Gerhard: Piano Trio / Cello Sta / Chaconne / Gemini

On this CD:

1. Piano Trio
Composed by Roberto Gerhard
Performed by Caroline Balding, Jo Cole, Timothy Lissimore, cantamen

2. Sonata for cello & piano
Composed by Roberto Gerhard
Performed by Caroline Balding, Jo Cole, Timothy Lissimore, cantamen

3. Chaconne for solo violin
Composed by Roberto Gerhard
Performed by Caroline Balding, Jo Cole, Timothy Lissimore, cantamen

4. Gemini, for violin & piano
Composed by Roberto Gerhard
Performed by Caroline Balding, Jo Cole, Timothy Lissimore, cantamen

Customer Reviews:

A wide-ranging collection of Gerhard's music.......2003-12-11

This disc contains music from every period of Roberto Gerhard's output, from the 1918 Piano Trio, one of his earliest published works, to the fully mature 1966 masterpiece Gemini. With strong, idiomatic performances, it provides an excellent survey of Gerhard's chamber output.

The Piano Trio was completed in 1918, when the composer was just 22 years old. It is a remarkably assured debut--it was his first acknowledged chamber work. It is written in a three-movement fast-slow-fast form, and in a style which owes much to Ravel, though Gerhard neither has the elder composer's sinuous melody nor his sensual grasp of colour. It is still worth hearing, though I don't think many people, on first listening, would guess the composer.

Moving along to 1956, the Cello Sonata is a revision of Gerhard's 1946 Viola Sonata. This is a roughly neo-classical work, though the harmonic language alternates between dissonantly tonal and tonally-leaning serial (it needs careful listening to tell when the serial passages begin and end). Like the Piano Trio, this work is also in a fast-slow-fast form, though it is more concise (15 minutes to the earlier work's 25) and much more tautly constructed. I found it enjoyable, though I wouldn't claim it as the equal of some of Gerhard's contemporaneous work.

The Chaconne for Solo Violin was written in 1959. A work with this title inevitably draws comparisons with Bach, and given that this work lasts over 20 minutes, one assumes the composer intended so. As one would expect, this isn't a work of the stature of Bach's, but it is still an interesting ride, though at times I found the structure a little diffuse. Once again, this work alternates serial and non-serial writing, though it is somewhat more dissonant than the Cello Sonata.

The one outright masterpiece on the disc is Gemini, a 1966 duo for violin and piano. This is a wide-ranging, free-wheeling work that constantly evolves its melodic material into new shapes, new forms, before a haunting, slow section--a prefiguration of the ends of his late works Leo and Libra--gives way to a vigorous coda. This is a highly dissonant work, but never gratuitously so; everything is wonderfully to the point, particularly some of the changes in piano colour from the use of extended techniques. (Oddly enough, when listening to this work last, I couldn't help but think of the early music of Wolfgang Rihm. It seems like an unlikely comparison point, but ...)

The performers here do a good job with Gerhard's music. I'm not quite sure that the violinist is quite up to bringing the Chaconne fully off, but the rest of the performances are excellent. Recommended to those already convinced by Gerhard; those wishing to start exploring this underrated composer would perhaps best start with the Chandos disc of the Violin Concerto and First Symphony.

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