JAVS Fall 2008

all through the CD, you can feel that he and Taylor are counting for their lives. I have a recording made in the 1970s by Josef Kodousek and Jan Novotny, and here the rhythms swing effortless ly, showing unequivocally that the players are conversing in their mother tongue. Ditto regarding the Three Madrigals , the compari son being here with Jiri Novak and Milan Skampa (from the Smetana Quartet) in the 1950s. With both LPs long unavailable, however, we can rejoice in the elo quent and enthusiastic perform ances by Martinson and friends, which are technically brilliant. The informative liner notes, put ting the pieces in the context of Martinu’s American exile, are by the violist himself. Those in the Clarke CD are by Liane Curtis, president of The Rebecca Clarke Society, and are uniquely authori tative in their clarification of the genesis of these works. This par ticular selection of pieces, useful as it is for including most of Clarke’s chamber music for strings (except for the Viola Sonata and the Piano Trio), is best sampled in short doses: there are just so many soulful, slow-moving, modally tinged pieces one can listen to back to back. Some of the viola and piano pieces have been recorded previously by Helen Callus, whose uniquely sensuous playing Martinson cannot quite match. There is definitely room for both, however, and anyway the present CD includes numer ous rare offerings. Among all the viola-related soulfulness, Clarke’s sense of humor comes through in movements like the Grotesque (second of Two Pieces for viola

The latter was written in America, on a commission from the Library of Congress. A further point of contact with these particular play ers is that the piece was written in memory of Hans Kindler, the NSO’s first Music Director and a cellist himself. Hardy, a laureate of the Seventh Tchaikovsky Competition in 1982, commands a beautifully malleable tone, but I do miss an intangible idiomatic quality that the best Czech players seem to bring to their country’s music. Toshiko Kohno writes in the liner notes about her learning the Poulenc Flute Sonata from the source, as it were, when she took part in a master class with Jean Pierre Rampal, who had played the piece’s premiere with the com poser at the piano. Kohno’s per

and cello, one of the few compo sitions of Clarke’s to be published during her lifetime), and especial ly the Combined Carols for string quartet, a hilarious romp that brings the CD to a light-hearted conclusion. Martinson and his colleagues of the Julstrom Quartet, paired in different com binations, make an excellent case for the rediscovery of Clarke’s music. The Beauty of Two. Duo per formances by The Kennedy Center Chamber Players. Grieg: Cello Sonata; Hindemith: Viola Sonata, op. 11 No. 4; Poulenc: Flute Sonata; Martinu: Cello Sonata No 3. David Hardy, cello; Daniel Foster, viola; Toshiko Kohno, flute; Lambert Orkis, piano. Dorian DSL-90705.

This recording fea tures principal players of the National

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Symphony Orchestra,

Washington, D.C., and is dedicated to the memory of Mstislav Rostropovich, who was the orchestra’s Music Director from 1977 to 1994. Accordingly, it is cellist David Hardy who gets the lion’s share of the CD’s running time, with expressively eloquent readings of the Grieg and Martinu sonatas.

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