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Chopin & Grieg: Cello Sonatas

10,00 $ – 19,00 $

Erling Blöndal Bengtsson
When at the age of three Erling Blöndal Bengtsson was given a violin by his father, his immediate instinct was to position it between his knees. However much his father protested, he could not be persuaded to hold it under his chin. The boy was adamant, and just six months later he gave his first public recital, on a viola with an end-pin attached to it. Seven years later he was allowed to make his debut with an orchestra in Copenhagen’s Tivoli Concert Hall where, in the summer of 1992, Erling Blöndal Bengtsson was celebrated on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. the fifthieth anniversary of his debut, and as the greatest living Danish cellist – il not one of the finest anywhere, with his bright slender tone, at once elegantly nimble and glowing with concentration and pained recognition.
“The born cellist” is no hackneyed clichĂ© when applied to Blöndal Bengtsson. He found it all so easy that he could make do with one hour’s practice a day as a child – and indeed no more was asked of him by his violinist father and exceptionally musical mother, an Icelandic woman straight out of the ancient sagas.
In 1948, just sixteen years old, Erling Blöndal Bengtsson travelled to Philadelphia to take up studies with the pre-eminent cellist of the time, the Russian-born Gregor Piatigorsky. Just one year later he became Piatigorsky’s assistant at the Curtis Institute of Music, and the year after that he had succeeded him as teacher at the Institute.
He stayed in the United States for five years before letting himself be tempted back to a teaching job at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen. He was appointed professor at the age of 29, and has during the course of a career spanning almost 40 years become a role-model for a whole family of young cellists playing in Denmark and abroad, while at the same time tending his own soloist career.
Between 1958 and 1978 he was also attached to the Swedish State Radio School of Music in Stockholm; he was a professor at the Musiklochschule in Cologne from 1978 to 1982, and continues regularly to give masterclasses at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, at Aldeburgh, Sion, and in Scandinavia.
In 1990 he moved back to the United States to take up a professorship at one of North America’s leading centres of music, The University of Michigan School of Music in Ann Arbor.
Blöndal Bengtsson’s repertoire is just as all-encompassing as his teaching activitics. Much of it has been recorded: the complete Bach solo suites and the Beethoven sonatas, solo works by Reger and Ysaye, cello concertos by Boccherini, Haydn, Schumann, Dvorak, Lalo, Saint SaĂ«ns and Tchaikovsky, but also much contemporary music. His insatiable curiosity about modern music has resulted in the first performance of a number of Scandinavian cello concertos, many of which are also dedicated to him, including thoof Niels Viggo Bentzon, Vagn Holmboe, Herman D. Koppel, Jan Maegaard (due for release) and Jon Nordal. He has played the Danish premieres of concertos by Britten, Barber, Khatchaturian, Delius, Lutoslawski and Walton, and indeed the latter two have themselves conducted performances with Blöndal Bengtsson as soloist.
For a number of years he has been playing 60 – 70 concerts a year, in Europe, the United States, and the former Soviet Union, and he has appeared with all the main Scandinavian orchestras and numerous foreign ones, including the Royal Philhilmonic, BBC Symphony, St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad) Philharmonic, and the Salzburg Mozarteum, with conductors such as Sir Malcolm Sargent, Pierre Monteux., Nicolai Malko, Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt, Paavo Berglund, Sixten Ehrling and Yuri Temirkanov.
And Blöndal Bengtsson’s audiences value him. He is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music and has been awarded the Danish “Discophile” prize of 1958 and the Hyam Morrison Medal for Cello in Gold in 1957, among many other prizes. He is also First Knight of the Danish Order of Dannebrog, and Commander of the Icelandic Order of Falcon.

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Fredéric Chopin
Sonata for Violoncello and Piano in G minor op. 65 (1845-6)
1. Allegro moderato
2. Scherzo (Allegro con brio)
3. Largo
4. Finale (Allegro)

Edvard Grieg
Sonata forVioloncello and Piano inA minor op. 36 (1883)
5. Allegro agitato
6. Andante molto tranquillo
7. Allegro – Allegro molto e marcato

Erling Blöndal Bengtsson – Violoncello
Nina Kavtaradze – Piano

Cello Sonatas ©

FredĂ©ric Chopin is above all known as the composcr for the piano and with good reason: first of all he did not write a singlc work in which the piano does not take part, and secondly, by and large, only his works for piano solo succeeded in keeping the attention of the public – with of course the exception of the two concertos with orchestra.
Apart from a large number of works for piano solo by Chopin we have about a dozen works for piano and orchestra. Bcsides the abovc-mentioned concertos there are also a number of shorter works. There are as well eighteen Polish songs with piano accompaniment – Chopin’s only vocal work – and a handful of chamber works, which comprise a piano trio, a polonaise for cello and piano, some rathcr uninteresting variations on a theme from Rossini’s “Cinderella” for flute and piano and the cello sonata. The sonata owes its inception to Chopin’s friendship with the cellist Auguste-Joseph Franchomme, who probably gave the composer some advice about writing for the cello.
The sonata was dedicated to Franchomme, who gave the first perfomance of it with Chopin in Salle Pleyel in Paris on 16th February 1848, the year before Chopin’s untimely death.
While composing the sonata Chopin stayed at a castlc in Nohant bclonging to his friend Aurore Dudevant (better known under her nom de plume Gcorge Sand), where he attemptcd to recover from the tuberculosis which was to send him to the grave the following year.
Some time was to elapse before the sonata earned a place in the repertoire. For many years it was considercd to be a weak composition, not composed out of any inner urge, but as a Christmas
present for Franchommc. The sonata is nevertheless well written, also with regard to the cello part.
Today one takes a rather different view of the work, and the sonata has achieved the status of being one of the romantic era’s major works for this instrumental combination.
The first movement of the sonata, the longest, is one of Chopin’s more successful grapples with classical sonata form, which however here is somewhat extended in romantic fashion. The melodious main theme enters on the cello after the piano’s introductory bars, and on the whole it is the cello that prevails with regard to the presentation oft he thematic matcrial and its development. And this thematic material is rich in beautiful, romantic mclodies.
The second movement is thc sonata’s scherzo, where the melodic element again predominates in the gently sounding middle section in D major,
The third movement, the sonata’s slow movement, is a melodically extremely beautiful largo, reminiscent of the funeral march in the most frequently played of Chopins three piano sonatas,
number lwo in B flat minor op. 35.
The finale is an abundant unfurling of beautiful themes with many chromatic episodes and fine interplay between the two instruments.

Edvard Grieg has been called a master of Miniatures and it is indeed true that it is the large number of lyrical pieces for piano and the many songs in his output that are uppermost in the mindsof music lovers. In the many books written about Grieg one sometimes reads that he was not at ease with sonata form, something he struggled with all his life. All the same, a not insignificant number o fhis compositions are in this key form: a symphony in C minor (not very successful according to the composer himself), a piano sonata in E minor, a string quartet in G minor and three sonatas for violin and piano, generally considered to be his best chamber works next to the string quartet.
Like Chopin’s cello sonata, Grieg’s has long been underrated. It was written for the composer’s brother John, who had studied the cello for some years at a conservatoire before joining his father’s business Judging from the sonata he must have been rather a good cellist. The sonata was dedicated to John Grieg, with whom the composer’s relations became somewhat strained when he discovered that his brother had begun having an affair with his wife, Nina. Even so it made a devastating impression on Grieg when his brother committed suicide in a fit of Depression in 1901.
The cello sonata’s first movement is something of the most passionate Grieg ever composed, desperate, wild music in striking interplay between the two instruments.
In the slow movement it might seem that the composer’s inspiration is not quite as much in evidence, since he makes use of thematic recycling, quoting his splendid March of Allegiance from the incidental music to BjĂžrnson’.s play “Sigurd Josalfar” (Grieg’s opus 22, composed in 1872). But have not many composers re-used their own themes which they felt embodied more potential? Schubert did so abundantly without being reproached for it.
The cello sonata’s andante is a very beautiful piece of music.
In the energetic finale there are also echoes of earlier works by Grieg, but as in the case of the andante the result is convincing.
Grieg was not himself wholly satisfied with his cello sonata, but even so, like Chopin’s sonata, it occupies a secure place in the cellist’s repertoire.

RELEASE DATE: MAY 2005

CATALOGUE NUMBER: DACOCD 644

EAN: 5709499644003

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