Alina Ibragimova Cédric Tiberghien Beethoven
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Alina Ibragimova Cédric Tiberghien Beethoven Violin Sonatas – 3 Alina Ibragimova violin DDD WHLive0045 C 2011 The Wigmore Hall Trust Cédric Tiberghien piano P 2011 The Wigmore Hall Trust Made & Printed in England Recorded live at Wigmore Hall, London All rights reserved. 25 May 2010 Unauthorized copying, hiring, lending, public performance and broadcasting prohibited. LC 14458 Wigmore Hall 36 Wigmore Street Ludwig Van BeethoVen London W1U 2BP www.wigmore-hall.org.uk John Gilhooly Director Violin Sonatas – 3 The Wigmore Hall Trust Reg. Charity No. 1024838 01 Violin Sonata in A major Op. 30 No. 1 22.00 04 Violin Sonata in E flat major Op. 12 No. 3 19.05 07 Violin Sonata in A major ‘Kreutzer’ Op. 47 37.30 Total time: 78.56 ‘Smiling faces, furious applause: that’s how this series ended’ (The Times) WHLive0045 Alina Ibragimova violin Made & Printed in England Cédric Tiberghien piano Recorded live at Wigmore Hall, London, on 25 May 2010 Ludwig Van BeethoVen Violin Sonatas – 3 Violin Sonata in A major Op. 30 No. 1 22.00 01 Allegro 06.48 02 Adagio molto espressivo 07.15 03 Allegretto con variazioni 07.33 Violin Sonata in E flat major Op. 12 No. 3 19.05 04 Allegro con spirito 07.57 05 Adagio con molta espressione 06.31 06 Allegro molto 04.22 Violin Sonata in A major ‘Kreutzer’ Op. 47 37.30 07 Adagio sostenuto – Presto 13.38 08 Andante con variazioni 15.16 09 Presto 08.47 Total time: 78.56 b0045 RPM.qxd 02-03-2011 11:46 Page 2 BEETHOVEN VIOLIN SONATAS – VOLUME 3 This disc contains many wonders, but even the the sonata for which Op. 47’s tarantella finale best recording engineer cannot capture every was originally written – only to be shunted aside spark in a live concert. The visual dimension is and replaced, probably because its brilliance inevitably lost: here we miss Cédric Tiberghien’s threatened to overbalance the sonata’s earlier hands leaping back from a strident piano chord as movements. if nipped by a mousetrap; or Alina Ibragimova’s The works selected are also bonded by their violin bow, shedding increasing hair in the background range of eminent figures serving as hardships of the ‘Kreutzer’ sonata. Nor can any godfathers, progenitors, or friends. The figure in microphone fully convey the audience’s intense the carpet of Op. 12 No. 3 in E flat major is the concentration during this final recital in the Viennese court’s Kapellmeister Antonio Salieri, team’s Beethoven sonata series at Wigmore Hall. exaggeratedly presented in Peter Shaffer’s play Throughout the series we sat hypnotised Amadeus as a flatulently mediocre composer by the muscular passion of Beethoven’s music consumed with envy of Mozart’s genius. and the performers’ dynamic musicianship. Alina Beethoven’s attitude to Salieri varied, but as a Ibragimova, born in Russia in 1985, and Cédric bumptious young man in Vienna he considered it Tiberghien – French, ten years older – first joined worthwhile taking lessons from him in the Italian forces under the umbrella of the BBC New vocal style. The Op. 12 set was dedicated to Generation Artists scheme. At the Cheltenham Salieri, though the fruits of Beethoven’s lessons International Music Festival in 2007 they pro- seem almost comically absent in this sonata’s jected Elgar’s Sonata, previously foreign territory, first movement. Marked Allegro con spirito, it is with a fire and rapport that took the breath away. wickedly full of propulsive drive and changes of These Beethoven performances contained the direction – a volatile mood speedily signalled by same elements, filtered through longer study of Tiberghien’s athletic runs and cascades. the music’s subtleties and character, and very ‘Intellect, intellect, intellect’, groaned the close attention to expression marks. critic of the Allgemeine musicalische Zeitung, ‘but Beethoven showed remarkable speed develo- without nature, without song!’ With the piano’s ping the piano–violin genre: nine of his ten halting opening procession, song seems equally sonatas for the instruments were written within absent in the following Adagio con molta six years. The present recital travels from Op. 12 espressione. Then in the ninth bar Ibragimova No. 3, the last in his first complete set of 1797–8, enters bowing legato, and lyrical flight is achieved to the far grander ambitions of Op. 47, the in an arching melody long and soulful enough to ‘Kreutzer’, first performed in 1803. Bridging the suggest Schubert’s later songs without end. The two, appropriately, comes Op. 30 No. 1 (1801–2), humorous rondo finale is tied to a four-square, 2 4 b0045 RPM.qxd 02-03-2011 11:46 Page 3 even dim-witted theme, though it doesn’t staunch Ibragimova’s tone staying relatively slim. Yet Beethoven’s exuberance in forging genuine by keeping small Ibragimova valuably restrains instrumental interplay in a sonata officially desig- the movement’s pathos, helping to make its nated as being ‘for piano, with a violin’. The disturbed song linger in the mind. To this fretful eigteenth-century tradition of assuming the reverie Beethoven’s original tarantella finale piano’s prominence continued even in the would have provided a jolting contrast; the playful ‘Kreutzer’ (published in 1805 as ‘Sonata for piano variation replacement offers more graceful and obbligato violin’), though our ears pick up enchantment. a different story, especially with Ibragimova and Finally we reach the ‘Kreutzer’, most brilliant Tiberghien bouncing notes off each other or and taxing of the sonatas. The nickname’s scampering like cat and mouse. persistent popularity is ironic, for the esteemed With Op. 30 No. 1, the background eminence French violinist Rudolphe Kreutzer, the eventual is Tsar Alexander I, anointed Emperor and dedicatee, took no part in inspiring its creation; Autocrat of All the Russias only the previous year. nor, apparently, did he ever perform it. Honours Approving the young Tsar’s reforming agenda, should go instead to the violinist George Beethoven dedicated the three Op. 30 sonatas to Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower, an African-Polish Alexander, who remained a welcome supporter mulatto who established a reputation in London even after his liberalism retreated, buffeted by the during the 1790s and visited Vienna, and Napoleonic wars. Beethoven, in 1803. Mindful of his orphaned Of the three, this A major sonata is the most tarantella, Beethoven speedily set to work intimate and subtlest in its effects. As in Op. 12 writing movements of matching brilliance to suit No. 3 the emotional weight is centred in the slow Bridgetower’s talent; the pair premiered the newly movement, Adagio molto espressivo, one of constituted sonata, with the ink barely dry, on Beethoven’s most haunting creations in the 24 May 1803. Initially Beethoven felt sufficiently chamber field. Each instrument, intertwined from kindly toward his exotic visitor to make a gift of the first bar, sports a different character: the violin his tuning fork; but their intimacy abruptly ceased cast as the lyrical songbird, soaring in long after Bridgetower let loose an off-colour remark phrases (already hinted at in the opening relaxed about a woman, unaware that she was one of the Allegro); the piano more like a chicken leisurely composer’s friends. In pique and fury Beethoven pecking for seeds, following a trail of dotted removed the dedication to Bridgetower, and rhythms over 41 bars. In the present performance, inscribed Kreutzer instead. aside from Beethoven’s idiosyncratic genius, the Kreutzer thought the piece forbidding – and section reveals differences in the way that each probably, with the premiere past, shop-soiled. artist projects, with Tiberghien looming larger and The publisher Nikolaus Simrock also dragged 3 5 b0045 RPM.qxd 02-03-2011 11:46 Page 4 his feet. Writing in October 1804, Beethoven a more linear drama, with variations of increasing wondered if Simrock had purchased it from him opulence and florid design, capped by an ex- ‘only to give the moths a feast’. His impatience tended coda. Then, after a throat-clearing new must have been heightened by his sense of the chord, comes the Op. 30 tarantella, a finale work’s exceptional qualities. Written just before of wheeling fireworks strikingly punctured by the ‘Eroica’ Symphony, its dynamic drama far sudden pauses for thought. exceeds anything achieved in the previous The aura surrounding this towering work only sonatas, with piano and violin locked into argu- increased with the publication in 1889 of Tolstoy’s ments quasi-symphonic in scale. Tiberghien’s novella The Kreutzer Sonata, where a jealous forceful piano furthers the powerful rhythmic husband murders his wife after suspecting her of drive of the first movement’s Presto; but this an affair with the violinist who visits the house to Presto must live in the shadows of the portentous play duos. Their repertoire includes Beethoven’s introduction, Adagio sostenuto, sent on its way Op. 47. The husband considers its finale ‘feeble’ by a splayed first chord from Ibragimova’s violin. and the central variations ‘commonplace’, but the Contrasts, conflicts, hidden relationships linked first movement shakes him to the core, stirring to the germinal motif of a rising second: these are ‘new emotions, new possibilities’. Murderous the elements shaping this magnificent creation. possibilities for him, maybe; gloriously trans- The heavenly second movement, Andante con figuring ones for Ibragimova and Tiberghien. And variazioni, based on an expansive and comforting for us. theme that seems to start in mid-stream, pursues Notes by Geoff Brown © 2011 4 6 b0045 RPM.qxd 02-03-2011 11:46 Page 5 Also available on Wigmore Hall Live from all good record shops and from www.wigmore-hall.org.uk/live BEETHOVEN Violin Sonatas – 1 Violin Sonata in D major Op.