Four Generations
Patrick Moore; Andrew Staupe
Navona Records nv6766 (navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6766)
Like the biblical series of “begat”s, these four works for cello and piano are linked by sequential relationships, in this case, those between teachers and students: Darius Milhaud taught William Bolcom, who taught Arthur Gottschalk, who taught Karl Blench.
Lasting only a little over four minutes, Milhaud’s Elégie (1945) is no lamentation; instead, it’s sweetly nostalgic, the cello’s long-lined lyricism shifting gently between major and minor modalities. Pulitzer-laureate Bolcom’s 18-minute Cello Sonata No.1 (1989) mixes, he writes, “traditional, popular and modernist musical languages…to form a serious piece of music with a serious sense of humor.” The always-eclectic Bolcom channeled Broadway blues (Allegro inquieto), Brahms (the lovely, sentimental Adagio semplice) and Bartók (the motorized Allegro assai) in this always-entertaining pastiche.
Gottschalk’s 23-minute Cello Sonata: In Memoriam (2006) presents, says Gottschalk, three “personality sketches” of “men who meant so much to me personally.” The first is alternatingly enigmatic and rambunctious, the second intensely melancholy, the third aggressively assertive. It’s a work with its own intriguing, multifaceted “personality.”
The seven movements of Blench’s gripping 26-minute Dreams and Hallucinations (2014, rev.2022) depict, writes Blench, the delusions of “The Man…a tragic character, trapped in his own mind.” Ominous, tolling chords, anguished wails, obsessive rhythms and nightmarish dissonances effectively create a disturbing sonic mirror of “The Man’s” disturbed mind.
Cellist Patrick Moore and pianist Andrew Staupe, both Texas-based, bring passion and depth to these very different, yet very engrossing compositions.
