Eduard Tubin (1905-1982)
Chamber Music
Triin Ruubel (violin)
Xandi van Dijk (viola)
Theodor Sink (cello)
Kärt Ruubel (piano)
rec. 2025, Konzerthaus Abtei Marienmünster, Germany
MDG 903 2370-6 SACD [61]
This is a cannily compiled selection of Eduard Tubin’s chamber music that manages to present a couple of world premiere recordings as well as trawling back and forth – back to a student Piano Quartet, which, stylistically speaking, might surprise a few people and forward to the deeply impressive and expressive Viola Sonata of 1965.
There are two brief early solo piano pieces being given, it would appear, disc premieres. Rediscovered in the early 2000s, Sarcasm – appropriately tart and terse at only 1:45 – and the contrastingly resonant and rich Sonnet may not tell us much about Tubin but do explore his music-making in the period circa 1928-30. The Piano Quartet also comes from this period, definitively dated to 1930 and his final student work. It’s cast in a single movement lasting 15 minutes but is clearly sectional and teems with hothouse inspirations. It’s cast in a heated post-Franckian style, its Franco-Belgian element unmistakeable, the music moving fluidly and ardently. The Grave section is at first intoned by the cello then taken up by the other instruments before there emerges – rather from nowhere – a folk fiddle paragraph eerily reminiscent of The Lark Ascending which ushers in rollicking high spirits.
The two Sonatas are the most nutritious works in what is inevitably a rather melange-like compilation. The Alto Saxophone Sonata of 1951 is heard in its composer-authorised transcription for Viola. It’s been recorded in the original guise, so this version offers a new slant on things. Its initial reticence is deceptive as it soon burgeons into vital life, albeit accompanied by nervous anxiety. At its heart is a troubadour song which offers a calming, lovely warmth that returns after the inevitable faster contrasting central panel. The sinewy and lively finale brings the work to a satisfying end.
The Viola Sonata is an astringent piece with some brief oases of lyricism, with urgency allied to unease. The central movement is a fast one, somewhat gaunt and profoundly serious, whilst the centre of gravity falls on the slow finale, Prokofiev probably offering the precedent. It offers no easy answers. Instead, the music remains tersely spoken, with the piano often fractious and the viola having no recourse to any legato richness. Tubin, here, remains tight-lipped, even gnomic.
There are a couple of other smaller works, a Ballade from 1939, for violin and piano, far more conventionally freewheeling and lyrical in impulse than anything else in the programme if also, to be critical, somewhat formulaic too. Pastorale was written for viola and organ and is heard here in the version for viola and piano, three minutes of innocence amidst the storm of the times.
There are other versions of most of these works though I’ve not heard them but I can say that the team of Triin Ruubel (violin), Xandi van Dijk (viola), Theodor Sink (cello) and Triin’s sister, Kärt Ruubel (piano) project these works with real insight and assurance and they’ve been well recorded. In her booklet notes, Kärt Ruubel makes the point that she has played the Viola Sonata numerous times and has always wanted to record it. Well, she has done so here, with Xandi van Dijk, to considerable effect and the whole programme sits well as a tribute to Tubin in his 120th anniversary year.
Jonathan Woolf
Contents
Sarcasm, ETW32 (c.1930)
Alto Saxophone Sonata, ETW61 (1951)
Sonnet, ETW28 (1928)
Viola Sonata, ETW63 (1965)
Ballade, ETW52 (1939)
Pastorale, ETW62 (1956)
Piano Quartet in C sharp minor, ETW59 (1930)
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