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RECITAL REVIEW August 24, 2002
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By Michelle Dulak
The repertoire for solo cello is a bit like that for solo violin: small, but
select. What there is, is mostly good, or at any rate interesting. And though most
of it belongs to the twentieth century and is technically very taxing, the solo
cellist can always relax (comparatively!) with one of the earlier Bach Suites
somewhere in the program.
The young Russian cellist Alexei Romanenko's Old First Concerts recital Friday
night, however steered clear of the Suites, though not of Bach. Romanenko's
gruelling program ended with Zoltán Kodály's mammoth Sonata, Op. 8, and introduced
a rarely-played and fascinating Capriccio by the great 19th-century cellist
and pedagogue Julius Klengel. But it began with the player's own transcription of
the Chaconne from Bach's second Partita for solo violin.
Violists who play the Bach Chaconne move it down a fifth, to G minor, so as
to preserve the relationship between the key and the instrument's open strings. One
would expect a cello transcription to do the same, but Romanenko's Chaconne
is in the original D minor. Moreover, it's about as close as humanly possible to
the violin original, preserving even the original voicings of chords almost all the
time.
Perhaps only cellists intimately familiar with the violin version will appreciate the gymnastics this entails. Keeping the piece in D minor means relocating everything originally on the violin's E string into the higher positions of the cello's A string; a good third or more of the piece is consequently up in thumb position. And since the open strings don't lie in the same relation to the music as they do on the violin, Romanenko had constantly to "break" chords literally between positions, playing the bottom of a chord in the first position and then shifting far up the fingerboard to catch the rest of it. Even with such heroic methods, there were a few unavoidable fudges. The chords at the climax of the maggiore section, where the rhythm of the opening comes back, had to be thinned out. It was really the only place in the transcription where Romanenko's revoicing of chords was at all noticeable, but unfortunately it stuck out badly: where a violinist playing up in position in this spot can strike the open D string to glorious effect, Romanenko was already using his D string to cover one of the other two notes in the chord. And there was one place, very near the end of the work, where he was forced to move a measure or so of music an octave down. (The bar in question is absolute murder on the violin in first position; in a high position on the cello I doubt it's physically possible.) (The Chaconne, incidentally, contains long stretches in arpeggios that are indicated just as block chords in Bach's manuscript, and violinists have come up with various schemes of breaking them into figuration. The one Romanenko used was the one that I grew up with — Heifetz used it in the first recording I ever had of the piece — but I haven't seen or heard it since. I wonder where he encountered it?)
but kids, don't try this at home So did the transcription work? Surprisingly well, largely thanks to Romanenko's deft shifting and chord technique. In particular, preserving the illusion of a broken chord when the "break" spans several positions means having to leap very quickly to a scrupulously in-tune high double-stop, a thing Romanenko managed more reliably than I suspect some better-known cellists could. It was not by any means a technically immaculate performance, such as any number of violinists could make of the violin original, but it was confident and strong and well-shaped over its quarter-hour span. Julius Klengel's Capriccio in the Form of a Chaconne, Op. 43, according to the program notes, was "certainly influenced by Bach's Chaconne." I'll say. You've got your short, harmonically-conceived theme in D minor; your swift succession of variations; your central section in the major, followed by a return to the minor; oh, and of course your unaccompanied string instrument. At the maggiore the, ahem, sincere flattery is almost too much, as even Klengel's melodic line nearly matches Bach's in the same place. Elsewhere the mimicry is less bald. For one thing, Klengel's variations are more distinct one from another than Bach's are, contrasting at close quarters rather than flowing into one another. For another, when Klengel really lets himself go to town in the technical department, we're in a different musical world. To his credit, he keeps the serious pyrotechnics in reserve for a remarkably long time, all the way through to the second minore section, but when they launch you do know it. (The variation with the artifical harmonics all up and down the fingerboard is a real kick — at least if you can play it, as Romanenko certainly could.)
In short: think equal parts Bach Chaconne, Brahms Haydn Variations, and Paganini 24th Caprice (if you can!), and you'll have a rough idea of the flavor. "The Capriccio is undeservedly missing from the repertoire of today's cellists," Romanenko writes, and I'm inclined to agree. Towards the end the piece does start feeling a little long, but it's varied, well-made, and in general a lot more than one would expect from a composer best known today for his technical studies. As for the Kodály: all of Romanenko's considerable virtues were brought to bear on this vast, unruly monster of a showpiece, with its scordatura tuning (the lower two strings are retuned a half-step lower), its absurdly huge range, and its flamboyantly rhapsodic character. On the technical side the performance was very good indeed, accurate in the high register, with tight trills and lovely, even, delicate tremolos. And Romanenko makes a big, bold, and very attractive sound. But I couldn't help wishing that he'd varied it more. He is no colorist; his sound at fortissimo and at pianissimo seemed to change only in volume, and his vibrato appeared to have only three settings: fast, faster, and off. All the same, it was a performance full of thrills, and it received a well-deserved ovation. Which must have left Romanenko in a quandary: how do you toss off an encore when your only instrument's tuned in scordatura? His solution was witty and graceful: he came back on after the third curtain call, sat down, and lit into the opening bars of the Kodály again. And when the audience erupted in laughter, he grinned, bowed, and left the stage.
(Michelle Dulak, editor of San Francisco Classical Voice, is a violinist and violist who has written about music for Strings, Stagebill, Early Music America, and the New York Times.)
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