Folk & Ba-Rock Cello
Works by Cervantes, Dall’Abaco, Sollima et al
Giovanni Sollima (cello)
Dynamic CDS-8035 54:59 mins
Clip: Giovanni Sollima: Krunk (Giovanni Sollima)
This album is thrilling. Giovanni Sollima really takes the lid off cello playing, with an intoxicating energetic, rhythmically charged virtuosity. Musical landscapes are evolving and cello technique is no exception. Here Sollima displays all the new ideas that tend towards developing the left hand for percussive effects with hitting and slapping pizzicatos, and using the bow to creating cutting and slicing effects.
He is an exciting artist-creative in terms of writing his own arrangements and pieces, and in his interpretations. For example his Baroque performances are teeming with spontaneity with tasteful ornamentation at cadences. Sollima takes the first of 14 Capriccios by Dall’Abaco and revels in the dramatic minor key invention.
In Corbetta’s Caprice which he has arranged, he offers some dazzlingly frantic string crossing. The folk music exquisitely drones away with mellifluous melancholic lines fusing into the concoction. As a composer, his music blends all these influences of folk, rock and baroque styles. Lamentation starts with a folk-like drone with singing above the line, before the fireworks start, with slides galore yielding to fast, furious and dizzying invention.
Where perhaps the most cutting-edge playing comes is in his sparkling arrangements of Nirvana’s ‘About a Girl’, Slayer’s ‘Raining Blood’ and Hendrix’s ‘Angel’. Here he explores some ugly sounds, particularly in ‘Raining Blood’ – the thudding bowing is electric and powerful.
Potentially this is a very influential album, as it showcases the wealth of expression possible, in an explosively compelling fashion, and equally the diverse styles that are offered in the cello repertoire. Jo Talbot