Jonathan Swartz & Mark Fewer, violins
Andrés Díaz, cello
Wendy Chen, piano
GROTESKE (Soundset Recordings)
A new CD of chamber music featuring busy Canadian violinists Mark Fewer and native Torontonian Jonathan Swartz contains a pretty compelling mix of new and obscure.
The new is Fantasy Variations on a Theme by Charpentier, which allows Toronto composer, teacher and director Kieran MacMillan to show off what a clever boots he is. The theme, borrowed from a Ritournelle from Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s nativity cantata, is laid out in a way so simple as to sound primitive, but MacMillan quickly turns it into a freewheeling set of 11 variations that cover just about every art music style imaginable.
The obscure is the five-movement Suite, Op. 23, for two violins, cello and left-handed piano commissioned by left-handed pianist Paul Wittgenstein from Erich Wolfgang Korngold — completed in 1930. (The album’s title comes from the middle movement, “Groteske”.) It is a remarkable showcase of a very creative composer. Korngold managed to somehow fuse the new aesthetic of the 20th century with late Romanticism. Sometimes it sounds as if he’s trying to underpin serial tone rows with traditional harmonies. it’s a fascinating interplay.
This excellent quartet of players delivers all the music on this disc with zest, flawless technique and a lot of care in the shaping of the music. Pianist Wendy Chen engages with the piano with red-blooded gusto.
It may seem like a risk to take a chance on this disc, but it’s well worth it.
For more information, including track samples, click here.
Here is the second movement, marked “Walzer,” very nicely played by violinists Liviu Prunaru and Valentina Svyatlovskaya, cellist Marie-Stephanie Janacek and pianist Antoine Rebstein last year:
John Terauds