German label Antes Edition's Seresta: Music from South America features cellist
Martin Merker in cello-centered music from Argentina and Brazil accompanied by pianist
Anna Adamik and joined in the last two pieces by vocalist Marilla Vargas and percussionist Wolfgang Lindner.
Merker is a member of
Camerata Bern and plays cello with the Offenburg String Trio; this appears to be his first appearance on disc as a soloist. Not surprisingly,
Merker leads off with music of José Bragato, tango nuevo's greatest exponent of the cello, following that with the suite Le Grand Tango by
Astor Piazzolla.
Merker's is able to capture the overwrought and excessively sentimental milieu of the Tango, but does not seem to have full mastery of it so much as a deep interest in the music; his playing is earthbound and has little sense of lift or swing. As the
Ginastera and Mignone pieces that follow were written more or less as concert music, they don't suffer as badly as the Bragato and
Piazzolla, though both could benefit from some degree of rhythmic lilt, and these performances never quite take wing.
Adamik is a splendid accompanist, however, with plenty of power, energy, and precision, though at times her enthusiasm comes close to overshadowing the soloist.
Brazilian composer Liduino Pitombeira, whose music
Merker states in the notes is "one of the greatest discoveries of recent years," serves as the focus of the balance of Seresta. If he is, it's hard to tell from what's here. In his Sonata for cello and piano, Op. 91, Pitombeira devises some attractive figures and seems to have ideas worth exploring, but fails to pull them together in a way that tells a coherent story; the music is strangely empty. Pitombeira's Seresta No. 15, Op. 108, features ominous-sounding percussion and eerie, wordless vocals, but unfolds as a series of events with no connecting sequence; it's like a haunted house with no floors or doors. While these are gifted performers, Antes Editions' Seresta seems like a well-intentioned misfire.