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Bridge, Britten & Debussy: Cello Sonatas / Mørk, Gimse

$15.99
$20.99 Save 25%

Details

Composer
Frank Bridge, Benjamin Britten, Claude Debussy, Leos Janacek
Artist
Truls Mork, Havard Gimse
Format
CD
Label
Alpha
Released
Aug 26, 2022
Catalog #
ALPHA560
UPC
3760014195600

About

The great Norwegian cellist Truls Mørk makes a triumphal return to chamber music with his regular piano partner Håvard Gimse. The program features two English composers, Benjamin Britten and his teacher Frank Bridge, whose Cello Sonata was written during the First World War and is tinged with despair and searing emotional force. Britten composed his Cello Sonata in 1961, following his meeting with Mstislav Rostropovich, to whom he dedicated the work. Another person traumatized by the Great War was Debussy, who wrote: ‘It was cowardly to think only of the horrors being committed, without trying to react by rebuilding, insofar as my strength allowed, a little of that beauty which is currently under attack.’ His Cello Sonata (1915) was the first of a series of six sonatas for various instruments that he planned to compose, only managing to write three before his death. As a determined Moravian nationalist, Janácek did not entitle his three-movement work of 1910 ‘sonata’; he called it Pohádka (Fairy tale) and based it on a poem by Vasily Zhukovsky.

REVIEW:

What one notices from the very start of the Bridge sonata, with which the disc begins, is Mørk’s fulsome tone. He is partnered very well throughout by Gimse and the recorded sound is really present, upfront, so much so that it is best to lower the volume for a realistic perspective. That said, I have found much to like in these accounts.

This is an excellently programmed disc, admirably performed and well recorded. It should provide plenty of pleasure. Alpha are also to be commended for their cardboard product with sleeves for inserting both CD and booklet.

-- MusicWeb International

Four of the 20th century’s greatest works for cello and piano: three of them famously recorded back in the 1960s by Rostropovich and Britten – a hard act to follow. Yet the Norwegian duo, Truls Mørk and Håvard Gimse, rise fully to the challenge in close yet lucid recorded sound that achieves an exemplary balance between cello and piano. Marginally less juicy of tone and idiosyncratic of phrasing than Rostropovich, Mørk brings a classical poise and eloquence to his phrasing and a marvellous sensitivity to detail, while Gimse is fully alive to the very different styles of piano writing in these four works.

The qualities of the new recording are especially favourable to Frank Bridge’s big two-movement Sonata – composed athwart the outbreak of the First World War, which horrified him – where the old recording suffered from slightly cloudy piano sound. As Mørk soars through the fraught lyricism of its first half, one hears clearly how Bridge subtly inflected even the most seemingly conventional piano figuration with his own individuality. And if the new recording of Debussy’s war-time Sonata is less dark and rhapsodic than the Rostropovich-Britten, it exemplifies the more enduring characteristics of French culture he sought to uphold.

The fugitive flights of melody and figuration comprising the three whimsical movements of Janáček’s Pohádka (Fairy Tales) demand a glancing, mercurial response which they certainly receive here, while the Britten Sonata somehow emerges as a weightier, more substantial work than in the original recording by its dedicatee and composer – special though that will always remain.

-- BBC Music Magazine

Tracklist 13 tracks

  1. 1 I. Allegro ben moderato 10:57
    Track
    1
    Title
    I. Allegro ben moderato
    Duration
    10:57
    Composer
    Frank Bridge
    Performer
    Truls Mørk, Håvard Gimse
  2. 2 II. Adagio ma non troppo - Molto allegro e agitato 14:03
    Track
    2
    Title
    II. Adagio ma non troppo - Molto allegro e agitato
    Duration
    14:03
    Composer
    Frank Bridge
    Performer
    Truls Mørk, Håvard Gimse
  3. 3 I. Prologue 04:48
    Track
    3
    Title
    I. Prologue
    Duration
    04:48
    Composer
    Claude Debussy
    Performer
    Truls Mørk, Håvard Gimse
  4. 4 II. Sérénade - 03:31
    Track
    4
    Title
    II. Sérénade -
    Duration
    03:31
    Composer
    Claude Debussy
    Performer
    Truls Mørk, Håvard Gimse
  5. 5 III. Finale 03:38
    Track
    5
    Title
    III. Finale
    Duration
    03:38
    Composer
    Claude Debussy
    Performer
    Truls Mørk, Håvard Gimse
  6. 6 I. Con moto 06:13
    Track
    6
    Title
    I. Con moto
    Duration
    06:13
    Composer
    Leoš Janáček
    Performer
    Truls Mørk, Håvard Gimse
  7. 7 II. Con moto 02:10
    Track
    7
    Title
    II. Con moto
    Duration
    02:10
    Composer
    Leoš Janáček
    Performer
    Truls Mørk, Håvard Gimse
  8. 8 III. Allegro 02:36
    Track
    8
    Title
    III. Allegro
    Duration
    02:36
    Composer
    Leoš Janáček
    Performer
    Truls Mørk, Håvard Gimse
  9. 9 I. Dialogo 04:48
    Track
    9
    Title
    I. Dialogo
    Duration
    04:48
    Composer
    Benjamin Britten
    Performer
    Truls Mørk, Håvard Gimse
  10. 10 II. Scherzo-pizzicato 03:31
    Track
    10
    Title
    II. Scherzo-pizzicato
    Duration
    03:31
    Composer
    Benjamin Britten
    Performer
    Truls Mørk, Håvard Gimse
  11. 11 III. Elegia 03:38
    Track
    11
    Title
    III. Elegia
    Duration
    03:38
    Composer
    Benjamin Britten
    Performer
    Truls Mørk, Håvard Gimse
  12. 12 IV. Marcia 05:04
    Track
    12
    Title
    IV. Marcia
    Duration
    05:04
    Composer
    Benjamin Britten
    Performer
    Truls Mørk, Håvard Gimse
  13. 13 V. Moto Perpetuo 04:35
    Track
    13
    Title
    V. Moto Perpetuo
    Duration
    04:35
    Composer
    Benjamin Britten
    Performer
    Truls Mørk, Håvard Gimse