JAVS Spring 2019

Recording Reviews

Recording Reviews Carlos María Solare

Many traits in Benjamin Cutter’s charming suite of five “bagatelles” bear witness to his training in Stuttgart, Germany, starting with its German title: Eine Liebes Novelle ( A Love Story ); it is dedicated “in veneration” to Cutter’s teacher Edmund Singer, concertmaster of the Stuttgart Court Orchestra. First performed by the composer at the New England Conservatory in 1889, this could almost be a lost cycle of phantasy pieces by Robert Schumann, chronicling a romantic relationship from the “First Meeting” to its “Happy Ending”, not lacking bout of “Melancholy” and “Jealousy”, quickly appeased by the lover’s lilting “Serenade”—all this clad in bitter sweet romantic harmonies and idiomatic writing for both instruments. Julia Klumpkey numbered Eugène Ysaÿe and Leopold Auer among her teachers—not to forget the perhaps less celebrated Parisian viola pedagogue Henri Benoit. She wrote several pieces for the viola, including the present Lullaby published in 1937, an insidiously melodious miniature that is proving hard to get out of my head. Edna Pietsch continued to write in her own brand of romanticism throughout her long life; the Andante Cantabile is thought to date from the 1950s, but a good tune is timeless anyway, and this one is beautifully set with a rich piano accompaniment that makes the most of it. I had been aware of Walter Piston’s Interlude for decades, as it is listed on the back page of Boosey & Hawkes’s editions of Britten’s Lachrymæ and the Bartók Concerto, so it’s nice to finally be able to match sounds to the name, and really stern sounds they are, too, stemming from the years of WWII. C.E. Jones—his given names seem to be a state secret but Internet research revealed the first one to be Christopher—wrote his Concerto for Viola “Monongahela” upon a commission from the present soloist; the piano-accompanied version was premiered at

The American Viola —Blood: Barcarolle ; Cutter: Eine Liebes-Novelle ; Piston: Interlude ; Pietsch: Andante Cantabile ; Klumpkey: Lullaby ; Jones: Concerto for Viola “Monongahela” . Andrea Houde, viola; Sun Jung Lee, piano. Albany TROY1749 This CD’s program is based on the American Viola Society’s ongoing eponymous project, with four of the six pieces therein having been published on the organization’s website. It is surely not a coincidence that most of the composers represented were professional viola players. Blanche Blood, who was active in the Chicago area, was also a pioneer player of the viola d’amore. Her Barcarolle , published in 1906, was “originally written for and . . . especially adapted to the deep-toned effects of the viola.” It includes a magical moment when, after a short cadenza of the viola, the piano picks up the main tune to a wave-like accompaniment on the viola.

Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 35, No. 1, Spring 2019

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