“What Happens When Performers Approach Unfamiliar Music With the Same Confidence as Beethoven or Brahms”: Søren Rastogi and Janne Fredens

BY MARK GABRISH CONLAN

I was asked to interview Danish pianist Søren Rastogi in connection with his latest cello-and-piano album, Resurgence, consisting of two cello sonatas by little-known Russian composer Leokadiya Kashperova (1872-1940). When I realized that the cellist, Janne Fredens, was also Mrs. Rastogi, I asked if I could make it a joint interview with both of them.

Leokadiya Kashperova has a toe-hold in the history of classical music because Igor Stravinsky mentioned her as his piano teacher in his 1935 French-language autobiography Chroniques de Ma Vie (Chronicles of My Life). Having already recorded a cello-and-piano CD called Upheaval, a compilation disc of four little-known women composers (Henriëtte Bosmans, Dora Pejačević, Nadia Boulanger and her tragically short-lived sister Lili), Fredens and Rastogi decided to do a follow-up containing both Kashperova’s cello sonatas. In this interview, they discussed the Kashperova album, which they called Resurgence, as well as other records they’ve made, jointly and severally.

First off, how did the two of you meet, and was it both a professional and a personal relationship from the get-go?

We met as students at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen. It began very much as a professional relationship: we started playing together, and gradually the musical partnership became a personal one as well. We have been performing together ever since.

How did you discover the music of Leokadiya Kashperova, and what made you decide to record her two cello sonatas?

We first encountered Kashperova through a very fine BBC radio recording and were immediately struck by the music. We were surprised to discover how little of it had been recorded, so we began looking into Graham Griffiths’s extensive research and exploring more of her work ourselves.
It soon became clear that this was music we wanted not only to play, but also to help bring into wider circulation. From the beginning, the idea was to record both cello sonatas as a complete set. We programmed them in concerts throughout 2025 and 2026 before recording them, which gave us time to let the music really settle. The audience response has been remarkably positive, so we are naturally very curious to see how listeners respond to the album.

Your previous listing in the Fanfare Archive was for an album called Upheaval consisting of cello-and-piano works by four women composers—Henriëtte Bosmans, Dora Pejačević, and Nadia and Lili Boulanger. You’ve also been involved in an interdisciplinary project about Clara Schumann. Have you made it a special project to seek out and perform works composed by women, and if so, why?

We are interested more broadly in excellent music that, for one reason or another, has fallen outside the standard repertoire. Women composers are particularly interesting in this respect because so many historical factors worked against them, both during their lifetimes and afterwards.
We have also become increasingly interested in what happens when performers approach unfamiliar music with the same confidence we normally bring to a Beethoven or Brahms score. If you begin with the assumption that every bar deserves to make musical sense, you immediately enter a much more curious and investigative artistic process instead of simply “playing the notes.” We have developed quite a lot of experience with that approach, and it became central to our work on Kashperova as well.

Janne, in addition to your other projects, you’re also a member of the Jalina Trio, whose recording of Mendelssohn and Brahms was want-listed by Jerry Dubins in 30:2. What is the Jalina Trio, how long has it existed, where has it performed, and what else, if anything, has it recorded? And is Line Fredens, the violinist, a relative?

Janne: Line is my sister. The Jalina Trio was an important part of my earlier musical life, although the ensemble is no longer active. Natsuki Fukasawa was our pianist for most of the trio’s active years. We toured internationally, took prizes at several chamber-music competitions and made three recordings. Our Mendelssohn and Brahms album was very warmly received by Jerry Dubins here in Fanfare, which of course meant a great deal to us. [Dubins didn’t write a formal review of the disc, but he Want Listed it in 30:2.] It was followed by Kaleidoscope and NOW! Denmark, both devoted to modern Danish music.

The two of you are listed as co-directors of the Odsherred Kammermusikfestival in Denmark. What is it, where does it take place, and how long have you been associated with it?

We became artistic directors in 2022. Søren grew up in Odsherred, so there is also a personal connection to the area.
One of the things that attracted us was the possibility of bringing music-making at a very high international level to a part of Denmark outside the major cultural centers. At the same time, we wanted young Danish musicians to be genuinely integrated into the festival, performing alongside established professionals rather than simply appearing in a separate youth program. Some of them are as young as fourteen, and over the last few years we have seen how powerful that experience can be for their development.

Søren, you’re listed as having been the soloist on the world premiere recording of the 1941 piano concerto by Paul August von Klenau with the Singapore Symphony under Hans Graf. How did this recording come about, and was it a work you had long wanted to perform?

Søren: I came across the concerto through an artistic-research project in which I wanted to investigate the process of learning and interpreting a work that was, in practical terms, almost a completely blank slate. There was no established performing tradition to lean on, which made it ideal for that purpose.
Dacapo became interested in making a recording, and after several years we managed to involve the Singapore Symphony and Hans Graf. So it was not a concerto I had dreamed of playing for years; rather, my interest grew directly out of the research process. That eventually developed into a much larger recording project than I had originally imagined.

Søren, you’re also credited with an album called Visiting Grieg on Simax with baritone Johannes Weisser, consisting of five Grieg song cycles. How did this project happen?

Søren: Johannes and I have played together since our student years. We performed the great song cycles of Schubert and Schumann many times in both Denmark and Norway, so we had already developed a close musical language together.
A Grieg recording became a very natural idea, both because of Johannes’s Norwegian background and because of Grieg’s strong connection to the German Lied tradition. We were also very fortunate to work with the late Tony Harrison as producer. He brought insights from a very detailed project concerned with reconstructing aspects of Grieg’s own performance style from Grieg’s surviving recordings. That gave the project an additional historical dimension that we found fascinating.

What are your future plans, and do they include any more recordings of cello-and-piano material with both of you?

We are certainly considering making these recordings into a trilogy. We already have some ideas for a third cello-and-piano album, but we would rather not reveal the repertoire just yet.
For the moment, we are very much looking forward to seeing how Resurgence finds its way into the world. One of the pleasures of working with neglected repertoire is that a recording is not really the end of the process. Ideally, it is the beginning of the music becoming part of a living repertoire again.