme, their juxtaposition with the other works on this disc bringing them forward out of their own time and into the twentieth century.
The other Vasks piece is Castillo Interior, a duet for violin and cello, which contrasts long hymn-like, somewhat devotional phrases with rapid, almost aggressive sections, which perhaps remind us that the bustle and violence of the outside world is never far away. It is brilliantly performed here by YuEun Kim and Coleman Itzkoff.
Finally, we come to the most well-known piece on the disc, Pärt’s ubiquitous Spiegel im Spiegel, which, clocking in at 10:24, must be one of the slowest on record. Tamsin Little only takes 8:14 over it, but listening to it after this performance, Little seemed a little rushed to me. Kim’s tone here is ethereal, almost insubstantial and she and Gajić sustain the slow tempo brilliantly. I found myself hanging on to each note and just for these ten minutes it felt as if time really did stand still.
I should just mention that the recording quality is first rate. Despite my reservations about the performance of the Mozart Fantasias, I found this an absorbing disc, and one that I shall certainly return to from time to time.
Philip Tsaras
Help us financially by purchasing from
Contents
Pēteris Vasks (b.1946)
Balta Ainava (White Scenery)
Arvo Pärt (b. 1935)
Fratres
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Fantasia in D Minor, K.397
Arvo Pärt
Mozart-Adagio (after Sonata K. 280)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Fantasia in C Minor, K. 475
Pēteris Vasks
Castillo Interior (Interior Castle)
Arvo Pärt
Spiegel im Spiegel
