Zoltán Kodály

Cello Sonata & other works

“… the warm and sensitive partnership of Natalie Clein and Julius Drake.” “A must-have disc.” BBC Music Magazine

FIVE STARS: The Telegraph and Finacial Times

“Pianist Julius Drake shades the introduction to the 1922 Sonatina exquisitely.” Independent on Sunday

Composer: Zoltán Kodály

Performers:

Natalie Clein (cello)
Julius Drake (piano)

Recording details: November 2009
Concert Hall, Wyastone Estate, Monmouth, United Kingdom
Produced by Simon Kiln
Engineered by Arne Akselberg
Release date: June 2010
DISCID: EE10230F
Total duration: 68 minutes 33 seconds

Tracklisting

Sonata, Op 8
1 Movement 1: Allegro maestoso ma appassionato  [9'14]
2 Movement 2: Adagio  [13'02]
3 Movement 3: Allegro molto vivace  [11'31]

4 Sonatina [8'42]

Nine Epigrams
5 No 1: Lento [1'13]
6 No 2: [untitled] [1'18]
7 No 3: [untitled] [1'21]
8 No 4: Moderato [0'58]
9 No 5: Allegretto [0'44]
10 No 6: Andantino [1'11]
11 No 7: Con moto [1'35]
12 No 8: [untitled] [2'56]
13 No 9: [untitled] [1'31]

What the critics say

Andrew Clements, The Guardian, 27.5.2010

The point of Natalie Clein’s collection is the epic Sonata for unaccompanied cello, which is not only one of Zoltán Kodály’s greatest achievements, but also arguably the single most important work for solo cello since Bach’s six Suites. Even if Clein’s performance does not quite match János Starker’s celebrated recording (available on Delos) for sheer sweep and intensity, it is nevertheless extremely impressive, both in the impassioned rhapsodies of the first two movements, and in the array of folk tunes that are paraded in the ferociously challenging finale. Rather than do the obvious and combine the solo Sonata with Kodály’s earlier two-movement Sonata Op 4 for cello and piano, Clein and Julius Drake complete the disc with a collection of the composer’s smaller-scale pieces for the same combination. There are a couple of early pieces: a rather Debussy-like Sonatina that may well have been originally intended as a new first movement for the Op 4 Sonata; and the set of Epigrams from 1954 that derive from Kodaly’s copious educational music. Originally wordless with piano accompaniment, Clein and Drake show how easily they transform into charming instrumental miniatures.

Geoff Brown, The Times, 12 June 2010

Epic, forceful and a real technical challenge, Kodály’s 1915 sonata for solo cello dominates this uplifting recital. Magically deft, soaringly passionate, without any trace of self-indulgence, Clein conjures a full orchestra of colours and textures from her precious Guadagnini cello. Gentler moods prevail in Kodaly’s little-known Epigrams and other minor delights. Julius Drake’s piano accompaniments are expectedly delicate and caring. Hyperion’s warm recording is another joy.

 John Allison, BBC Music Magazine, July 2010

Performance: five stars
Recording: five stars

Zoltan Kodály’s long life (1882-1967) is mirrored in the wide span of works on this excellent new release. More than half a century separates the early Romance lyrique of 1898 and the Nine Epigrams of 1954, a period in which Kodály (along with Bartók) set about collecting folk music from the remotest corners of Hungary. In his perceptive notes accompanying this release, Calum MacDonald compares Kodály with Vaughan Williams as two great national composers who played a broad role in society. Little of that folk spirit is heard in the earliest work here, really a salon piece, but it and the slightly later Adagio (Kodály’s first official chamber music) both benefit from the warm and sensitive partnership of Natalie Clein and Julius Drake. The miniature Epigrams, pieces that sound like less edgy Bartók while having their own originality, are also touchingly done.

But the compelling reason for acquiring this disc, which does nor attempt to be a complete survey of Kodály ’s cello music, is Clein’s magnificent account of the Solo Sonata, Op. 8. One of rhe masterpieces of the cello repertory, it opens with massive, declamatory chords, and Clein’s depth of tone makes an immediate impact on this well-engineered recording. A wartime work dating from 1915, this is sombre music that finds space for folk inflected ruminations – at one point in the central Adagio even conjuring up the dusky sound of the cimbalom. A must-have disc.

 Geoffrey Norris, The Telegraph, 25 June 2010

FIVE STARS

Zoltán Kodály’s Sonata for Solo Cello represents one of those daunting summits that cellists feel ineluctably drawn to conquer, and Natalie Clein does so here with terrific passion, piquancy and technical accomplishment.

The Hungarian spice of the music is hot, imbued as it is with the distinctive traits of folksong and folkdance that Kodály had studied first-hand on his field trips with Bartók. The frenzied finale is a case in point, but so too is the brooding central adagio movement, where Kodály gets the cello to imitate the twang of the cimbalom. In fact, as Clein shows in this supreme performance, Kodály’s ability to conjure up a kaleidoscope of colours from the cello attests to his remarkable insight into the instrument’s expressive potential and range, using pizzicato, multiple-stoppings, harmonics, unequivocal gestures, heady lyricism and haunting languor in a score that is disciplined structurally but also has a supple sense of spontaneous invention.

The Sonata, composed in 1915, sounds far more radical than the Sonatina for Cello and Piano of 1922, maybe because the latter is thought to be the movement that Kodály wrote to replace one that he had felt to be unsatisfactory in his Cello Sonata of 1909-10. Perhaps he was trying to match it to an earlier manner of writing, but it nevertheless has a vibrant personality that Clein and Julius Drake light upon and convey instinctively.

A very early Romance Lyrique, written in 1898 when Kodály was still in his teens, inhabits the realms of the sophisticated salon, but the darker Adagio of 1905 has a more intense and bleak message, and the Nine Epigrams of 1954 transcend their educational function to conjure up crisp, poignant images. Altogether, an imaginatively planned disc, and one played compellingly.

Duncan Druce, Gramophone, new entry in their chart, 3 July 2010

Clein and Drake find great variety and colour in Kodály’s cello works

I can remember first hearing the Kodály Solo Sonata, nearly 50 years ago, and being amazed at its scope and at the composer’s extraordinary resourcefulness. Something of this sense of wonderment returned on listening to Natalie Clein’s account; she produces an astonishing range of colours and evokes the widest variety of expressive styles. I find it admirable, too, how she’s able, in the recording studio, to maintain so much of the excitement and directness of live performance. Music of this rhetorical character demands a fine sense of timing; Clein demonstrates this, and her air of conviction is sustained through the first movement’s intense declamation, the Adagio’s rich, low-range melodies, the finale’s dance rhythms and the eerily quiet “natural” sounds that punctuate the discourse. It must be said that Clein is more concerned with expression than beauty of tone in her effort to capture something of the roughness and raw edges of folk music.

The rest of the programme has a more refined character and Julius Drake’s expressive playing is a fine match for Clein’s outgoing manner. There’s a noble performance of the well known Adagio and a sensitive account, stressing its impressionistic features, of the 1922 Sonatina. The Epigrams of 1954, intended originally as vocalises, are delightful short pieces with only subtle hints of Kodály’s nationalistic style. These, too, are beautifully and simply played, with Clein keeping to the original vocal range, I imagine. A recording of great immediacy points up the variety of the programme, from the Sonata’s grandeur and vividness to the intimacy of the Epigrams.

Anna Picard, Independent on Sunday, 11 July 2010

From 1898’s Romance Lyrique onwards, Natalie Clein traces the life of Hungary’s foremost musical educator.

Her greatest achievement is the 1915 Sonata: a fusion of Baroque rigour, Romantic breadth and ancient folk melodies, with tangy scordatura, ululating trills and bitter pizzicato – a world away from the swooning verbunkos of the Budapest cafés. Pianist Julius Drake shades the introduction to the 1922 Sonatina exquisitely. A bold recital in which Clein embraces a darker, wilder sound.

Andrew Clark, Financial Times, 13.8.2010

Zoltán Kodaly’s lasting memorial will be his work in music education, the impact of which is still felt today. In contrast to Bartók, his compatriot, contemporary and fellow collector of Hungarian folk music, his concert music has gone out of fashion – which makes this new recording of his most powerful instrumental work all the more welcome.

Unlike Bartók, Kodaly (1882-1967) stuck to abstract forms: the fewer instruments he dealt with, the more effective the music. That is certainly true of the half-hour unaccompanied Sonata – alternately desolate, passionate and highly virtuosic, its classical principles intricately tied to the rich bank of folk-related harmonic/melodic resources the composer had uncovered and assimilated on his journeys into the countryside.

The Sonata was long “owned” by Janos Starker, whose interpretation carried the composer’s stamp of approval, but it was high time one of the younger breed of cellists took it up. Clein proves a more than worthy champion, not least in the tumultuous finale, a fabulous compendium of themes that sound as if they have been drawn from within the instrument, turning it into zither, bagpipe and chanter. The playing is never self-reverential: Clein rises above the fearsome technical challenges, capturing the bravura nature of the piece in a way that makes it “speak” like pure music.

There is much to enjoy, too, in her performances (with Julius Drake on piano) of the early Sonatina and the late Epigrams – simple studies designed to exemplify Kodaly’s educational method but enjoyable on their own terms. The final two pieces, Romance lyrique and Adagio, are student works, exuding an innocent romanticism that Clein and Drake capture to perfection.