Stefan Wolpe Vol.7 – Music for Violin and Piano
Movses Pogossian; Susan Grace; Varty Manouelian
Bridge Records 9452 (bridgerecords.com)
Armenian-born Movses Pogossian, first-prize winner of the 1985 USSR National Violin Competition and now based in California, is the featured soloist in the latest of Bridge Records’ landmark series devoted to German-Jewish/American composer Stefan Wolpe (1902-1972).
Wolpe’s four-movement, half-hour-long Violin Sonata (1949) is among his most enduring works, spanning an emotional gamut from playful and joyous to melancholy and anguished, and all the way back again. Pogossian and pianist Susan Grace provide all the intensity and flexibility required for its varied moods.
Pogossian is joined by his wife, Varty Manouelian, in two pieces, Duo for Two Violins (1924), with motoric echoes of Bartók, and the short Two Studies for Two Violins and Piano (1933).
The CD opens and closes with unaccompanied works, Second Piece for Violin Alone (1966), a three-minute quirky charmer that would make an effective recital encore, and the 15-minute Piece in Two Parts (1964), a thoughtful, thought-provoking series of brief, pithy phrases, influenced perhaps by Wolpe’s interest in Oriental meditation. The disc also includes a 29-bar fragment from an unfinished Second Violin Sonata (1959).
The detailed booklet notes are by Toronto musicologist Austin Clarkson, who studied with Wolpe and became, in 1981, the first board chairman and general editor of the Stefan Wolpe Society.
This is intriguing repertoire that deserves to be heard.
