JAVS Fall 2011

R ECORDING R EVIEWS

by Carlos María Solare

where the viola accompanies the piano, both musi cians bring forth ravishing sonorities, even when the viola ventures higher than was usual in Beethoven’s days. This is an illuminating and most welcome foray into nineteenth-century performance practices (in sev eral senses), made even more interesting by a note in the booklet revealing that Silverthorne’s editions of both the horn Sonata and the Grand Duo are shortly to be published by Toccata Press. No sooner had the online Summer Issue of JAVS reached cyberspace with my comparative review of sev eral recent recordings of the Bach Suites, when another one landed on my doormat, courtesy of the AVS’s own helen Callus. Basing her work on Simon Rowland Jones’s most reliable edition, Callus transcends it by constantly seeking her own solutions for the many places that require a decision on the player’s part. These solutions are consistently satisfying, as is Callus’s reigning in of her exuberant temperament in search of a middle way between so-called “authentic perform ance” and an unashamedly Romantic interpretation of the music. She keeps her trademark voluptuous tone within discrete stylistic bounds and characterizes each movement eloquently, if not with complete consisten cy as far as Baroque style is concerned. First position and abundant open strings are appropriately favored, so the occasional Kreislerian glissando comes all the more surprisingly. Callus’s rubato can sound impatient on occasions, but this is a highly personal thing that shouldn’t deter anyone from investigating this beautiful set, recorded in a generously warm acoustic at the Domaine Forget in Canada. Tertis Viola Ensemble. Music by Telemann, Weinzierl, Bowen, Bartók, Piazzolla, Norton. Oehms Classics OC 788. J. S. Bach: “Cello” Suites. helen Callus, viola. Analekta AN 2 9968-9.

Beethoven by Arrangement . Works for Viola and Piano. Viola Sonata in A; horn Sonata, op. 17; Notturno, op. 42; Grand Duo in E-flat, op. 20. Paul Silverthorne, viola; David Owen Norris, piano. Toccata Classics TOCC 0108. Out of the eighty minutes of music included in this CD, just the first sixteen seconds are original: although Beethoven did start work on a Viola Sonata, he only got as far as bar eight! Too bad, since what we have is the buoyant beginning of a sonata movement, slightly redolent of the early violin sonatas. After it’s over, we are left with transcriptions made by Beethoven’s contemporary Franz Xaver Kleinheinz, who turned the Serenade for string trio into a Notturno for viola and piano by basically combining the violin and cello parts into one piano part, and the slightly later Friedrich herrmann, who, in a more rad ical intervention, adapted Beethoven’s Septet for viola and piano. In comparison, Paul Silverthorne’s own transcription of the horn Sonata for the viola is con siderably smaller beer, effective as it is, simply because he didn’t need to write a new piano part of his own (he did, however, pick and choose between the origi nal horn part and Beethoven’s own, more elaborate version for cello). Silverthorne has also lent a hand to both Kleinheinz and herrmann, improving the layout of their piano parts at several points. Was it worth it? In Silverthorne’s hands, and in those of his piano col laborator, the potentially boring Notturno makes unusually good sense. At a slightly lower pitch, the gut-strung Brothers Amati viola blends beautifully with the warm sound of a Viennese piano from the 1860s. (The only previous time I have actually enjoyed this piece was in Tabea Zimmermann’s per formance, played on Beethoven’s own viola and accompanied by a fortepiano from the Beethoven haus in Bonn, so there must be something about it that doesn’t translate well to modern instruments.) Similarly, in the Grand Duo (aka Beethoven’s Septet), which, like the Notturno , includes many passages

Made up of four members of the Munich Philharmonic, the Tertis Viola Ensemble was founded

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