For his latest ‘twentieth-century-only’ recital, the American cellist Matt Haimovitz serves up a distinctively mixed bag: four American works alongside two highly characteristic pieces by Hindemith and Britten.
The level of musical interest is high, the commitment to unfamiliar repertory commendable. As with the first disc in this series (12/95) the sound is spectacular, the playing technically first-rate but not always interpretatively spot-on. In the Britten, particularly, Haimovitz doesn’t seem consistently on the right wavelength, adopting an overly rhapsodic manner and, in the “Fugue”, a surprisingly cautious tempo. So I prefer the versions of this work by Tim Hugh (super-budget price) or, as first choice, Robert Cohen. The much-recorded Hindemith arouses no such qualms, perhaps because its very explicit dialogue between plangent neo-romanticism and forceful neo-classicism suits this player better than Britten’s more understated style.
The four American works all earn their relatively modest disc time, even though the Harbison is a bit too winsome, in post-Britten fashion, for my taste. George Perle’s pair of miniatures, dating from 1945, are touchingly direct, and the set of Six Pieces by Roger Sessions (1966), though growing a bit predictable in their rhythmic organization, project a personality all the more winning for not being required to sustain a symphonic breadth. Most enjoyable of all is Mario Davidovsky’s study in the interaction between live cello and pre-recorded tape. While very much of its time (1964) it still has something to say, not least that an unabashed neo-romantic style is as good a basis for this kind of composition as a more radical modernity.'