Anastasia Kobekina
Sony 1 98029 54682 8
2x CD
By Roy Gregory
For classical musicians, with their fixed and repeated repertoire, interpretation is the lion’s share of performance – a life of never-ending cover numbers if you like. When it comes to soloists building a reputation, there are certain works that, as they scale the heights of stardom represent a rite of passage: As they look down from the summit, they take the form of a definitive statement. For violinists, it’s Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas, but for cellists, it’s his Cello Suites. Given its place in the pantheon of cello works, it’s not surprising that the catalogues are awash with recordings of the piece. With stellar performances from Casals, Rostropovich, Fournier and Tortelier, not to mention an audiophile darling in the shape of Starker’s recording for Mercury, you might well ask whether we need another.
We first wrote about the brilliant young cellist, Anastasia Kobekina, back in December 2023 < https://gy8.eu/review/discovering-anastasia-kobekina/>. Since then, she has rapidly become the hottest ticket in town, at least as far as cellists are concerned. Despite a busy schedule of both chamber and orchestral concerts, she produced an album of collected (mainly) solo works for Sony – Venice – and now, a second in which she tackles the Bach Suites. While some might feel it’s too early in her career to take on such a monument, others will point out that she can always return to the work later. Meanwhile, her fresh, invigorating approach certainly brings a new perspective to this familiar music – a little like the mirror image on the cover, something that’s at once recognisable but also different enough to cause a double take.
In keeping with modern norms, she plays the first five Suites on a standard cello (either the 1698 De Kermadec Blass, or her usual 1771 Bonamy Dobrée, Suggia – both by Stradivarius) but the sixth is played on a smaller, five string Violincello Piccolo, dating from 1800. The smaller instrument uses a specific bass string that alters its tonal consistency, while adding a definite sense of punctuation to line and phrasing. The contrast between the different instruments is fascinating and further widened by Kobekina’s approach.
The recording is close up and immediate, ideally suited to her expansive, emotive style and fluid lines. With this music, comparisons are inevitable, but it quickly became apparent that as far as Kobekina is concerned, they’re not to be feared. We might characterise Starker as muscular, structured and controlled, a model of poised restraint and precision. Switch to Rostropovich (on DGG/Warner Classics) and there’s a smooth, romantic swagger to the playing, his heart worn firmly on the sleeve of his bowing arm. In fact, along with Fournier, his is probably the most personal and emotionally expressive of the great performances. But we are going to have to extend that continuum considerably further to reach Kobekina’s emotive, purposeful, vivid and deeply individual account.
Standing on the shoulders of giants…
Does this make her performance an outlier? A love it or hate it, Marmite experience? For ultra-traditionalists, maybe. But in many ways, it is a reading that is simply following current classical evolution, a developmental path that encourages a more involved (and arguably less academic) approach to the music. Perhaps the most obvious example to date would be another Bach recording, Ólafsson’s Goldberg Variations on DGG, which takes a similarly laissez-faire attitude to the more rigorous demands and historical technicalities of the score. Just the way that Kobekina navigates the sinuous opening phrases of Suite No.1 are all you need to hear to make you realise you are not in Kansas anymore. Her measured pacing here, the sheer continuity, make it seem like she’s wrapping herself in the music, revelling in its structure and fleshing out its textures. That willingness to play with tempo runs through the whole set. Take the Bourées in Suite No.4: Where Starker’s pace is almost metronomically correct, Rostropovich takes these at a more stately, deliberate pace. Kobekina plays them faster, with a far more insistent attack that really accentuates their dance-like nature. The energy and pace, deliberate pauses and accelerations make them playful, almost flirtatious and, at 3’33”, 20 seconds shorter than Starker, over two-minutes shorter than Rostropovich. In fact, she plays with greater variation in tempo and dynamic contrast than any of the other sets I have.
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