Sol Gabetta Archive

VASKS: Presence – Sol Gabetta, cello – Amsterdam Sinfonietta – Sony Classical

by Audiophile Audition | May 3, 2016 | Classical CD Reviews

VASKS: Presence – Sol Gabetta, cello – Amsterdam Sinfonietta – Sony Classical 88725423122, 61:00 ***: Vasks divides the difference between risk and reward and comes out ahead. The Latvian composer Peteris Vasks likes to take risks. His symphonies are wide sprawling affairs, romantic at core with long reflective passages that can suddenly erupt into frantic desperation. These outbursts often occur with little warning. His Concerto No. 2 for Cello and String Orchestra works like this. It begins as an extended cadenza, reflective, with Samuel Barber-ish sentimentality. The statuesque Sol Gabetta plays it with some mastery. (Also for Sony, she performed a competent − but not extraordinary − rendition of Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 2.) You will probably enjoy the lively Allegro. It has dramatic sforzandos and steep scalar ascents, along with subtle tempo shifts. The final movement is sedate, but with strange effects like a full-scale descending glissando, as if the air has been let out of the piece. Suddenly, ninety seconds from the finale, a keening soprano voice sings out a sweet one-minute vocalese. It’s Gabetta! Her pipes aren’t bad: Vasks’ writing for her is both ethereal and unadventurous. And we hear almost the same sequence again in the […]