Angela and Jennifer Chun are Juilliard graduates who migrated to Nathan Milstein in Switzerland, only to debut at Carnegie Hall, and to play all over the world. They specialize in modern music, having collaborated with many modern composers, and hence the production of this disc.
I have yet to hear a work by Martinu that didn’t peak my interest; even at his most pedantic (and that is rare) he offers something important to say, and does so in a way that grabs attention. So it is with his with this 1930 Sonatina, a piece loaded with rich timbres, and clever, idiomatic counterpoint. The tough thing about two violins and a piano is making the work sound without simply having the violins play in parallel. Martinu succeeds with great skill in making the two violins separate voices yet still having the piano part able to accompany both at once, as if the one-size-fits-all accompaniment is in actuality made to fit two distinct parts.
The Shostakovich pieces are excerpts and arrangements from the composer’s works for the stage. The first (Prelude) is from The Gadfly and is one of the most-Russian sounding laments I have heard by this composer. Secondly there comes a “Gavotte”, a little tongue-in-cheek stroll from the Human Comedy. And last we have the “Waltz” from an unidentifiable source, a stinging little work that is deceptive in its alluring motives, and not a little sarcastic.
Milhaud’s Sonata is the finest work on this disc, the beginnings of his wandering tonalities just starting to make an appearance, along with some eerie similarities to Debussy’s piano music in the open chords of the bass and modal melodies. Though only 22, his skills at violin playing shine forth in this piece, not easy at all in its exposed parts and delicate tonal nuances. Composer Isang Yun (1917-95) provides a staggering stop to all the movement found in the previous three compositions with his Sonatina. Indeed, the effects of moving into a far more meditative and improvisational feel after the intensity just gone on before might easily be questioned as a programmatic blunder. The work is too long and outstays its welcome; parts of it hang around like a bad cold, and I cannot help but think the composer was self-indulgent in assuming that we need to hear so much of the same thing so often. It has some good ideas and nice effects, but the slammed-on brakes after so much musical momentum up to this piece throws us through the front car window. His Pezzo Fantasiosa starts out much the same, though the virtuoso antics of the Chun sisters help in spots. But the similarity to the Sonatine in tone and temperament does little to relieve the monotony. At 24 minutes, this is the largest chunk of time on this disc, and one of these pieces should have been eliminated and replaced with something more programmatically acceptable.
Harmonia mundi provides, as nearly always, some warm and instrumentally specific sound. I would hate to not recommend this disc because of the wonderful performances of the first three pieces, so it does get a stamp of approval, but under protest.
— Steven Ritter
