"Time ... And Again" for violin and piano

Combined with:
Pärt: Fratres for violin and piano
Pärt: Spiegel im Spiegel for violin and piano
Schnittke: Suite in the Old Style for violin and piano
Schnittke: Fuga for violin and piano
Vasks: Little Summer Music for violin and piano

BIS CD 1392

Vadim Gluzman (violin)
Angela Yoffe (piano)

Intelligent playing of likeable repertoire – to be taken a piece at a time rather than swallowed whole

Most of these pieces have an appeal of their own though I’m not sure they work as a programme. Schnittke’s Suite in the Old Style is in effect new wine in old bottles and approximates in its wit and elegance to Warlock’s Capriol Suite. It’s an absolute delight, very nicely played by Israeli Vadim Gluzman and Latvian Angela Yoffe. By contrast, Schnittke’s youthful, unaccompanied Fugue takes Bartók’s Solo Sonata as a starting point but nothing much happens thereafter.

Peteris Vasks’s folksy, freewheeling (partly aleatoric) Little Summer Music is, like the Schnittke Suite, a pleasure to listen to, music full of colour and variety. Arvo Pärt’s Fratres comes bounding in on spindly arpeggios, its quieter music unaffectedly played much like the simpler, tender but equally aerated Spiegel im Spiegel.

Thereafter I would have preferred the grittier tones of a Shostakovich, Prokofiev or Bartók sonata for darkening contrast. Instead, Kancheli’s Time…and again (1996) inhabits a musical territory somewhere within earshot of Pärt, and its half-hour of oscillations between tortured fortissimi and sugared pianissimi begins to wear thin before very long. Had it not been for the fact that various other Kancheli works of the period sound similar I would probably have enjoyed it more. Good playing, though, and excellent sound.

Rob Cowan
Gramophone, October 2004