Only two months ago I had never known Charles-Valentin Alkan’s Cello Sonata (1847), but this 17-19 December 2007 recording is my second to review in as many months. Modeled on the Cello Sonata by Frederic Chopin (1846), Alkan’s extends an immediate muscularity and joie de vivre that, under the gifted hands of cellist Alban Gerhardt prove quite compelling. The fervent, even feverish opening movement, Allegro molto, plunges forward and immediately pulls back for a lilting cantabile or two, while all the while the piano part blisters by in sterling 16th notes. Alkan marks the lyrical second movement Allegrettino, and it proceeds by a halting albeit limpid gait, a rocking series of figures in the cello over a purring piano ostinato. The music wants to waltz, but it often seems lost in thought. The piano part might hint at a siciliano at times, but then the music becomes a gavotte or tender march. The third movement bears an inscription from the prophet Micah on the score: “a dew from the Lord. . .,” which the composer imitates in the form of keyboard droplets, diaphanously rendered, tremolando, by pianist Steven Osborne (b. 1971). The last movement Saltarella communicates manic energy, bouncing as much as singing, the two soli in constant, furious, tumbling figures. Brilliant for its own sake, the piece proves an effective vehicle for the virtuosi and listener alike, sparkling smiles everywhere.
Chopin’s G Minor Sonata holds true to the stylistic and harmonic developments he manifests in his late nocturnes and the knotty Barcarolle and Polonaise-Fantasy. Counterpoint and modal harmonies now color the Chopin style, the melodies themselves often searching or groping toward some unresolved, chromatic cadence. Much of the dark timbre and harmonic color points to Gabriel Faure. The nasally piercing tone of Gerhardt’s Matteo Gofriller instrument captures the direct, often razor-thin, melodic contour of the piece. The sheer, labyrinthine twists and turns of the passionately declamatory first movement surely must have baffled Chopin contemporaries, the sonata-form fused to a fantasy structure that Scriabin would find attractive. The Scherzo begins with a decidedly martial edge, but the tenor relaxes into elastic phrases that enjoy protean transformations into short and long phrases, and one especially tender waltz. Chopin’s late ability to concentrate lyric impulses into a densely confined space manifests itself in the Largo, where the two instruments go their separate ways, almost two distinct nocturnes that vie for our admiration. The music could be an interlude from his E minor Concerto, and it certainly influenced the Brahms B-flat Concerto. Traditional bravura marks the Finale: Rondo, swirling and pulsating in its ineluctable progression to G Major. Seamlessly effected, the Chopin and Alkan sonatas bespeak two musicians of singular vision.
— Gary Lemco
