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Gregor Piatigorsky - Mendelssohn, Chopin & Strauss

£10.87

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Label: Testament

Cat No: SBT1419

Barcode: 0749677141929

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 1

Genre: Chamber

Release Date: 25th February 2008

Works

Mendelssohn
Cello Sonata no.2 in D, op.58

Chopin
Cello Sonata in G minor, op.65

Strauss, R
Cello Sonata in F, op.6

Artists

Gregor Piatigorsky
Leonard Pennario
Rudolf Firkusny

Works

Mendelssohn
Cello Sonata no.2 in D, op.58

Chopin
Cello Sonata in G minor, op.65

Strauss, R
Cello Sonata in F, op.6

Artists

Gregor Piatigorsky
Leonard Pennario
Rudolf Firkusny

About

Gregor Pavlovich Piatigorsky came into the world in Ekaterinoslav (now Dniepropetrovsk), Ukraine, on 17 April 1903, the son of a fiddler who taught him violin and piano. But when he heard a cello for the first time at a concert, he knew his destiny: using two sticks to represent a cello and a bow, he spent hours in imaginary play. “Those magic sticks lifted me into a world of sound where I could call every mood at will,” he later wrote. Given a real cello at seven, he made such rapid progress with a local teacher that at nine he was playing in public.

He was granted a scholarship to the Moscow Conservatory, where his teachers were Gubariov and Alfred von Glehn, a pupil of Davidov; he also had private tuition from Anatoli Brandukov. Meanwhile he moonlighted alongside his father in clubs and cinemas. He was a member of the Zimin Opera Orchestra and in 1919, aged only 16, became principal of the Bolshoi Opera Orchestra. He played in the Lenin Quartet led by the Auer pupil Lev Zeitlin, gave trio concerts with Issay Dobrowen and Misha Fishberg and gained invaluable experience from working with Glazunov, Igumnov, Goldenweiser, Elena Beckmann-Scherbina and Chaliapin – who told him: “You sing very nicely on your cello, Grisha, but try to speak more on it.” Refused permission to study and give concerts abroad, in 1921 he escaped to Poland – travelling most of the way in a cattle truck and crossing the border on foot with musician friends, his cello over his shoulder. “Suddenly bing-bang-bang! Two soldiers shoot at us,” Piatigorsky told an interviewer years afterwards. “There is with us a lady opera songer[ sic]. She is very awfully fat. As she hears the bangs she jumps up on my shoulders and puts her big arms round my neck ... my cello is no more.”

These sonatas were all written for excellent cellists. Mendelssohn had his brother Paul in mind for his D major Sonata, although he dedicated it to the Russian amateur player and music patron Prince Mateusz Wielhorski. Piatigorsky’s freewheeling interpretation is reminiscent of Feuermann’s: he did not know that master’s recording, which was still unpublished at the time, but he may well have heard Feuermann play the work. Chopin’s G minor Sonata – one of his few chamber works and his last large-scale creation – was composed for a friend, the cello virtuoso Auguste Franchomme, with whom he gave the première in 1847. It cost Chopin an immense amount of effort, none of which shows in the finished piece. Richard Strauss’s Sonata in F major is a youthful work, dating from 1883, but the Czech cellist Hanusˇ Wihan, for whom Dvorˇák wrote several masterpieces, accepted the dedication and gave the first
performance with the composer. This work needs the firm shaping it gets from the performers here.

From the booklet note © Tully Potter, 2008