COMPOSERS: Boulanger,Debussy,Hindemith
LABELS: AVI
ALBUM TITLE: Hindemith • Debussy • Boulanger
WORKS: Hindemith: Trio for Violin, Viola and Cello No. 2; Debussy: Violin Sonata in G minor; Boulanger: Three pieces; plus Lili Boulanger Two Pieces for Piano Trio
PERFORMER: Wanzhen Li, Alina Abragimova, Christian Tetzlaff (violin); Volker Jacobsen (viola); Gustav Rivinus, Tanja Tetzlaff, Bartholomew LaFollette (cello); Gunilla Süssmann, Lars Vogt, Anna Rita Hitaj (piano)
CATALOGUE NO: 8553295
As with previous releases from Lars Vogt’s Spannungen/Tensions festival, this selection from 2012 is a pleasure. Heimbach’s Hydroelectric Plant provides the unlikely setting for music by Lili and Nadia Boulanger, Debussy and Hindemith. It is the intensity and spontaneity that makes such festivals special, as heard in Vogt and Alina Ibragimova’s performance of Debussy’s Violin Sonata, with its daringly languid first movement.
The same composer’s early Scherzo is enchantingly insouciant in the hands of cellist Gustav Rivinius, but even more noteworthy is the chance to hear Nadia Boulanger’s Three Pieces for cello and piano. This trio of charming miniatures underlines the loss to music that resulted from her decision to stop composing, following her sister’s death in 1918. Lili Boulanger’s music had a steelier edge to it, as can be heard in an intense and poetic performance of the Two Pieces for Piano Trio from 1917. These are balanced by a spirited account of Hindemith’s droll Second Trio for Violin, Viola and Cello from Christian Tetzlaff, Volker Jacobsen and Bartholomew LaFollette. The live recordings are inevitably spacious, but with plenty of detail, atmosphere and fully justified applause.
Christopher Dingle