JAVS Spring 2022

Recording Reviews

who also have place here. What of Glinka and Borodin? What of Scriabin and Stravinsky and Khachaturian? Well, then what of…Bunin, Sokolov, and Shebalin? Yes, what of Bunin, Sokolov, and Shebalin? These three composers, Vendryes’s listeners will find, are just as “Russian” in their sound as the others mentioned above. And this is what I found most interesting and pleasing in the works on the present album performed by Vendryes and David. We will focus on their works here, but the Glinka deserves mention too, of course. The Glinka sonata is beautifully played by Vendryes and David, and as on many recital programs proves to be a good “opener” on this album during which both players show the richness of their individual and combined tone, their sensible and sensitive romantic hearts which paint the lyricism this work is known for wonderfully. Following the sonata by Glinka is one by Revol Bunin. Being in the second slot, as it were, on the album, this sonata provides the listener with something of the Russian scherzando and wit. This is not given us with the bitterness of Shostakovich or frenetic brilliance of Prokofiev, but with something more resigned. I identify this especially at cadences, half and full, in the opening movement and others where one often finds the melodic material punctuated with a short, descending chromatic gesture that, to my ear, suggests something of Russian irony and resignation. The same sort of thing is found in the other two movements of Bunin’s sonata which have a lightness of character, the witty scherzando and occasional whimsy which both performers carry off expertly and with what one can describe as an involved detachment, a contradiction entirely appropriate in the context of this “Russian” album. Though written in four movements, the Sokolov is the shortest sonata on the album; it is also the “newest”, having been written in 2006. This sonata was for me the most brooding of present collection. This brooding is not extroverted (read: loud and “in your face”) as I sometimes feel in music by, say, Shostakovich, but rather intimate and personal. At times, especially in the second movement Andante , there is a sense of isolation perhaps self-imposed, a dreamy, moonlit wander in the wood where the person

Three Centuries of Russian Viola Sonatas Basil Vendryes, viola William David, piano

Viola Sonata in D minor, Mikhail Glinka (arr. V. Borisovsky) Viola Sonata in D minor, Revol Bunin Viola Sonata, Ivan Sokolov Viola Sonata in F minor, Op. 51, No. 2, Vissarion Shebalin As Principal Violist of the Colorado Symphony and Faculty member at the University of Denver’s Lamont School of Music, Basil Vendryes boasts an impressive career which includes previous activities as a chamber musician and orchestral player with several important orchestras around the country, including the New York Philharmonic and San Francisco Symphony. With this release of his first solo album, Three Centuries of Russian Viola Sonatas , Vendryes shows us how he has achieved such great professional success as a performer: his tone is expressive and emotional, his technique well executed and finely polished. The album includes the familiar Sonata in D minor of Glinka and three other sonatas which, to risk an assumption, are rather less familiar, by Revol Bunin, Ivan Sokolov, and Vissarion Shebalin. To risk another assumption, or series of assumptions, Russian music (of the last three centuries at least!) is noted for its tender lyricism, its broad, dreamy, sweeping melodies, its sharp wit and ironic, sometimes bitter scherzando . And all this with an incredible, sustained weight, a studied use of detachment and sense of isolation. These characteristics, though not one of them encapsulates all of them, are recognizable in well-known Russian composers such as Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Shostakovich, and Prokofiev. But this is just a bare handful taken from a pool of other important Russian composers

Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 38, No. 1, Spring 2022

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