Chopin & Rachmaninoff: Sonatas for Cello & Piano - Carter Brey, Barbara Weintraub

Chopin and Rachmaninoff? On first consideration these two composers seem like curious choices to share a cello concert—or any other kind. Chopin, the tubercular Pole, with his subtle, crepuscular style and the pastel colors on his musical palette, was always reigned in, laid back, yearning, wistful, contemplative: private. Think then of Rachmaninoff, with those deep, sad, dark eyes, the extravagant Russian emotionalism, the tempests that rage in his turbulent music, the sobs and unabashed tears that stain its somber pages. 

On second thought, however, the wisdom of the choice begins to be apparent. Both men were, after all, part of the great 19th century romantic tradition; both were keyboard virtuosi; both were melancholics; each was, in his own way, able to sway our senses and set our pulses pounding with the songful melodies, the ravishing harmonies, the shifting moods that permeate his scores. It has been said of Chopin that he could really write only for the piano, that his scoring for other instruments-espe cially for full orchestra, as in his two piano concerti-was sketchy and perfunctory. Yet of the five works for chamber players that the Polish master composed, three involved the cello: the Introduction and Polonaise (op. 3), the Piano Trio in G minor (op. 8), and the Cello Sonata (op. 65). What prompted the creation of two of these pieces, in fact, were his friendships with cello players of the period. The young Chopin (20 years old at the time) wrote the first of the above mentioned pieces, also known as the Polonaise brilliante, for Prince Anton Radziwill, who happened to be something of an amateur cellist. He did have the presence of mind, however, to dedicate it to a Viennese virtuoso of the instrument, Josef Merk, who also wrote a number of cello pieces on his own. Then, in 1845, when he was in his mid-30s, Chopin set down his ambitious four-movemnent Cello Sonata for another famous cellist, the Frenchman Auguste-Joseph Franchomme, a rather close friend who also wrote cello works and held chamber music evenings in Paris. In that Sonata, heard on this recording, how uncannily Chopin proves his own mastery of the mellowest of all musical instruments in terms of its possibilities, even as he makes the piano, at whose keyboard he always felt most at home, a true collaborator in a superbly crafted score.