Another birthday treat from Vladimir Ashkenazy
LAST year Decca marked Vladimir Ashkenazy’s 80th birthday with reissues of his great recordings, as well as new ones including one with Sydney cellist Catherine Hewgill.
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LAST year Vladimir Ashkenazy’s 80th birthday was lavishly celebrated by his longstanding recording label, Decca, with box sets and a series of reissues, along with a new recording of Bach’s French suites.
But the Russian maestro is not only a world famous pianist, and more recently conductor, he has also always been a keen chamber musician and during his time as Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s chief conductor he forged collaborations with the band’s foremost players.
An album of rare pieces by Sergei Rachmaninov featured him with former concertmaster Dene Olding on violin, and now with From Darkness to Light it is the turn of SSO principal cellist Catherine Hewgill to work with the master on a superb all-Russian program of sonatas by Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitri Shostakovich, with a yearning version of Vocalise by Ashkenazy’s beloved Rachmaninov as the cherry on the icing.
MASTERPIECE
Prokofiev’s sonata, dedicated to Mstislav Rostropovich, had to go through various hearings by Soviet committees before it was allowed a public performance. It was immediately declared to be a masterpiece and it has remained popular ever since.
Full of memorable melodies and shifts of intensity and emotion, there is plenty here to challenge both musicians. Ashkenazy’s dazzling technique and faultless judgment both seem undimmed after such a long career.
Paying tribute to Hewgill as a “very artistic and highly professional musician”, he said it felt very natural to him to identify with this great Russian music.
The largo third movement of Shostakovich’s sonata perhaps reflects the emotional turmoil the composer was in at the time he wrote it, having fallen in love with a young student which resulted in a separation from his wife Nina. But then the composer was the master of disguise, as artists had to be to survive under Stalin, and what his music is “telling” us is always a contentious issue.
Whatever the case, it is a beautiful movement and Hewgill’s artistic sensitivity combined with an eloquent and elegant tone are perfect for it.
Hewgill, born in 1963, the year Ashkenazy left the Soviet Union for good, had tuition from both Rostropovich and Jacqueline du Pre’s teacher William Pleeth, so this is music that’s very much in her DNA. As she says these two pieces evoke passages of darkness “which seem to resolve themselves into the possibility of universal light and hope”, hence the album’s title.
After the heavy shifting moods of the sonatas Rachmaninov’s much-loved Vocalise — originally a wordless song for high voice — comes as a refreshing palate cleanser to finish off this lovely album.
Decca’s peerless production values make this both a fine tribute to the veteran pianist and a superb debut disc for Hewgill. You can buy it at Fish Fine Music for $24.99.