Review by Simon Jenner, April 2nd 2025
Anna Brikciusova is often seen with her brother Frantisek in the Duo Brikcuus. Here finally we can enjoy her solo recital: ambitious and strikingly simple. Bach’s Cello Suites 1 and 4 between which is an intriguing rarity. The underrated quiet giant Georg Philipp Telemann’s deeply impressive solo Cello Suite in D. And a discovery.
Bach’s No 1 in G major BWV1007 with its famous opening has expressive movements Brikciusova relishes. She’s a n expressively truthful player and like say the violinist Isabella Faust goes for that over sheer beauty of sound. Her knowing dogs deep into the strings and isn’t afraid of the dark or even ugly time. Her Sarabande though really lilts, the Minutes dance with a kind of adolescent glee, and the Gigue bounces with ebullience and aplomb, and a sense of arrival.
Photo Credit Luca Luciano
Returning to Bach for No.4 in E flat major BWV1010 Brikciusova starts almost casually with the opening Prelude, here almost tossed aside as an unmeasured prelude for keyboard, but not quite. It depends as in if the ruminative engagement has settled the soloist in the way they’ll go. Then with slithering motifs we just how deep it delves.
The Allemande curls in with insouciance and grace, a memorable dance.. by the Brikciusova applies that pressure she deploys to exuberant effect elsewhere. The Courante is quietly thrilling, a shadowy and potent running of its themes.
The Sarabande draws out some delicious enharmonics, and remote key passages in the upper register. Brikciusova will always go for making strange, making new, and though tone can thin out over such pressure it’s far more interesting.
The two Bourées find Brikciusova on absolutely comfortable tonal boundaries with the slithering from the nutty tonal centre of these kinked movements always challenged. The second really digs in for some magnificent guttural effects.
Photo Credit Simon Jenner
Edward Gregson (b.1945) overlapped at the RAM with today’s soloists. Known for orchestral music and particularly brass band, he’s more versatile than that suggests.
Four Pictures written in 1982 for his two sons, he declared the pieces are unnamed to allow maximum imagination. The fourth and curious third (played in that order) enjoy some interesting harmonies and mirror themes. It’s calm end to the cycle and I can see why 3 was played last. It enjoys a series of repeat variations in different registers of the Faure like main theme.
Cecile Chaminade (1857-1944) was precocious and privately studied to overcome prejudice. Known principally for her piano music and her Flute Concertino, Chaminade wrote this 4 Hand work Pieces Romantiques Op 55 from 1890.
This is first rate Chaminade too. ‘Primavera’ recalls Faure – perhaps his Impromptus and Barcarolles most – but with silvery twists. It goes at a gentle Allegretto.
‘Serenade d’Automne’ is a real serenade: a song-like sashay into a kind of waltz, that moves more exotically in its middle section.
‘La Chaise a Porteurs’ portrays a muddy trek for a sedan chair. Somewhere in the 18th century. It’s brisk and almost folkloric for Chaminade, going at an Allegro or possibly a more simple Vif. Deeply rondo-like, it invokes another time in a sadder modernity.
The concluding Gigue brings dark and light together across the range of the Cello. Each musical phrase ranges up then straight down to the bottom register. But it’s also an ascending ladder of invention. Brikciusova delights in the final bars.
Photo Credit Simon Jenner
Photo Credit Simon Jenner
Happily though there’s a built-in encore: a piece new to me. Contemporary composer Irina Kosíková’s brooding ‘La nuit est tombé’. There’s no dates available but being the daughter of banned philosopher Jan Kosik and literary historian Ruzena Grebenickova, and having studied with Jan Hora, together with piano lessons given by Eliska Kleinová and Arnostka Grünfeldová, Kosíková’s a composer who seems to have emerged in the 1990s.
This glacially moving work emanating from the lower depths starts slow, but then moves to a Scherzo akin to say Shostakovich. Indeed there’s some affinity with him, Weinberg. Czech organ composer Peter Eben (Kosíková studied organ) and the kind of sound world seen from the 1960s. Returning to a tenebrous meditation as slow movement it’s essential classicism is apparent. Building to a magnificent ruminative climax it ends emphatically.
Brikciusova isn’t the most superficially polished of cellists. She comes though from a deep tradition we need to see far more of. A superb conclusion to one of the most musicianly traversals of cello writing I’ve heard in a while.
Photo Credit Simon Jenner
Photo Credit Simon Jenner