ICSM Online Journal > Reviews

Raphael Sommer plays Martinů: New CD Set

Martin Anderson writes:
posted 9 August

A memorial edition of Raphael Sommer’s recordings of Martinů’s complete œuvre for cello and piano has just been published on two well-filled CDs (152 minutes; AAD); Sommer is accompanied by his chamber-partner of 25 years, Daniel Adni. The first disc contains the three sonatas and two sets of variations, while the second offers less familiar material: the Nocturnes, Pastorales, Arabesques, Suite miniature and the Ariette. The recordings were made in 1983–86 by Israel Radio; the sound is a little recessed at times, though never enough to impede enjoyment of these first-rate performances.

The double album has been produced to raise money for The Raphael Sommer Music Scholarship Trust – established in memory of Raphael Sommer, who died in 2001, by his mother Alice Herz Sommer and his widow Geneviève Sommer – to provide funds for talented young string-players to further their studies. The focus of the Trust is on the performance of chamber music – of critical importance to developing musicians but where opportunities for advanced performance coaching and experience are generally rather limited once students leave their teaching institutions. The Trust requests a minimum donation of £10 in exchange for the Martinů recordings, though this sum barely covers the production costs of the CDs, and a larger donation would be appreciated. Cheques should be made out to ‘The Raphael Sommer Music Scholarship Trust’ and sent to 55 Quickswood, London NW3 3SA. The Trust can be contacted by e-mail at Sraphi2137 [at] aol.com.

Sommer, born in Prague in 1937, survived two years (1943–45) with his mother in the prison-ghetto of Terezín (Theresienstadt), where he made one of his first public appearances, in Hans Krása’s children’s opera Brundibár. He studied with Paul Tortelier in the 1950s, won the Casals and Piatigorsky Prizes, played chamber music in Marlboro in 1965 at the invitation of Rudolf Serkin, and thereafter pursued parallel careers as soloist and teacher. He was the head of the cello department at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester from 1967 until 1989, when he took up a professorship at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London . With the cellist wife, Geneviève Teulliè res, he founded the chamber-music festival at Gex, in the Jura, and gave his last concert, with the Salomon Trio, which he also founded, on 12 November 2001 , the day before he died.

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