Lawrence Power (viola) & Simon Crawford-Phillips (piano)
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Lawrence Power makes the second of his appearances in this month’s release lists, this time with his regular pianist partner Simon Crawford-Phillips in the chamber music of Shostakovich. The centrepiece is the Viola Sonata, Shostakovich’s last completed work, premiered posthumously, on what would have been the composer’s sixty-ninth birthday. Its ravishing slow finale reworks the opening of Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ Sonata—a tribute to a composer he revered.
Shostakovich the film composer also takes a bow, in the form of The Gadfly, with its famous ‘Romance’ beloved of violinists everywhere. That this works just as compellingly on the viola is triumphantly displayed in the arrangement made by Vadim Borisovsky (founding violist of the Beethoven Quartet), one of the Five Pieces he recast from Shostakovich’s original.
Shostakovich’s 24 Piano Preludes have also proved irresistible to transcribers and here we have the seven brilliantly reworked by a pupil of Borisovsky, Yevgeny Strakhov.
Shostakovich: Seven Preludes from 24 Preludes Op 34, arr. Yevgeny Strakhov (1909-1978)
1 Un Peu Triste (#10)
2 Marche Funèbre (#14)
3 Une Valse Vite (#15)
4 Une Valse Militaire (#16)
5 Mélodie Amoureuse (#17)
6 Une Danse Ironique (#18)
7 Finale (#24)
Shostakovich: Sonata for viola and piano Op 147
1. Moderato
2. Allegretto
3. Adagio
Shostakovich: Five Pieces from The Gadfly Op 97
1 Scene: Moderato
2 Intermezzo: Andante
3 Sharmanka (Barrel-Organ Waltz)
4 Romance
5 Folk Festival
June 2012
****
“Lawrence Power and Simon Crawford-Phillips find a much greater variety of resonances in the score than is often the case. They embark on a musical narrative of epic proportions...For the most part, however, Power and Crawford-Phillips place most emphasis on the more grotesque elements of the writing, as if to suggest the composer recapturing the energetic satirical style of his earlier career.”
24th February 2012
***
“[in the Sonata] Power and Crawford-Phillips get beneath the skin of a work that, in its balance between wit and wisdom, radiance and austerity, comes across as a mysterious embrace of life and death.”
April 2012
“Power's performance is particularly engaging in the witty, sardonic middle movement...if not the very last word on the Sonata, this is still a finely played programme that can be recommended with confidence.”
February 2012
“Such is the extraordinary nature of this sonata that it does not respond to any kind of superficial treatment, and Power's performance is, on balance, the most penetrating I have heard...in the Op. 147 Sonata Power is to be preferred above his rivals: there is an 'inner' feeling to his playing (and to that of his partner) which his competitors do not quite equal”
29th January 2012
“Power’s exploration of the viola repertoire on disc grows ever deeper, and this is one of his most compelling recordings yet for Hyperion.”
5th February 2012
“Crawford-Phillips and Power are eloquent interpreters, spare as well as generous in expressing the work's pervasive melancholy.”
Click on any of the works listed above for alternative recordings.
1 Un Peu Triste (#10)
