Russian Soulscapes, the sequel recording to and Homage to Fiddlers, celebrates a decade of collaboration between Ivan Sokolov and Karen Bentley Pollick.
We first met as guest artists during the Seattle Chamber Players Icebreaker II: Baltic Voices Festival in February 2004 and have since presented recitals in Seattle, New York City, Birmingham, Baton Rouge, Denver, San Francisco, the Czech Republic, and at the American Academy of Rome, where we premiered duos composed by Dorothy Hindman and Charles Norman Mason during his 2005 Samuel Barber Rome Prize Fellowship.
In September 2007 cellist Dennis Parker joined us in Birmingham for the very first all-Sokolov concert comprised of the Violin and Viola Sonatas featured on and the Cello Sonata and Piano Trio recorded on Homage to Fiddlers. On January 30, 2008, while en route to the airport to return to Moscow after recording the Cello Sonata and Piano Trio in Seattle, Sokolov hummed the opening six bar theme for his emerging Piano Quartet, offering an initial glimpse at the epic scale of the three movement composition that he completed in August 2010.
The first sonata movement forms the core of the entire quartet, expressing a rainbow of emotions with expansive harmonic and thematic development and interjections of birdsong. Sokolov’s image of ‘murmuring monks in the basement of a monastery amidst outbursts of turbulence’ is depicted in the darker second movement. “I see this movement as a prayer for the world that had been expressed in the first movement.” The Finale portrays youthful exuberance and springtime energies. “It expresses the light, momentous and blissful mood that embraces you when the soul is peaceful, joyful and quiet. As in a dream, the subjects from the first movements are remembered.”
We premiered the Piano Quartet in Seattle on November 1, 2011 with violist Laura Renz and cellist Page Smith at the Chapel of Good Shepherd Center. In March 2013 we performed at Lord of the Mountains Church in Dillon, Colorado with Basil Vendryes, Principal Violist of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, and Richard Slavich, Professor of Cello and Chamber Music at the University of Denver’s Lamont School of Music, where we recorded in Hamilton Recital Hall.
Sokolov’s String Trio from 2009 merges elements of Beethoven’s Serenade Op. 25 for flute, violin and viola with salon music and requires considerable virtuosity from the performers to create halos of overtones in the stratospheric registers and lush romantic textures amidst soulful melodies and dance rhythms evocative of Shostakovich and other Russian influences. The seven - movement String Trio combines the suite principle with elements of a sonata cycle. All movements except the last one are interludes or episodes connected with each other thematically and by their contemplative or lighthearted content. The Prologue is a brief sonata in C minor with a lingering incompleteness. The Waltz evokes nostalgia for Glinka and Tchaikovsky and has a fleeting middle section in 7/4 meter. A short Interlude with a solo for each instrument and heartfelt Aria are both reminiscent of Grieg, and akin to early Rachmaninov and Myaskovsky. The Chopinesque Recitative opens with a bold violin statement on the G- string. A radiant viola solo is the highlight of the Nocturne with a nod to Borodin. In the last measures of the Nocturne the mood and thematic elements of the first movement return. An energetic Epilogue propelled by triplets that Sokolov describes as ‘swimming with expansive strokes in the Black Sea’ concludes the String Trio.
Both chamber works comprise a deep listening experience and substantial array of movements. Bringing these compositions to the stage and recording studio has been a rewarding experience for us. We invite you to delve into the sonic realm of Ivan Sokolov’s intoxicating themes, bird song imitations, chromatic harmonies, enharmonic modulations, and cascading sonorities that permeate Russian Soulscapes.
