Passing Samuel Barber’s Torch

Sean Kennard and Jonah Kim on the cover of their new album (from the Amazon.com Web page for this recording)

A few months ago Delos released what seems to be the debut album of the duo of cellist Jonah Kim and pianist Sean Kennard. The two of them met as teenagers at the Curtis Institute of Music, and the first major work they prepared was Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Opus 19 sonata. Appropriately enough, they chose that sonata as the opening selection on their new album. However, my own interest was more inclined to what followed, Samuel Barber’s Opus 6 sonata.

I first came to know this sonata through the Canadian West Hill Radio Archives Barber anthology, Historical Recordings: 1935–1960 (which Amazon.com tells me I purchased on October 13, 2011). The collection includes a recording of a recital performance of the sonata at Curtis performed by cellist Orlando Cole, who premiered the sonata accompanied by Barber himself. On the recording he is accompanied by Vladimir Sokoloff, and Cole was by that time on the Curtis faculty. The anthology album, however, also includes a brief spoken introduction by Cole, reflecting on personal impressions of the music. Cole was still on the faculty when Kim arrived at Curtis, and it was through Cole that Kim came to know Barber’s sonata and eventually record it.

Going through my own archives, I discovered that I have only encountered the Opus 6 sonata in performance exactly once. Cellist Sara Hong performed it at an Old First Concerts recital in July of 2014, accompanied by pianist Makiko Ooka. By that time I had become quite familiar with the Cole-Sokoloff recording and was delighted with the expressiveness that Hong brought to her interpretation. Listening to Kim thus amounted to encountering an old and cherished friend in a new light. As is often encountered in Barber’s scores, his expressiveness runs a wide gamut from intense introspection to joyful playfulness. Working with Kennard, Kim knew just how to bring those extremes to light, while giving just as much attention to all of the “intermediate” dispositions.

Where the Rachmaninoff sonata is concerned, much of my knowledge arose through recitals and master classes that I attended at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Unless I am mistaken, one of those master classes was led by cellist Steven Isserlis, who claimed “second-hand” acquaintance with Rachmaninoff himself through his Russian mother, who was a piano teacher. The Opus 19 sonata was composed in 1901; and those who really know their Rachmaninoff will recognize this as the year in which he completed his Opus 18 (second) piano concerto in C minor.

As a result, there should be no surprise that the piano part is more than mere accompaniment. Nevertheless, all of the expressiveness contributed by the piano serves as just the right complement to the expressiveness of the cello part. In other words Rachmaninoff approached Opus 19 as a conversation between equals, and Kim and Kennard could not have done a better job of conveying the parity of their exchanges.

Taken as a whole, this is anything but a “plain old sonata album;” and the attentive listener will be rewarded by the opportunity to listen to a pair of sonatas, both of which deserve more attention than they have been getting over the last century or so.