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Selected Reviews - ResurgenceKASHPEROVA Cello Sonatas No. 1 in G and No. 2 in e  Janne Fredens (vc); Søren Rastogi (pn)  OUR 8226946 (61:24)

One of the traps all reviewers can unwittingly fall into and that must therefore be constantly guarded against is that of the lasting first impression. As recently as 50:1, I reviewed a new Capriccio release containing Leokadiya Kashperova’s Piano Concerto in A Minor and her Symphony in B Minor. Both, based on their dates and opus numbers, op. 2 and 1900 for the concerto, and op. 4 and 1905 for the symphony, were presumed to be among her earliest composed and published works. But by that time, Kashperova (1872–1940) had already passed the age where the term “prodigy” might apply. She had studied piano with Anton Rubinstein at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, graduating from that institution in 1893. Two years later she would earn a second degree, this one in composition, having studied with Nicolai Soloviev. And yet, it seems that between 1893 and 1900, seven years passed before she began composing in earnest. According to her brief bio, she made use of those years mainly in launching her career as a concert pianist, undertaking tours to Berlin and London, and generally making a name for herself on the concert circuit. She came to composing only after establishing her reputation as a pianist of note, thus following in the footsteps of her famed teacher, Anton Rubinstein. Or, so was the assumption.
I was very taken with her piano concerto, rhapsodizing over it enthusiastically. But here’s where we come to the reviewers’ trap of lasting first impressions referred to above. While I praised the piano concerto con appassionato, with equal brio, I savaged the symphony. Coud I now overcome that negative impression in order to review Kashperova’s two cello sonatas as if I’d never heard her symphony?
The first thing to say is that up until receipt of this album, the piano concerto and symphony were Kashperova’s earliest works we knew of. The cello sonatas herein recorded are earlier still, and they prove our prior assumption false. The Sonata No. 1 in G Major, op. 1/1, and No. 2 in E Minor, op. 1/2, were composed in 1895 and 1896, respectively, almost immediately after she had earned her degree in composition under Soloviev. We now know that it’s the two cello sonatas that are, in fact, Kashperova’s first compositions, and that she embarked on her career as a composer sooner than we’d thought. Most likely, she pursued parallel career paths of concert pianist and composer simultaneously.
Naturally, I wondered why she would have chosen the cello for her very first compositions. It wasn’t her instrument, nor had its dedicatee been her instructor at the conservatory. But Alexander Verzhbilovich was a professor of cello at the school, and his playing “was noted for its tonal beauty, singing style, nobility, and grace.” Kashperova no doubt heard him play and was inspired by what she heard to compose and dedicate her two cello sonatas to Verzhbilovich.
A composer’s “first” in any genre, be it a symphony, a concerto, or, as in this case, a cello sonata, tends to raise the question of “the pancake precept,” the idea that the first pancake out of the pan is never any good. In Betty Crocker and Aunt Jemima land that may be true, but in music land, we have enough examples of “firsts” in every genre that are done to perfection.
Continuing the analogy, I’d say that Kashperova’s First Cello Sonata is related to a pancake, but it’s of a batter much better. It’s a delicate, sweet crepe. The piano takes the lead in stating the melody as the first movement opens, but then, having prepared the way for the cello, it gets out of the way, so to speak, remaining mostly in the upper regions of the keyboard, allowing the cello to spin its lyrical line in the instrument’s most honeyed range without having to compete against the piano to be heard.
Given Kashperova’s training under Anton Rubinstein and Nicolai Soloviev at one of Russia’s two most famous music academies, it’s hard to speculate on where the inspiration for this sonata came from, for if I had to guess at its origins, I’d say it bears a much closer resemblance to the French school at the time than it does to anything coming out of Russia around this time. If I didn’t know the composer, I might guess Louis Vierne, a recording of whose cello sonata I reviewed for this same issue.
The Scherzo movement that follows is a bit easier to place. Not surprisingly, Mendelssohn plays hide and seek through its pages as the piece scampers along, though I wouldn’t put up much of an argument to Sofia Petrova’s album note in which she suggests that this Scherzo hints at a Ukrainian dance that recalls music from Tchaikovsky’s opera, The Tsarina's Slippers.
If you’ve been waiting for and wanting a good dose of the “Russian” in Kashperova’s G-Major Cello Sonata, the Andante movement should do it for you. At least to start with, the music sounds the mood of the heavy-burdened laborer bemoaning his sorrowful fate. But the pace picks and the feeling of woe lightens a bit in what is clearly the central section of an ABA form, which eventually returns to its mood of forlorn hopelessness. To suffer in such exquisite beauty is sublime.
The Rondo finale gives hope to the downtrodden that happier times are on the horizon, a future predicted by an obviously shady soothsayer and her sham crystal ball. Kashperova couldn’t have known what was coming in Russia just a few years later.
The Sonata No. 2 is woven from a very different cloth. Could it be mere coincidence that its E-Minor tonality is the same key in which Brahms cast his First Cello Sonata, op. 38? Maybe, although Kashperova’s E-Minor is turbulent and tragic. While her G-Major Sonata had its isolated moments of angst, its overall leaning was towards the lyrical and the beauty of soulful song. In the E-Minor Sonata, Kashperova sets out to prove her mastery of the Romantic period’s Sturm und Drang style, and she succeeds at it masterfully.
The G-Major Sonata is beautiful, and that, alone, is enough to recommend it. The E-Minor Sonata is beautiful too, but it’s also intense and powerful in its expression and dramatic thrust. This, in my opinion, recommends it as a work that belongs in the mainstream of the cello sonata literature and that should be in the repertoires of every serious, professional concert cellist.
Kashperova seems to have been a composer never at a loss for melody or a heartrending slow movement, and that’s what we get in her Andante movement, which in the E-Minor Sonata, comes in second place ahead of the Scherzo. This Andante is unusual in that instead of an uninterrupted melodic thread, we get a sort of stream-of-consciousness reverie comprised of intimate exchanges between the cello and piano in a confidential conversation to which we are but privileged eavesdroppers.
The Scherzo, unashamedly, is pure Mendelssohn. It’s always interesting to see how they handle finales in their minor-key works. Do they give us an upbeat, optimistic, triumphant finale in the parallel major key, E Minor/E Major. Do they retain the minor key for the finale, changing to the parallel major in just the last few measures, to ensure an exultant final cadence? Or do they end as angst-filled with gloom and doom as they began? Brahms found that violence and upheaval suited him in works such as his Piano Quintet in F Minor, op. 34, and his Fourth Symphony in E Minor, op. 98. Tchaikovsky, on the other hand, chose slipping away into mute eternity as an appropriate way to end his “Pathétique” Symphony.
I’m at a bit of a loss as to how to explain Kashperova’s finale to her E-Minor Cello Sonata. Clearly, the score is online at imslp.org, the finale, with four sharps in the key signature, is in E Major, and the tempo marking is Allegro maestoso, which suggests a stately, grand, imposing atmosphere. But little to none of that is expressed by the music. The movement’s underlying pace is more of a moderato than an allegro, and there’s nothing I’d call maestoso about the character of the music.
It begins with a simple-sounding, folksong-like tune that could well serve as a theme and variations. But that’s not what Kashperova does with it. The movement unfolds in a kind of ongoing, radiant sonata-allegro form based on the opening melody. I wouldn’t call the character of the music exuberant or especially high-spirited. Rather, its mood strikes me as amabile and contented with itself, its radiance illuminated from within. It’s extraordinarily beautiful and deeply satisfying, despite the fact that it’s not like most movements we think of as finales. It leaves this listener feeling gladdened and content as opposed to roused.
In Fanfare 47:4, I had the pleasure of reviewing an album of works for cello and piano in a program of works by female composers, titled Upheaval. The OUR disc featured cellist Janne Fredens and pianist Søren Rastogi as they team up again here to bring us these premiere recordings of Leokadiya Kashperova’s two cello sonatas. It’s my understanding that Fredens and Rastogi are the subjects of an interview being conducted in conjunction with this and other reviews of the album submitted by colleagues, so I will leave it to the interviewer to question these extraordinary artists about the rediscovery of the sonatas and how they came to be recorded by Fredens and Rastogi.
Let me just say that Janne Fredens is one of Denmark’s leading cellists and advocates on behalf of chamber music by composer’s that history left behind and forgot. She has toured extensively throughout Europe, the U.S., Australia, Japan, and the Middle East, her artistry recognized and critically acclaimed wherever she has appeared.
Danish pianist Søren Rastogi has also made a name for himself at home and abroad as a concerto soloist with major orchestras and a collaborator with countless artists in chamber music performances. His extensive repertoire ranges from Mozart to Rachmaninoff, Bartók, Stravinsky, Gershwin, Bernstein, and beyond.
As I listen to Fredens and Rastogi play these Kashperova cello sonatas, I cannot honestly think of another duo that could be more responsive to the unique voice of this composer and the ennobling spirit of her music. Jerry Dubins