LERA AUERBACH: Celloquy = 24 Preludes for violoncello and piano; Sonata; Postlude – Ani Aznavoorian, cello/Lera Auerbach, p. – Cedille

by | May 28, 2013 | Classical CD Reviews

LERA AUERBACH: Celloquy = 24 Preludes for violoncello and piano; Sonata for violoncello and piano; Postlude for violoncello and piano – Ani Aznavoorian, cello/Lera Auerbach, p. – Cedille CDR 90000 137, 75:12 [Distr. by Naxos] ****:

Like Leonard Bernstein, composer, pianist, poet, playright and visual artist Lera Auerbach (b. 1973) is faced with the challenge of how to allocate time between her creative passions. “I’ve been cursed and blessed with this need to express myself in all these different areas – in music, in literature and the visual arts,” she said in an interview for San Francisco Classical Voice. But, unlike Bernstein, who constantly fretted over his many talents, Auerbach has accepted her creative diversity. “So I’m constantly asked, when am I going to make up my mind and concentrate on one thing or another, and at some point I realized I am never going to make up my mind, because they are all a part of me.” Auerbach was in America on a concert tour in 1991, when she spontaneously decided to live in America and leave her native Russia. Since then, she has published three volumes of poetry and prose in Russian, composed a full-length ballet, “The Little Mermaid” that has received over 150 performances worldwide, and written an opera, “Gogol” and a “Requiem – Ode to Peace.” She’s composed string quartets, symphonies, theater works, and concertos too numerous to mention. She’s served as composer in residence at several international music festivals. In short, Auerbach’s developed a very successful musical, artistic and literature career.

Auerbach has become fascinated by the challenge of writing preludes – works of short but varying lengths for each of the 24 major and minor keys. She started writing preludes for piano, added a set for violin and piano, and here, Celloquy, 24 Preludes for violoncello and piano. It’s a 50-minute work that explores the unusual characteristics, colors and sonorities of piano and cello. Some of the techniques for piano include tone clusters, prolonged pedaling, and complex layering of textures. The different ways of playing the cello include bowed and pizzicato motives, glissando passages, playing sul ponticello (on the bridge), and microtonal quarter-tone trills, among others. Although they vary in length from 47 seconds to almost five minutes, the composer intends the 24 preludes to be an organic part of a larger composition. She often juxtaposes a slower prelude next to a faster one. Prelude No. 10 is called Sognando (Dreaming); No. 12 takes a beautiful theme and distorts it into a weird, troubled remembrance; No. 14 is an acerbic version of a theme from Mozart’s Magic Flute; No. 16 a disturbing waltz. In No. 17, the cello mimics an electric guitar, and No. 18 is a neo-baroque dance. The constantly challenging variety makes Celloquy intellectually and musically stimulating, but it never quite coalesces into a whole.

In the Sonata for Violoncello and Piano (2002), the cello and piano are equal partners in a conversation that “play contrasting roles and expresses different characters. At times, this co-existence is a dialogue, at times a struggle, at times an attempt to resolve inner questions,” the composer states. The emotional center of the work is the Lament, where a deeply felt Russian cello melody is expanded by increasingly dramatic piano chords that add to the angst. It’s one of the highlights of this disc. An obsessively energetic scherzo raises the anxiety level for the final movement, which mirrors the poem in the program booklet that Auerbach wrote: “Abyss.” Using microtonal cello trills, it’s a harrowing conclusion that conveys the composer’s image “of standing at the edge of an abyss, where nothing is left of the past or the future.” The listener is lead into another world, bleak and scary, but very passionate. Postlude for violin and piano defines that world by transforming the distorted melody in “Prelude No. 12” and adding chords on a prepared piano. It’s ethereal and sad.

There’s a lot of Russian sorrow and angst in Auerbach’s music, but her 21st century musical inventions provide lots of musical interest. Cellist Ani Aznavoorian and pianist Auerbach are at one with the music and the recording is close and impactful. Anyone who loves the cello will savor the performances and be captivated by the music. Auerbach is certainly one of the leading voices of new music today, and this disc is worthy of her efforts.

—Robert Moon

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