Stained Glass
Works by Bacewicz, Ravel, L Boulanger, Prokofiev and Arvo Pärt
Johan Dalene (violin), Christian Ihle Hadland (piano)
BIS BIS-2730 (CD/SACD) 68:48 mins
Taking its over-arching title from Witraż (Stained Glass Window), the final piece of its Bacewicz group, this recital programme is truly delectable. Ravel and Prokofiev make perfect companions, their violin sonatas complementing one another despite, or perhaps because of, their contrasting personal languages; Prokofiev, writing in the USSR in 1943, was profoundly influenced by the French works of the 1920s, at which time he had been living in Paris. Boulanger’s Nocturne harks back to 1911, Bacewicz’s characterful short pieces mostly to the 1950s in communist Poland and Pärt’s ubiquitous Fratres to the present day, yet there’s a distinct sense that these composers are sibling spirits who can meld the personal, the dark and the shining into colourful soundworlds of their own. Witrażitself is an early Bacewicz work, under the mesmerising spell of Szymanowski.
Dalene and Hadland make an excellent duo – equal partners who bounce ideas off one another with oodles of vitality. Dalene often presents a gorgeous sound. Yet it is perhaps in his efforts to characterise the music that he sometimes pushes matters to extremes, leading to moments that sound forced and too angry. It’s not that the works themselves do not contain sardonic twists and turns – they do – or that beauty alone is all that’s desirable – it’s not. But a forced, barking tone risks distracting us from the music itself. This approach becomes a problem in the opening solo of Fratres and resurfaces to the detriment of the Prokofiev’s scherzo, among other examples. Unsurprisingly, it’s a contemporary trope: we’re all used to being barked at and bludgeoned by exaggerated opinions these days. It’s a pity that it has been getting into musical interpretation as well. Jessica Duchen
