Joe Cutler (born 1968)
Sonata for Broken Fingers: a chamber opera, libretto by Max Hoehn
Stalin: Stephen Richardson, bass
Maria Maximova, the pianist: Claire Booth, soprano
Gleb, Programmer at Moscow Radio: Christopher Lemmings, tenor
Dr Denisova and Public Prosecutor: Lucy Schaufer, mezzo-soprano
Leonid, the Minister: James Cleverton, baritone
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group/Sian Edwards
rec. 2024 at Recital Hall, Royal Birmingham Conservatoire
NMC BRC029 [68]
Text in English included
It’s been some years since I last had occasion to hear and review some of Cutler’s music so I was glad to have have this opportunity to hear his new chamber opera, Sonata for Broken Fingers. It was inspired by a story – which may be apocryphal – about the pianist Maria Yudina. It is said that Stalin asked for a recording of her playing a particular Mozart concerto. However, there was no such recording: either it had been a radio performance and not been kept or it even might have been destroyed, as Yudina had spoken out against the regime. Anyway, it is said that she and an orchestra assembled in the middle of the night to perform and record the concerto so that a recording could be presented to Stalin the next day.
The libretto here by Max Hoehn tells a slightly different story. The pianist is named Maria Maximova. She has been incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital for five years after having been denounced for ‘formalism’ – that catch-all term used to condemn any artist whom the regime did not approve of. She was ill-treated there. The head of Radio Moscow, Gleb, turns for help to the Minister, Leonid, who is also Maria’s brother. They arrange to fetch Maria out of confinement to record the work, which here is not Mozart but ‘Beethoven’s piano sonata No. 33.’ There is, in fact, no such sonata: Beethoven’s sonatas are numbered 1 to 32. However, Maria has had two fingers of her left hand broken. Nevertheless, with the help of Dr Denisova, she is pumped up with drugs and is able to record the work, of which we hear snatches. As the recording is being taken to Stalin, he dies. In a reversal of fortune Maria is asked to play at his funeral as an honoured Soviet artist.
The action is presented in very short scenes with occasional flashbacks, including one to Maria’s trial, where a Public Prosecutor inveighs against her. There is a good deal of spoken dialogue, and Maria also provides a narration. The musical passages tend to be very short: nothing ever takes wing, although Maria has occasional brief bursts of coloratura. The ensemble is of six players, with an extra pianist playing linking fragments on the piano between the scenes, which include some passages of pastiche Beethoven, representing the supposed sonata.
I find the story a clever but rather crude satiue on the Soviet regime and the music never really gets going as an opera. It is more like a play with incidental music. These musical passages are quite lively and inventive but tend to be brief. The singers, who also have to speak, are excellent, above all Claire Booth as Maria who has a lovely singing voice and also a good speaking one for the narrations. Stephen Richardson is a convincing Stalin, as is Christopher Lemmings as the frightened Gleb, trying to achieve the impossible, and James Cleverton as Leonid the apparatchik who has already betrayed not only his sister but also their father. The roles of Public Prosecutor and Dr Denisova are both taken by Lucy Schaufer, steely in the first role and compassionate in the second. The ensemble under Sian Edwards plays with a will and I should put in a word for Xenia Pestova Bennett who pre-recorded the piano fragments between the scenes.
As a work this reminded me of the play with music Every Good Boy deserves Favour, by the late lamented Tom Stoppard with music by André Previn, but originally for a full, not a chamber orchestra, though he later reduced the scoring. I attended this nearly thirty years ago. Like Sonata for Broken Fingers this treated dissidence as mental illness and I feel that, despite the best intentions, neither work quite comes off.
The recording is clear and good. The booklet contains the complete text, in English only, and there are a few differences between the printed text and what is actually performed. The introductory material, though, fortunately, not the libretto, is printed in orange on a black background in tiny type: you need a bright light and a magnifying glass to read it.
Stephen Barber
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