Dmitry SHOSTAKOVICH Viola Sonata
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Annette Bartholdy Dmitry DDD Annette Bartholdy is one of the most sought after violists of the young generation. Born in 8.557231 Bern, Switzerland, she is winner of many international competitions and awards, and works with masters such as Andras Schiff, Thomas Zehetmair, Heinz Holliger and, since 2000, as SHOSTAKOVICH a duo with Julius Drake. She has appeared as a soloist with many leading European ensembles such as the European Camerata, the Camerata Bern and the Festival Strings Viola Sonata Lucerne and has toured extensively in Europe, the United States, South America, South Africa and Japan. She is a passionate chamber musician. She has been invited to leading festivals such as Davos in Switzerland, Prussia Cove in England, Versailles and La Prée in Cello Sonata (arr. for Viola) France, Elverum in Norway and Perth in Australia. In February 2002 she made her London Wigmore Hall début with a Bach-Shostakovich recital, together with Julius Drake, winning Annette Bartholdy, Viola • Julius Drake, Piano high acclaim from the press and public alike. Annette Bartholdy plays a very fine Balestrieri Viola of 1767. Julius Drake
The London born pianist Julius Drake works with many of the world’s leading vocal and instrumental artists, both in recital throughout Europe and America, and on record. He has partnered in vocal recitals among others Victoria de los Angeles, Sir Thomas Allen, Olaf Bär, Barbara Bonney, Dame Felicity Lott, Wolfgang Holzmair and Edith Mathis and Instrumental recitals at international chamber music festivals such as Kuhmo in Finland and Saintes in France have led to collaborations with Christian Altenburger, Natalie Clein, Chen Halevi, Ernst Kovacic and the Ygdrassil Quartet. Recordings include French songs with Hugues Cuénod, French sonatas with Nicholas Daniel, Britten songs with Derek Lee Ragin, Haydn Canzonettas with Christoph Genz, Schumann Lieder with Sophie Daneman, Spirituals with Ruby Philogene, clarinet and piano works with Emma Johnson, and Sibelius songs with Katarina Karneus. His award-winning recordings (including the Gramophone Award in 1999) with Ian Bostridge include Schumann Lieder, two volumes of Schubert Lieder, Henze’s Songs from the Arabian, The English Songbook, and most recently the Britten Canticles with both Ian Bostridge and David Daniels.
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Dmitry Shostakovich (1906-1975) wrong, perhaps, and soon strains at the leash. Especially which follows comes from an evasive dialogue between Viola Sonata • Cello Sonata (arranged for viola by Annette Bartholdy) surprising is the pianist’s tearaway semiquavers after his two crafty servants and the robust recitative-like passage disarmingly easy rôle in the proceedings. The deadpan at the movement is based on the servant Gavryushka’s Among the select band of twentieth-century composers fine all-round musician, but later performances, ending puts the classical lid back, as if the composer has balalaika-accompanied monologue. In the outer who have brought the private voice of the viola to public including those recorded by the composer with Daniil said too much. movements, the many quotations are less direct, and attention, Shostakovich joins the even more select Shafran and Mstislav Rostropovich, surpassed his Shostakovich is never afraid of saying it, though in several have a significance which will remain majority with a single masterpiece to their credit (others performance. Clearly, as Annette Bartholdy points out, the most refined form possible, in the Viola Sonata of Shostakovich’s secret. He defined the opening springing most readily to mind are Britten’s Lachrymae the alternative versions for viola made first by Kubatsky 1975, last of a harrowing line including the Fourteenth Moderato enigmatically as ‘a novella’. Its pizzicato and Walton’s Viola Concerto). The very fact that his himself and later by Yevgeny Strakhov, a respected and Fifteenth Symphonies, the last three string quartets sounding of the viola’s open strings may be a homage to Sonata for viola and piano would seem to be the last viola teacher in the 1960s and 1970s, gave other and the song-cycle settings of Michelangelo poems Alban Berg’s elegiac last work, the Violin Concerto, word from his death-haunted final years gives it a very instrumentalists a chance. which examine death from every conceivable angle. which also begins with a more lyrical treatment of these special place in the repertoire. We are now doubly Back in the early days of the sonata’s performing None is a conclusive last word - ‘maybe I’ll still manage notes; and in both cases they are pitted against an blessed that the transcription for viola of his much history, the Fourth Symphony would not have passed the to write something else’ was always the composer’s altogether more complex form of elegy, though earlier Cello Sonata of 1934, brought most fully to new censorship, and Shostakovich swiftly withdrew it, response - and that could even be said of the present Shostakovich is unashamedly rhapsodic in the western attention by Annette Bartholdy’s serious but the clarity and apparent directness of the sonata work which turned out to be his swan-song, completed passionate central idea of the movement, placed in championship, offers us two works for viola-players could hardly earn retrospective disapproval. The light- just before his death on 9th August 1975. parentheses by solemn piano chords. The tension from the two most liberated phases of Shostakovich’s of-touch cantabile melody at the start easily evades the Very much a witness to its painful creation was the between diatonic and chromatic elements is distilled in creative life. D minor in which it is rooted, though the soloist soon dedicatee, Fyodr Druzhinin, who in 1964 had taken up its purest form in the finale - ‘an adagio in memory of Comparing the early 1930s in this way to the early hints at the nagging narrow intervals so characteristic of the rôle of principal viola in the Beethoven Quartet, the Beethoven’, Shostakovich told Druzhinin, ‘but don’t let 1970s is only relevant because in the first case a curtain the composer before the pianist again flies away from ensemble to which Shostakovich entrusted the that inhibit you. The music is bright, bright and clear’. was about to fall which restricted Shostakovich’s artistic the point. The second subject in the distant key of a premières of thirteen of his fifteen string quartets. Much Shostakovich uses his in memoriam theme, the C minor freedoms; the imminence of the second and final radiant B major, is especially poignant in the viola of what Druzhinin recalled for Elizabeth Wilson in her first movement of the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata, with extreme curtain, on the other hand, was the very thing which transcription definitively established by Annette outstanding book Shostakovich Remembered is borne subtlety to touch upon its right-hand rhythm and left- allowed those freedoms to resurface in their most Bartholdy from the slightly different Kubatsky and out in the sonata: the extreme pain in Shostakovich’s hand arpeggio and to meditate upon them in a series of refined and introspective form. The Cello Sonata could Strakhov versions. Perfect for the instrument’s intimate composing hand, one manifestation of a form of increasingly withdrawn paraphrases. His own cry from have been like the audacious large-scale masterpieces tones, too, is the whispering reappearance of the first poliomyelitis from which he had suffered for over a the heart is the sighing figure in descending fourths that came before and after it, the opera Lady Macbeth of theme at the end of the movement after a threatening decade, was turned to gold in the spare but miraculously introduced at a rare espressivo moment of the scherzo Mtsensk and the most bewildering of all his symphonies, development and the ensuing reassurance of the more effective textures of the outer movements, and their and launching this finale (also unaccompanied). These, the Fourth. Instead it seems to reflect his fellow- comforting melody. The scherzo, spare but exciting, has telephone conversation about the possibility of the and a brief reference in the very depths of the piano to composer Prokofiev’s thoughts of the same time on a a manic if not a mechanistic edge in the ferocious viola’s double-stopping in fourths found its way into the the opening of the Fourteenth Symphony, his ‘songs and ‘new simplicity’, embracing the kind of melody that ostinato patterns that accompany the simple tune, scherzo. This, the middle movement of the three, makes dances of death’, are the only elements to guide us ‘though simple or accessible, should not become a stretching viola technique and volume to the limits, extensive use of music from The Gamblers, a faithful through a near-hallucinatory quest until viola and piano refrain or a trivial turn of phrase’. For both composers, while, as in the original version, the rapid glissandi in operatic setting of a Gogol play which Shostakovich had at last find peace in an unequivocal C major. No this was something they embraced of their own free the trio section pose a threat to a simpler tune. With the abandoned in 1942 because his enslavement to the word stranger or more haunting music, surely, has ever been will: Prokofiev had only just made up his mind to return Largo, we reach the heart of the seriousness suggested would have resulted in a four-hour epic. The galop of composed on the threshold of death. permanently to the Soviet Union when he wrote those by the first movement. The introspective opening the first ninety bars is a straightforward transcription of words in 1934, and the Shostakovich sonata’s first recitative looks forward to the solos, for viola as well as the opera’s introduction; the more sinister whispering David Nice performance, given by its dedicatee Viktor Kubatsky for cello, in the later string quartets, the first of which and the composer that December, came over a year Shostakovich composed as late as 1938, while the song before the notorious Pravda attacks on Lady Macbeth as with the mute off combines revolutionary lament with a ‘chaos instead of music’, which changed the course of more private grief. The Allegretto finale begins with a what was permissible in Soviet music. Kubatsky was a wayward neoclassicism, a Mozart rondo theme gone
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Dmitry Shostakovich (1906-1975) wrong, perhaps, and soon strains at the leash. Especially which follows comes from an evasive dialogue between Viola Sonata • Cello Sonata (arranged for viola by Annette Bartholdy) surprising is the pianist’s tearaway semiquavers after his two crafty servants and the robust recitative-like passage disarmingly easy rôle in the proceedings. The deadpan at the movement is based on the servant Gavryushka’s Among the select band of twentieth-century composers fine all-round musician, but later performances, ending puts the classical lid back, as if the composer has balalaika-accompanied monologue. In the outer who have brought the private voice of the viola to public including those recorded by the composer with Daniil said too much. movements, the many quotations are less direct, and attention, Shostakovich joins the even more select Shafran and Mstislav Rostropovich, surpassed his Shostakovich is never afraid of saying it, though in several have a significance which will remain majority with a single masterpiece to their credit (others performance. Clearly, as Annette Bartholdy points out, the most refined form possible, in the Viola Sonata of Shostakovich’s secret. He defined the opening springing most readily to mind are Britten’s Lachrymae the alternative versions for viola made first by Kubatsky 1975, last of a harrowing line including the Fourteenth Moderato enigmatically as ‘a novella’. Its pizzicato and Walton’s Viola Concerto). The very fact that his himself and later by Yevgeny Strakhov, a respected and Fifteenth Symphonies, the last three string quartets sounding of the viola’s open strings may be a homage to Sonata for viola and piano would seem to be the last viola teacher in the 1960s and 1970s, gave other and the song-cycle settings of Michelangelo poems Alban Berg’s elegiac last work, the Violin Concerto, word from his death-haunted final years gives it a very instrumentalists a chance. which examine death from every conceivable angle. which also begins with a more lyrical treatment of these special place in the repertoire. We are now doubly Back in the early days of the sonata’s performing None is a conclusive last word - ‘maybe I’ll still manage notes; and in both cases they are pitted against an blessed that the transcription for viola of his much history, the Fourth Symphony would not have passed the to write something else’ was always the composer’s altogether more complex form of elegy, though earlier Cello Sonata of 1934, brought most fully to new censorship, and Shostakovich swiftly withdrew it, response - and that could even be said of the present Shostakovich is unashamedly rhapsodic in the western attention by Annette Bartholdy’s serious but the clarity and apparent directness of the sonata work which turned out to be his swan-song, completed passionate central idea of the movement, placed in championship, offers us two works for viola-players could hardly earn retrospective disapproval. The light- just before his death on 9th August 1975. parentheses by solemn piano chords. The tension from the two most liberated phases of Shostakovich’s of-touch cantabile melody at the start easily evades the Very much a witness to its painful creation was the between diatonic and chromatic elements is distilled in creative life. D minor in which it is rooted, though the soloist soon dedicatee, Fyodr Druzhinin, who in 1964 had taken up its purest form in the finale - ‘an adagio in memory of Comparing the early 1930s in this way to the early hints at the nagging narrow intervals so characteristic of the rôle of principal viola in the Beethoven Quartet, the Beethoven’, Shostakovich told Druzhinin, ‘but don’t let 1970s is only relevant because in the first case a curtain the composer before the pianist again flies away from ensemble to which Shostakovich entrusted the that inhibit you. The music is bright, bright and clear’. was about to fall which restricted Shostakovich’s artistic the point. The second subject in the distant key of a premières of thirteen of his fifteen string quartets. Much Shostakovich uses his in memoriam theme, the C minor freedoms; the imminence of the second and final radiant B major, is especially poignant in the viola of what Druzhinin recalled for Elizabeth Wilson in her first movement of the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata, with extreme curtain, on the other hand, was the very thing which transcription definitively established by Annette outstanding book Shostakovich Remembered is borne subtlety to touch upon its right-hand rhythm and left- allowed those freedoms to resurface in their most Bartholdy from the slightly different Kubatsky and out in the sonata: the extreme pain in Shostakovich’s hand arpeggio and to meditate upon them in a series of refined and introspective form. The Cello Sonata could Strakhov versions. Perfect for the instrument’s intimate composing hand, one manifestation of a form of increasingly withdrawn paraphrases. His own cry from have been like the audacious large-scale masterpieces tones, too, is the whispering reappearance of the first poliomyelitis from which he had suffered for over a the heart is the sighing figure in descending fourths that came before and after it, the opera Lady Macbeth of theme at the end of the movement after a threatening decade, was turned to gold in the spare but miraculously introduced at a rare espressivo moment of the scherzo Mtsensk and the most bewildering of all his symphonies, development and the ensuing reassurance of the more effective textures of the outer movements, and their and launching this finale (also unaccompanied). These, the Fourth. Instead it seems to reflect his fellow- comforting melody. The scherzo, spare but exciting, has telephone conversation about the possibility of the and a brief reference in the very depths of the piano to composer Prokofiev’s thoughts of the same time on a a manic if not a mechanistic edge in the ferocious viola’s double-stopping in fourths found its way into the the opening of the Fourteenth Symphony, his ‘songs and ‘new simplicity’, embracing the kind of melody that ostinato patterns that accompany the simple tune, scherzo. This, the middle movement of the three, makes dances of death’, are the only elements to guide us ‘though simple or accessible, should not become a stretching viola technique and volume to the limits, extensive use of music from The Gamblers, a faithful through a near-hallucinatory quest until viola and piano refrain or a trivial turn of phrase’. For both composers, while, as in the original version, the rapid glissandi in operatic setting of a Gogol play which Shostakovich had at last find peace in an unequivocal C major. No this was something they embraced of their own free the trio section pose a threat to a simpler tune. With the abandoned in 1942 because his enslavement to the word stranger or more haunting music, surely, has ever been will: Prokofiev had only just made up his mind to return Largo, we reach the heart of the seriousness suggested would have resulted in a four-hour epic. The galop of composed on the threshold of death. permanently to the Soviet Union when he wrote those by the first movement. The introspective opening the first ninety bars is a straightforward transcription of words in 1934, and the Shostakovich sonata’s first recitative looks forward to the solos, for viola as well as the opera’s introduction; the more sinister whispering David Nice performance, given by its dedicatee Viktor Kubatsky for cello, in the later string quartets, the first of which and the composer that December, came over a year Shostakovich composed as late as 1938, while the song before the notorious Pravda attacks on Lady Macbeth as with the mute off combines revolutionary lament with a ‘chaos instead of music’, which changed the course of more private grief. The Allegretto finale begins with a what was permissible in Soviet music. Kubatsky was a wayward neoclassicism, a Mozart rondo theme gone
8.557231 2 3 8.557231 557231 bk Shostakovich US 22/12/2003 13:40 pm Page 4
Annette Bartholdy Dmitry DDD Annette Bartholdy is one of the most sought after violists of the young generation. Born in 8.557231 Bern, Switzerland, she is winner of many international competitions and awards, and works with masters such as Andras Schiff, Thomas Zehetmair, Heinz Holliger and, since 2000, as SHOSTAKOVICH a duo with Julius Drake. She has appeared as a soloist with many leading European ensembles such as the European Camerata, the Camerata Bern and the Festival Strings Viola Sonata Lucerne and has toured extensively in Europe, the United States, South America, South Africa and Japan. She is a passionate chamber musician. She has been invited to leading festivals such as Davos in Switzerland, Prussia Cove in England, Versailles and La Prée in Cello Sonata (arr. for Viola) France, Elverum in Norway and Perth in Australia. In February 2002 she made her London Wigmore Hall début with a Bach-Shostakovich recital, together with Julius Drake, winning Annette Bartholdy, Viola • Julius Drake, Piano high acclaim from the press and public alike. Annette Bartholdy plays a very fine Balestrieri Viola of 1767. Julius Drake
The London born pianist Julius Drake works with many of the world’s leading vocal and instrumental artists, both in recital throughout Europe and America, and on record. He has partnered in vocal recitals among others Victoria de los Angeles, Sir Thomas Allen, Olaf Bär, Barbara Bonney, Dame Felicity Lott, Wolfgang Holzmair and Edith Mathis and Instrumental recitals at international chamber music festivals such as Kuhmo in Finland and Saintes in France have led to collaborations with Christian Altenburger, Natalie Clein, Chen Halevi, Ernst Kovacic and the Ygdrassil Quartet. Recordings include French songs with Hugues Cuénod, French sonatas with Nicholas Daniel, Britten songs with Derek Lee Ragin, Haydn Canzonettas with Christoph Genz, Schumann Lieder with Sophie Daneman, Spirituals with Ruby Philogene, clarinet and piano works with Emma Johnson, and Sibelius songs with Katarina Karneus. His award-winning recordings (including the Gramophone Award in 1999) with Ian Bostridge include Schumann Lieder, two volumes of Schubert Lieder, Henze’s Songs from the Arabian, The English Songbook, and most recently the Britten Canticles with both Ian Bostridge and David Daniels.
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CMYK N AXOS Shostakovich is among the select band of twentieth-century composers who have brought the private voice of the viola to public attention. The very fact that his Sonata for viola and piano would seem to be the last word from his death-haunted final years gives it a very 8.557231 SHOSTAKOVICH: special place in the repertoire. It is coupled on this disc with the world première recording DDD of Annette Bartholdy’s transcription for viola of his much earlier Cello Sonata of 1934, written during one of the most experimental phases of Shostakovich’s creative life. 8.557231
Dmitry Playing Time SHOSTAKOVICH 63:07 (1906-1975) V
Viola Sonata Viola) iola Sonata • Cello (arr. for Cello Sonata (arr. for Viola)* Cello Sonata, Op. 40 28:37 (arranged for Viola by Annette Bartholdy) 1 Allegro non troppo 12:02
2 Allegro 3:09 www.naxos.com Made in Canada Booklet notes in English h 3 Largo 9:01 & g
iola Sonata • Cello Sonata (arr. foriola Sonata • Cello (arr. Viola) 4 Allegro 4:24 2004 Naxos Rights International Ltd. V Viola Sonata, Op. 147 34:30 5 Moderato 11:20 6 Allegretto 7:32 7 Adagio 15:38 Annette Bartholdy, Viola • Julius Drake, Piano Recorded at Henry Wood Hall, London, 10th - 12th May, 2001 SHOSTAKOVICH: Producer: Andrew Keener • Engineer and Editor: Geoffrey Miles 8.557231 Publishers: Tracks 1-4 Boosey & Hawkes, Tracks 5-7 Sikorski Booklet Notes: David Nice • Cover Image: Dmitry Shostakovich (© Boosey & Hawkes)
AXOS *World première recording N