Bohuslav Martinů (1890-1959)
Complete Works for Cello and Piano
Vilém Vlček (cello)
Denis Linnik (piano)
rec. December 2024 and February 2025, Grosser Saal, Musik-Akademie, Basel
Supraphon SU 4364-2 [149]
Supraphon, and the youthful team of Vilém Vlček and Denis Linnik, have had the sensible idea of presenting not just the three cello sonatas, which fit very comfortably onto a single CD, but Martinů’s complete works for cello which fill two CDs almost to the brim. This wouldn’t be quite so important if the performances were lackadaisical, but they are, happily, anything but and make a real impression on the listener.
The performances of the sonatas tend to be incisive with fine articulation, tonally attractive, crisp and urgent without pushing the material. They catch those occasionally unstable moments where the music sets up a troubling discourse between the cello and the piano’s abrasive commentary – especially true in No.1. Dynamics are also notably well deployed. However, both these young musicians aren’t content merely to parade their tonal qualities – Vlček, in particular, is quite prepared to curdle his tone in the interests of drama, something apparent in the opening Allegro of No.2. The chorale-like nobility of this sonata’s Largo is also splendidly characterised, and its Allegro finale is taken at what is, for me, a perfect tempo – incisive, occasionally brittle, but full of life.
They find textual transparency in the Third Sonata, composed in 1952, where its folkloric elements are not far from the surface after the terseness of the wartime sonatas. The central movement is fluent and lyrically charged and the finale is properly light-hearted though acerbic when required. Above all, though, it’s full of freedom and free of stress, something well conveyed.
The other cello works are no makeweights and two are deservedly popular virtuoso showpieces. Variations on a Theme of Rossini, H 290 must have provided some respite from the rigours of early wartime composition – it was composed the year after Cello Sonata No.1. Vlček and Linnik play it with wry, droll flourish. The Variations on a Slovak Folk Song, H 378 was his last chamber work, using folk material generously but also ensuring rhythmic instability keeps the music taut and alive with the beautifully lyric curve of the writing. Raphael Wallfisch and John York also recorded the Seven Arabesques on their Nimbus disc coupled with the Sonatas, though what I detected as the slightly underpowered nature of their performance is evident here and the Czech team turn in a much faster, more colloquial, dramatic and syncopated performance. This 1931 set should be played far more often.
The Suite miniature is a dapper little collection but more generalised and less interesting – not surprisingly as these are ‘seven easy pieces for cello and piano’. Far meatier is the Pastorales, again from the ‘cello year’ of 1931 with a very much more harmonically searching vocabulary and an interest in impressionistic colour and texture – full of verve in this particularly fine performance. There’s a Romance, H 186bis, originally written for violin and found in a music library as late as 2022 and heard here in its première performance. The set of four Nocturnes, again from 1931, offer a study in contrasts between Moderato and Lento movements. The second movement is unusually intimate and lyrical for Martinů, especially in these Parisian years, and the bell chimes, in the piano, sound more graphically here than they do in the old Chuchro-Hála recording on Supraphon – the older pairing is more generously slow.
With apologies to those who have read this synopsis before, I include it as an aid to potential purchase. Stephen Isserlis’ second cycle (review) with Olli Mustonen on BIS was fast and furious (my preference is for his earlier set), the Watkins Brothers on Chandos are tough and abrasive (review), Mattia Zappa and Massimiliano Mainolfi on Claves (review) are defiant but their recorded sound is unhelpfully glacial, whilst Petr Nouzovský and Gérard Wyss on Arco Diva (review) are quite reserved. Raphael Wallfisch and John York in the latest of a fine sequence of sonata discs on Nimbus (review) are eloquent but a touch underpowered at certain points. Johannes Moser and Andrei Korobeinikov on Pentatone score highly – warm-toned and not too fast. I don’t think we have reviewed any reissues of the classic Josef Chuchro-Josef Hála recording of 1983 which, whilst also not the most incisive, is a wise, stylistically astute set. The Starker-Firkušný traversal is a classic, tensile, determined and propulsive.
I liked the Moser-Korobeinikov traversal, but this twofer gives one everything Martinů wrote for the cello-piano combination in athletic readings warmly recorded and well documented.
Jonathan Woolf
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Contents
Cello Sonata No. 1, H 277 91939)
Variations on a Theme of Rossini, H 290 (1942)
Cello Sonata No. 2, H 286 (1941)
Cello Sonata No. 3, H 340 (1952)
Variations on a Slovak Folk Song, H 378 (1959)
Seven Arabesques, H 201 (1931)
Suite miniature, H 192 (1931)
Pastorales, H 190 (1931)
Romance, H 186bis (1930)
Nocturnes, H 189 (1931)
Ariette, H 188b (1930)
