Kalabis: Sonatas for Cello, Clarinet, Violin and Piano

Album review

Viktor Kalabis (1923-2006), one of the most distinguished figures of 20th-century Czech music, wrote some eighty opuses, predominantly instrumental pieces, including for his wife, the world-renowned harpsichordist Zuzana Růžičková. His symponic works were performed by such high-profile musicians as Rojdestvenski, Sawallisch, Jiří Kout, Mácal, Ančerl, Václav Neumann, Manuel Rosenthal and Herbert Blomstedt, to name just a few. As the composer himself put it, his aim was to create music rooted in his country, music for educated listeners. Although he also drew inspiration from 20th-century classics, Kalabis arrived at a synthetic style of his own, an alternative to the rational compositional techniques – a Neo-Romantic alternative, akin to Neo-Classicism.
Besides the first ever album of Kalabis's complete piano oeuvre (scheduled to be released in 2019), Ivo Kahánek and other leading Czech instrumentalists have recorded the composer's three sonatas for two instruments – cello, clarinet, violin. The one for cello reflects the dramatic events in Czechoslovakia between June and September 1968: the months of euphoria of the Prague Spring, followed by disillusionment and resignation in the wake of the Warsaw Pact's invasion, which for two decades to come would numb all hopes of freedom. The clarinet sonata (1969) too clearly refers to the time of its coming into being: drama, grief and sorrow, escalated into harrowing helplessness. The elliptical and coherent violin sonata (1982) places emphasis on the instrument's typical ethos – melodiousness, bright sound and soulfulness. After three releases featuring Kalabis's symphonies and concertos on the label Supraphon, the present recording affords yet another insight into the composer's musical universe. And the turbulent events of the recent past, up to Kalabi’s death in 2006, seems clearly reflected in his chamber music. © Supraphon