Johann Helmich Roman • Sue-Ying Koang
I last reviewed an album of the music by Roman last November. I was pleased to explore this Swedish composer’s music in that album; I am also familiar with some of his flute music. This is my first time auditioning his music for solo violin. The more than an hour’s worth of music not only reveals the composer’s profound gifts and admiration for an Italian model of violin playing, but Koang’s own technical and emotive gifts as a baroque violinist.
The opening Övning in C minor is a solo tour-de-force. The piece explores multiple styles of writing for the violin. He easily traverses the gamut of the instrument, making the piece, not unlike the following Övenings, a showcase for the sound of one’s violin from high to low. Koang responds to the challenge with power and a clear voice.
The other set of pieces included come from his collection of Assaggio pieces. These “essays” on violin playing again betray his admiration for the Italian style, likely influenced by his hearing of masters while abroad. There’s also some resemblance to me, in terms of a style conversant with the solo fantasias by Georg Philipp Telemann. While I do like a lot of Telemann’s music, his fantasias aren’t for me in the same class as the caprices of Locatelli or the sonatas and partitas by J.S. Bach. Here, however, Koang makes the case I think through her performances of suggesting that Roman was a superior composer for the solo violin than our more famous Telemann.
The opening of the Assaggio in E minor is long, eclipsing the other movements in terms of length. The violin is constantly doing a call and response type of dialog with itself, separating these by the lower and higher registers of the violin.
Koang relies upon dynamics heavily in the continuation of the sonata, taking advantage of the generous, reverberant recording space. While hearing recordings with this much reverb can be taxing, especially so on headphones, I auditioned this recording over my office two-channel system using bookshelf speakers to great effect. There’s ample transparency and an appreciable amount of warmth to the violinist’s sound.
The sonata ends with a Giga which provides recollections of Pisendel’s own sonatas. Tartini comes to mind, however, with the opening of the F-sharp minor Assaggio. I really found by this point in the album that I’m liking Koang’s playing style, especially in terms of how she realizes phrasing, strong declaration, and uses dynamics as an affective component in her playing. While there is a lot to admire in the slower movements, those with faster tempi are no less enjoyable. Her application of dynamics comes across easily to us through this recording.
There’s a lot of repetition in the Övning in E minor (track 17). He could be quoting another’s composer’s work, which feels familiar to me with that rhythmic figure; compare it to the A minor Allegro from Bach’s second solo sonata, BWV 1003? The piece however is less structured than the Bach, instead, like the other Övning pieces, working within the realm of a fantasia. Koang sounds especially confident on this piece.
Two other pieces included from from the composer’s Stabat Mater P. 77. The composer himself arranged these; the final track, a fugue, brings parallelisms with Pisendel and Telemann. The dynamics from the performer again elevate the music for us. She is adept at applying dynamics in multiple ways, to differentiate both phrases and notes within a phrase. The last track also epitomizes her just intonation.
I’d first heard Roman’s Assaggi through the recording on Naïve by Fabio Biondi; I had to remind myself why I didn’t take to reviewing that recording. Upon a re-listen, I always find Biondi’s playing interesting; in this case, his intonation wasn’t as clean as Koang’s; he also applies some standard vibrato in longer notes, which I wasn’t the biggest fan of.
While neither performer has recorded the full set of Roman’s Assaggi, if I had to recommend a single disc highlighting the composer’s prowess as a violin composer, the easy win goes to this release by Sue-Ying Koang. Not only does her album give us a wider taste of Roman’s violin exploits, I ultimately found her playing more interesting and dynamic.
