Earlier this year, I picked up Nils Mönkemeyer's disc Mozart with Friends - Julia Fischer, Sabine Meyer, and William Youn, so some rather notable friends - and was bowled over by the overall quality. When this disc of the first three of Bach's Cello Suites transcribed for Viola popped up as an Add-on, I figured why not. Well, he's done it again. (Or, more accurately, he did the same thing before he recorded Mozart.) I've never heard transcriptions of the Cello Suites, but of course the music isn't surprising, and it works well on viola, even if not as well as on cello. That written, Mönkemeyer plays so well that one gains an appreciation of things that can only be done on a smaller stringed instrument. The precision and nimbleness is most impressive, the purity of tone even more so. So, it's both old hat yet something new and vibrant. While it may seem gimmicky at first, this is definitely no gimmick
But the Bach ends up being the warm-up. The
real treat here is the second, bonus disc, comprised of four world premiere recordings of works by living composers. Krzysztof Penderecki's brief memoriam to Bach starts things off quite beautifully, with a dark, rich, chromatic sound in a somewhat standard modern homage format. It's good enough that it has at least two other recordings available. Things then take a qualitative step up with Marco Hertenstein's
Luce morenda. Unabashedly modernist and virtuosic in nature, Mönkemeyer makes the whole thing sound most inviting and fun. Then along comes the apex of the twofer in the form of
Ariel, by Sally Beamish. Ms Beamish is a violist herself, so her score extracts many lovely sounds, grants the soloist the opportunity to show what she or he can do, and delivers a fantastical sound befitting the literary subject. Konstantia Gourzi's
Lullabies for a New World ends the disc, and it sounds vaguely eastern, influenced by chants that one imagines the composer may have heard in her native Greece at sometime in her life, though they are really just imaginary. The second disc offers a half-hour of mesmerizing new stuff, and for a solo instrument that I typically don't listen to. How about that?
Mönkemeyer surely needs to record the Bartok Viola Concerto, and I will likely have to give his DSCH Viola Sonata a try. And some of his other discs. But this guy has got to record more contemporary fare. It's impossible not to at least like what he's done here.
Add in some Sony A-list sound, and this here is an amazing set.
Amazon UK link:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00AGF86NW/?tag=pinkfishmedia-21