Classical Music -- Rachmaninoff's Cello Sonata in G Minor and Prokofiev's Cello Sonata in C Major featuring Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax / Rachmaninoff's Cello Sonata in G Minor, Brahms' Cello Sonata in D Major and Schumann's Fantasiestucke

Abstract

Review.

RACHMANINOFF: Cello Sonata in G Minor, Op. 19. BRAHMS: Cello Sonata in D Major. SCHUMANN: Fantasiestucke, Op. 78. Janos Starker (cello); Shigeo Neriki (piano). RCA VICTOR 60598-2 (70 min).

Performance: Aristocratic

Recording: Good

The performances of the Rachmaninoff Cello Sonata on these two discs offer a wonderful study in contrast between two of the finest cello virtuosos of our time, Yo-Yo Ma and Janos Starker Ma and Emanuel Ax make an ideal chamber-music team, and here they function as virtually a single orpanism, responding wholeheartedly to the emotionality and drama of the lush, lyrical 1901 sonata. They extend their expansive treatment by giving us the first-movement exposition repeat. For his part, Starker is cool, aristocratic, and never less than the complete musician. He forgoes the first-movement repeat and in general, expertly accompanied by Shigeo Neriki, comes up with a much tauter reading.

Starker's CD includes the lovely Brahms G Major Violin Sonata in a cello version that the annotation credits to Brahms himself. That may or may not be accurate, but whatever its provenance, Starker makes a good case for it here. Nevertheless, I'm not about to give up my treasured Szeryng-Rubinstein recording of the original. The other coupler, Schumann's Fantasiestacke, is a set of brief and typical character pieces, contrastingly lyrical and impulsive. Schumann scored them originally for clarinet but with the performance option of viola or cello. Again, Starker offers an elegant and precise reading, but I still prefer the lighter-textured clarinet version over the cello.

The late (1950) Prokofiev sonata that fills out the Ma-Ax CD is beautifully written for the instrument, but it is typical of the composer's output after he was beset by Soviet bureaucrats. Ma and Ax no doubt give the best possible performance, but it amounts to three movements of pleasing but bland fare.

The Starker-Neriki disc was well and cleanly recorded in New York's Manhattan Center. Ma and Ax used Mechanics Hall in Worcester, Massachusetts, and the sonics are simply magnificent--some of the best chamber recording with piano that has ever come my way.