Sony BMG has recently released three CDs featuring young classical artists. All are former child prodigies. Argentine cellist Sol Gabetta, now 25, gave her first public recital at the age of 10, while Russian pianist Nikolai Tokarev, also 25, gave his, Mozart-like, at the age of 6.
The youngest of the three, the 22-year-old Japanese violinist Mayuko Kamio, performed in Taipei at age 19 with the Evergreen Symphony Orchestra in March 2005. Then she gave a loving rendition of Chausson’s Poeme — the resulting DVD was reviewed in this column [Page 14, Taipei Times, May 7, 2008]. She repeats the same item on her new CD, only this time with piano-only accompaniment. To it she adds items by Tchaikovsky, Szymanowski, Stravinsky and others.
For her part, Sol Gabetta offers a strenuous Shostakovich disc containing two works, his dolorous Cello Concerto No. 2 and his Cello Sonata. The former, a live performance, is with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, the latter with pianist Mihaela Ursuleasa. Both items have complex performance histories and a careful study of Shostakovich’s political attitudes is advisable before attempting to listen to either.
Lastly, Nikolai Tokarev (who rather surprisingly for a Russian studied for two years in Manchester, England) gives a solo recital of French keyboard music stretching back 300 years. This CD is arguably the gem of the three — lyrical, humane, and accessible without detracting from the quality of the originals.
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