Christoph Croisé, Lullabies. Christoph Croisé, cello; Ana Bakradze and Oxana Shevchenko, piano. AVIE 2779 (digital EP). TT: ~21.20.
Lullabies, Op. 18, Lullaby for Béatrice; Lullaby for Almuth; Lullaby for Reni; Lullaby for Maria. Cello Sonata, II. Lullaby for Arthur.
As my review of Silvestrov's Postludium No. 3, way back in Issue 132, suggests, I'm a sucker for the cello playing big, resonant lyrical themes on its two middle strings. (The high range, brilliant in solo concertos, can turn light and nasal, which isn't as appealing.) So a set of four short Lullabies for cello and piano, by the cellist and composer Christoph Croisé, sounded like it would fill the same bill perfectly.
Well, not quite. The pieces aren't bad in themselves: M. Croisé obviously knows his instrument and how to deploy it effectively in its various registers. He also doesn't write badly for the piano:
But we get all too little of the sort of rich expressiveness the cello has to offer. Only the third and fourth pieces—the lullabies for Remi and for Maria—carry the sort of expressive weight you might have expected throughout: in that for Maria, the cello line becomes especially fervent as it rises in pitch. In the Lullaby for Béatrice, it's the piano, rather than the cello, that sets the mournful tone; the latter enters on the low (C) string, where it's hard to "sing," and his rising lines almost necessarily lose tonal depth.
Throughout the program, the cello vaults into higher flights of virtuoso fancy that, while impressive, negate the "lullaby" idea. (Some of the piano writing, too, gets ambitious: Ana Bakradze is clear and articulate tone, but, in Lullaby for Reni, a series of "playful" quick thirds somehow feels awkward.) I can't imagine any of these pieces putting a baby to sleep—in fact, I can't imagine that an adult could sleep. The tunes don't spin out long enough, and meanwhile there's just too much else going on. The recording captures the soloist's deep breaths vividly, along with the music.
Ironically, it's the program's one "retread"—reissued from M. Croisé's earlier release, Voyage Exotique—that most closely lives up to the title's promise. The second movement from the Cello Sonata, subtitled Lullaby for Arthur, gives the soloist a lamenting theme with Eastern European folk inflections, such as one had hoped for elsewhere. A slightly more distanced piano—here played by Oxana Shevchenko—works to the piece's advantage as well.
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