Stefan Henneken Solid

Neither Stefan Parkman nor Chandos could be accused of pandering to the masses in their choice of repertoire for this series of recordings by the Danish National Radio Choir. True, Reger's name may be more familiar than, say, Lidholm, Norgard, Pepping or Pizzetti (featured on previous discs), but only to the extent that the mere mention of Reger's a cappella music will send sensitive souls scurrying into the nearest Karaoke lounge. Visions of myriad notes covering the page would frighten most choirs away, but these singers are made of sterner stuff. For them complex contrapuntal structures, devious chromatic harmonies and textures so thick you need a forage knife to get through them, hold no terrors. Rather they not only weave their way through Reger's characteristically tangled scores without a moment's doubt, but illuminate the paths so clearly one hardly notices the dense musical undergrowth all around.

Weinberg always acknowledged Shostakovich as his source of inspiration. The three movements of his Violin Sonata No. 1 cover the path from C minor to C major, a popular route in Soviet academic tradition and one also taken by Shostakovich with a colossal effect in his Symphony No. 8 during the course of the same year. Weinberg’s Violin Sonatas 2 and 3 continue to reveal his creative ambitions.

Neither Stefan Parkman nor Chandos could be accused of pandering to the masses in their choice of repertoire for this series of recordings by the Danish National Radio Choir. True, Reger's name may be more familiar than, say, Lidholm, Norgard, Pepping or Pizzetti (featured on previous discs), but only to the extent that the mere mention of Reger's a cappella music will send sensitive souls scurrying into the nearest Karaoke lounge. Visions of myriad notes covering the page would frighten most choirs away, but these singers are made of sterner stuff. For them complex contrapuntal structures, devious chromatic harmonies and textures so thick you need a forage knife to get through them, hold no terrors. Rather they not only weave their way through Reger's characteristically tangled scores without a moment's doubt, but illuminate the paths so clearly one hardly notices the dense musical undergrowth all around.

The two sonatas by Johannes Brahms belong to the Olympus of the repertoire for every cellist, where, together with the suites by Bach and the sonatas by Beethoven, they virtually form the Trinity of our Old Testament. My own journey to these works began sometime in the 1980s and is – of course – still ongoing. I have had the opportunity to play both sonatas with many great pianists and thus get to know them from just as many different musical perspectives. Of course, I grew up with countless outstanding recordings, including a largely unknown one of the F Major Sonata by my own teacher William Pleeth with his wife, Margaret Good, which would also one day deserve to be made available to the public again.