Nikolai Roslavets (1881 - 1944) - Cello Sonata No. 2 (1922)
Lachezar Kostov, cello
Viktor Valkov, piano (2008)
Nikolai Roslavets's Cello Sonata No. 2 is a single-movement work composed in 1922 and first performed by M.M. Mirsojewa and S.P. Schirinski. Interestingly, the score estimates the duration of the piece to be 13 minutes, but both Ivashkin's and Kostov's recordings are around 20 minutes long.
"Roslavets’s tonal organisation system had reached its maturity by the time the Sonata for Cello and Piano No. 2 (1922) was written. The most extensive work on this disc, and twice as long as the first sonata, it opens with crystal-clear piano chords like frozen tear-drops. These fleeting aural images bring to mind the second song of Winterreise, Gefrorne Tränen, but swiftly develop into a deeply felt, introspective, meditative sound world. The sonata is built on alternating sections of intimate, pensive, lyrical moods that are separated by the insertions of fragile, lucid piano chords."
(source: Naxos)