Search - Kluksdahl :: Lines for Solo Cello

Yes! wonderful playing,precise and impassioned

scarecrow | Chicago, Illinois United States | 06/15/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Encountering solo literature on any instrument(save piano) has become quite interesting. The exclusive focus on timbre is a thrill by itself,self-sustaining and a creative challenge. The cello is perhaps, I'd argue the pinnicle instrument in the service of this literature it has tremendous range, technical, timbral,expressive,gestural. Sebastian Bach's famous Suites attests to this. CRI label has been in the service of music academia so that's who is included in this showcase, prize winners of some sort with a spin toward dodecaphonic means,interpreted personally as Ralph Shapey's music does so powerfully. Here the "Krosnick Soli" hovers close to the work also dedicated to Joel Krosnick of the Juilliard Quartet (also Gilbert Kalish,pianist). The low C string is tuned down (scordatura) to A. So this incredible foghorn like sound is forever present here. However Shapey had perhaps the anxiety the distrubing transgressive features of the human condition in his creative mind here. It is a granite like work, beginning in the lower depths as an anchoring point,trailing upwards. The piece is self sustaining and powerful. You sense the pestilence of the human situation,something perhaps Sartre or Klossowski has commented on.And Shapey can be quite graphic in his music,smears and densely wrought double stops with the low extended A. The music seems never pleased with itself,always anxious and nervous,searching for something. Augusta Read Thomas "Spring Song" is also a thrill a fascinating time for the ear,from quite a different creative perspective. She begins in a lyrical realm,transparent direct and tuneful,not so much dodecaphonic, that never was her affinity. The higher regions of the cello are exploited until time weighs here and the melodic materials descend, a great creative agenda, then double stops are introduced, and we return now armed with a new timbre to the top of the instrument.Kluksdahl has a marvelous sense of shape and an inspired use of vibrato,colouring the tone effectively when needed. Also it's modest length reveals her deep understadning of this genre of the unaccompanied solo. The Wernick piece here early from 1972 seems more like an etude he wrote to get it off his chest. It is gesturally labored I thought,too much material for the structural frame he adopts.Running in all directions even for Cadenza it was not focused. The plucked string is developed in Brodhead's "Lament" wonderfully evocative,and full of haunting mystery,the choice of intervals helps this cause as well.And my cause for the cello is testified in tha fact that we seem never to grow tired of hearing the plucked cello string. Like wise the Donald Martino an interesting creator here has an early student work of his from 1964, and it revelas deep fragmentation and the beginning points of American Babbittized dodecaphonic language.I didn't find it interesting,like wise the Schuller Fantasia from 1960,deeply serious work,unlike Schuller,well perhaps then. Scott Kluksdahl is a thrilling precise,clean and impassioned performer,who understands the modernist expressive credo quite well. I'd love to hear more."