Kim Kashkashian, Robert Levin: Elegies

“

This elegiac music seems very well-suited to the dark sound of the viola. Kashkashian plays it simply and very expressively, without slides or sentimentality; glowing and shimmering, her tone is pure, warm, inflected. The program has great variety. Britten's mournful Lachrymae (Reflections on a Song of John Dowland) comes to an agitated climax and ends with an old chorale. Vaughan Williams's Romance is a peaceful pastoral; Carter's Elegy is somber, gentle, and hardly dissonant; Glasunov's Elegy is very romantic. Liszt's Romance is very rhetorical--half recitation, half lamentation--but ends serenely. Kodály's Adagio, solemn and inward, comes to a passionate climax; the opening returns in the highest register. Vieuxtemps's romantic virtuoso piece has musical substance as well as passion, rhetoric, a big climax, and a wild, brilliant ending. --Edith Eisler

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Tracks:

1. Benjamin Britten: Lachrymae op. 48
2. Ralph Vaughan Williams: Romance
3. Elliott Carter: Elegy
4. Alexander Glasunow: Elegie op. 44
5. Franz Liszt: Romance Oubliée
6. Zoltán Kodály: Adagio
7. Henri Vieuxtemps: Elegie op. 30

Kim Kashkashian: viola
Robert Levin: piano