Szymanowski Mythes; Violin Sonata; Nocturne & Tarantella; Romance; Lullaby Sueye Park (violin), Roland Pöntinen (piano) BIS BIS-2652 (CD/SACD) 68:15 mins
Karol Szymanowski’s substantial Violin Sonata is the earliest work on this new release featuring his music for violin and piano, and receives the most satisfying performance here. Sueye Park and Roland Pöntinen have the measure of its late Romanticism, the violinist certainly supplying the sweetness called for in the middle movement’s Andantino tranquillo e dolce indication. It’s a work premiered by the composer’s friends Paul Kochański and Arthur Rubinstein, no less. The great Polish violinist became dedicatee of the Romance in D major, a piece memorable for the manner in which it floats upwards and away at the end; Park’s violin is not quite ethereal enough.
It doesn’t help that both instruments are very closely recorded, the violin sounding almost glassy in Mythes – three pieces of vintage Szymanowski that comprise the real masterpiece on this programme. The concluding ‘Dryades et Pan’ sounds a little hard-edged, and despite keenly poised playing from both musicians there is an absence of mystery right from the opening bars of the first piece, ‘La Fontaine d’Arethuse’. Both this triptych and the Notturno and Tarantella belong to Szymanowski’s headily sensuous middle period. Park and Pöntinen capture the mystery of the Notturno and play the Tarantella – one of Syzmanowski’s Sicilian souvenirs – with fire if not complete abandon. They end with La Berceuse d’Aïtacho Enia, an elusive later work: it receives a decent account, though one suggesting these players haven’t truly internalised this music.
John Allison