Cornelia Sommer: New Enchantments: Fairy Tale Music for Bassoon
Navona Records

For bassoonist Cornelia Sommer, fairy tales are serious business. Not only did she fashion her debut album New Enchantments with them in mind, she wrote her prize-winning dissertation on the topic (“Magic, Distance, and Simplicity: Archetypal Patterns in Fairy Tale Music as Analyzed in Chamber Pieces by Ravel, Janácek, and Schumann”). As serious as her handling of the recording project is, however, whimsy and playfulness are part of it too, which consistent with its title truly does enchant. Sommer is accompanied in various combinations by pianist Hilda Huang, violinist Rachell Ellen Wong, flutist Bethanne Walker, oboist Lucian Avalon, harpsichordist Jonathan Salamon, and fellow bassoonist Kathleen McLean. The album presents six world premiere recordings, three pieces Sommer's arrangements of classic fairy tale music and the others commissions based on stories from their creators' own cultural histories. Material by Robert Schumann, Jean-Philippe Rameau, and Gioachino Rossini appears alongside pieces by Iván Enrique Rodríguez, Max Grafe, and Sato Matsui on the release.

The album's framed by duos featuring Sommer and Huang, the first Schumann's Märchenbilder and the last Sommer's Fantasy on Rossini's “La Cenerentola.” Originally arranged for viola and piano, Märchenbilder was likely inspired by a letter the composer received from Louis de Rieux that contained a fairy tale-like poem and suggested a sonata be created based upon it. A prototypical Schumann melody distinguishes the opening “Nicht schnell,” whose lilt and conversational to-and-fro captivates. Jumping to attention, “Lebhaft” struts into position with enthusiasm, while “Rasch” exudes even greater intensity as it races tempestuously forward. The gentle “Langsam, mit melancholischem Ausdruck,” on the other hand, expresses the kind of tenderness of which some listeners might not have thought the bassoon capable.

With Huang again aboard, Rodríguez's Mamá María: Cuento de Hadas para Fagót y follows, a single-movement setting based on a modern fairy tale by Puerto Rican author Carmen Leonor Rivera-Lassén. When disease spreads in a village, mothers leave their children with the cave-dwelling María la Cruz for protection, but when she anticipates her own demise she takes the children to a nearby river where they transform into frogs and become self-sufficient. Mystery, mysticism, and drama abound as the seven-minute setting unfolds, and in a striking display of scene-painting Rodríguez suggests the sound of the creature's vocalizations as the piece nears its end.

Rameau's Un conte de fees combines five instrumental numbers from his fairy opera Zaïs, which recounts the saga of a genie who disguises himself as a shepherd to win over a woman. In contrast to the works preceding it on the album, Un conte de fées receives a sparkling chamber treatment in augmenting Sommer on baroque bassoon with Salamon's harpsichord, Walker's baroque flute, and Wong's baroque violin. In keeping with its title, “L'entrée noble” is delightfully regal, “Sarabande naïve” romantic, “Un voyage fantastique” spirited, “Sérénité” rhapsodic, and “Réjouissance” irrepressibly joyful. Based on The Grimm Brothers' Rumpelstiltskin, Grafe's Rumpelstilzchentanz focuses on the bizarre dance the titular character performs that indirectly enables a young woman to keep her firstborn from him after correctly guessing his name. The piece is even more striking for the roller coaster that is its double-bassoon arrangement featuring Sommer and McLean.

Matsui's Hanasaka Jiisan is a Japanese tale about friendship and loss, specifically about an old man whose magical power-possessing dog is killed by the man's neighbour but whose ashes after being sprinkled on withered cherry trees bring them to full blossom and lead to the man becoming rich. The story's arc is conveyed through the four movement titles and also by having Avalon's oboe, Sommer's bassoon, and Huang's piano respectively represent the dog, the old man, and the cherry trees. After its impish “Koko horé wan wan!” (Dig here, woof woof!) intro, tragedy strikes in “Inu no shi” (Death of the dog) and mourning follows in the elegiac “Aenai tomoé” (For a friend lost) until the poetic “Mafuyu no hana Zakari” (Midwinter blossoms) brings the piece to a pensive close. The combination of the three instrument timbres is particularly arresting in this presentation. At album's end, Sommer and Huang re-unite for the bassoonist's beguiling Fantasy on Rossini's “La Cenerentola.” While its writing was inspired by Charles Perrault's Cinderella, Rossini's opera dispensed with familiar aspects of the story and emphasized in their place dreams and transformations. A number of arias from the opera emerge within this charming, ten-minute travelogue, including gems sung by Cinderella and the Prince's valet.

September 2024