Duo
Martinů: Cello Sonata No. 1; Poulenc: Cello Sonata; Hindemith: 3 Pieces for Cello and Piano
Nuala McKenna (cello), Robert Kulek (piano)
Cobra COBRA0090 65:17 mins
Paul Hindemith famously wrote a prolific number of sonatas, including for instruments that other composers seemingly forgot (among them double bass, tuba and alto horn), and of course he composed several for cello. On this new album from Nuala McKenna and Robert Kulek, sonatas by Martinů and Poulenc are followed by a Hindemith work that isn’t technically a sonata, the early Three Pieces for Cello and Piano, yet functions much like one in three movements. Though he would later disown most of his music from the time of World War I, Hindemith made an exception for this 1917 work, and the arresting performance here proves he was right. McKenna and Kulek bring crisp attack to the opening Capriccio before finding lyricism in the central Phantasiestück; the closing Scherzo excitingly anticipates the abrasiveness of Hindemith’s expressionist period.
Opening the recording, Martinů’s Cello Sonata No. 1 (1939) receives a reflective performance, with less of the nervous energy that some interpreters bring to it. This more spacious-sounding approach not only works well on its own terms but recalls the style of Pierre Fournier, the work’s dedicatee. The German-Irish cellist’s notably warm, singing tone draws the listener in right from the start of the first movement.
Poulenc also wrote for Fournier in his Cello Sonata, a postwar work (1948) that may seem to lack (at least in the opening movement) the composer’s most distinctive fingerprint. But there is nothing anonymous about the dialogue between McKenna and Kulek, and by the time they reach the beautiful Cavatine it’s clear that they are delivering a compelling performance. John Allison