Katharina Deserno - Suites & Roses (2019/2020) [Hi-Res]

On her solo album Suites & Roses German cellist Katharina Deserno combines cello suites by Johann Sebastian Bach with works by Romanian composer Violeta Dinescu (*1953) to whose music she has a close connection.

The programme begins with the cycle Seven Roses, completed in 2012, which refers to the poem of the same name by Bert Brecht. With each of its seven movements it reveals an individual character (of the seven roses). It is expressive music, lyrically and poetically played.

Deserno chose the first two of the Bach Suites, which she beautifully differentiates, very dance-like, with rather dark colours. The Small Suite by Violeta Dinescu (2018) also has something dance-like, but the imaginative and expressive gestures of the music are at the same time also very rhetorical and theatrical, quasi clownish, not in the sense of pure fun, but rather of a Pierrot from the Commedia dell’Arte, with corresponding emotions: sensitive, melancholic and lonely, playful and audacious at the same time. The gripping performance by Katharina Deserno is wonderfully evocative.

The program ends with Violeta Dinescu’s Abendandacht, a very sensuous work that leaves the listener deep in thoughts.

The juxtaposition of music by Bach and Dinescu ultimately shows that what the Romanian composer composes for solo cello in no way fades before Bach’s masterpieces. Dinescu’s compositions are good pieces that leave a lasting impression. (Remy Franck, pizzicato.lu)

Katharina Deserno, cello