Alexandre Fiodorovitch Goedicke (1877-1957)
Sonate en la majeur, op. 10 n° 1
Sonate en ré majeur, op. 83 n° 2
Dix Pièces, op. 80

Francesco Parrino, violon (G. & A. Gagliano, Italie, 1790-1805)
Michele Pentrella, piano

Le patronyme sonne allemand : la famille Goedicke s’est installée au début du XIXème siècle en Russie à Moscou, où le jeune Alexander voit le jour en 1877 et où il mourra quatre-vingt ans plus tard. Un contemporain donc de Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, Chostakovitch. Mais ce n’est pas lui faire injure que d’observer qu’il n’a pas laissé la même trace que ses contemporains dans l’histoire de la musique russe. Goedicke est d’abord connu pour avoir été un organiste et un professeur remarqués (il a formé à peu près tous les noms qui comptent dans l’orgue russe du siècle passé). On découvre avec plaisir les deux sonates pour violon et piano ainsi que les dix pièces, à vocation pédagogique, « de difficulté moyenne en première position ». L’auteur des deux cantates « Gloire aux pilotes soviétiques » et « Joie de la patrie », Artiste du Peuple et Prix Staline (1948) ne se distingue par aucune audace harmonique ou formelle, Il reste dans un clacissisme qui se laisse écouter sans déplaisir, surtout sous l’archet et les doigts de l’excellent duo formé par les Italiens Francesco Parrino (violon) et Michele Pentrella (piano). (Jean-Pierre Rousseau)

A Russian musician, born in 1877 and a cousin of Medtner, Goedicke’s ephemeral fame was almost completely eclipsed in the Soviet era. He was neither rebel enough to attract the attention of the Western intellectual world, nor ambitious enough to carve out a career within the regime’s apparatus. Having completed his conservatory studies, in 1900 he competed as both composer and pianist in the third Rubinstein Competition in Vienna, winning the composition prize with his Konzertstu¨ck for piano and orchestra. Medtner, who also took part in the competition, recalls in his Memoirs that the prize for best pianist was given to the Belgian Emile Bosquet – whom he considered inferior to both himself and Goedicke – because the jury had developed a hostile attitude towards Russian pianists and did not want to bestow two prizes on Goedicke. In fact, Goedicke won in the composers’ category with the Violin Sonata Op.10, as well. That Violin Sonata, composed in 1899 (but published in 1901 by Jurgenson), is dedicated to Jan Hr?i´maly´, a Czech violinist and fellow-professor of Goedicke’s at the Moscow Conservatory. The sonata’s nickname, “Vesennjaja” (spring), is a clear reference to Rachmaninov’s song “Spring Waters” Op.14/11, which is quoted at the beginning of the first and the end of the final movement of Goedicke’s sonata. But even greater than the influence of Rachmaninov is that of German Romanticism. While Op.10 is a youthful work, the Violin Sonata Op.83, composed between 1948 and 1953 (but published only posthumously in 1972), is a clear rebuttal of Tikhon Khrennikov’s notorious anti-formalist attacks (on Shostakovich and Prokofiev, among others) from a composer shielded behind decades of academic tenure. The sonata reaches far into the past, even to early Beethoven, with a construction so formally impeccable as to seem almost provocatively anachronistic. On the other hand, the 10 Pieces Op.80 (“of average difficulty, in first position”), also dating from 1948, are wholly different. Effectively combining pleasant melody and the evocation of childhood, they fit with dignity in a line stretching from Schumann’s to Tchaikovsky’s Albums for the Young, shedding light on Goedicke’s prolific didactic side