If you want a superb collection of Honegger’s music for cello, both chamber and orchestral, then this CD is just the ticket. I am completely mystified at the fact that the Cello Concerto isn’t better known. It has wonderful, jazzy tunes (it sounds a lot like Gershwin in places), plenty of fireworks for the soloist, and it packs a huge amount of contrast into its quarter-hour of playing time. Perhaps a few moments are too acerbic to make it a pops concert favorite, but it’s not far from it, and Christian Poltéra turns in just the kind of snappy, youthful performance that evokes the roaring ’20s and the Paris of Les Six–even if Honegger’s basic seriousness keeps popping through now and again. Tempos here are brisk, and some listeners might prefer Rostropovich’s marginally more relaxed reading of the music’s easygoing, lyrical passages; but by any standard this is a sensational performance.
The three chamber works, all composed between 1920 and 1932, are also very rewarding, and like the concerto none of them lasts longer than about 15 minutes. In the Cello Sonata and the brief, spiky Sonatina, Kathryn Stott accompanies with her usual expertise. She and Poltéra collaborate atmospherically in the chromatically slithery opening movement of the sonata, which reveals Honegger’s ability to be dissonant, lyrical, and interesting all at the same time. This is even truer of the Sonatina for Violin and Cello, actually a substantial work in which Christian Tetzlaff hooks up with Poltéra to turn in some of the most perfectly tuned octaves you’ll ever hear on disc. Honegger’s mature personality surfaces most graphically in this piece, with its various march and chorale textures quite similar to those, say, in the First Symphony. Excellent sonics, as usual from BIS, make owning this disc a terrific way to plug what is probably a serious repertoire gap in your collection.
