For Kotova, a Little Inflection Goes a Long Way

A probing, lyric curiosity marked Nina Kotova’s recital Monday evening at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts. The Russian cellist seems to find the syntax and grammar of music endlessly fascinating, working hard to reveal the expressive life of every phrase, a trait also apparent in the U.S. premiere of a solo cello sonata of her own composition.

In her classically ordered sonata, phrases develop by accretion within a fashionably rumpled, chromatically goosed tonal context. Obsessive motivic repetition and expansion make each movement sound like a cadenza for an implied concerto. This is inward music for the most part, but communicably so.

Kotova played it with a tight, middleweight sound. She can certainly dig in for gruff vehemence and agile bounce, but she has a penchant for feathery, floating lines where a little inflection goes a long way.

Another U.S. premiere, Lawrence Weiner’s “Texas” Sonata, demanded something grittier in its outer movements, which Kotova supplied almost mechanically, saving nuance for the flowing inner melody. Busy for both the cello and the piano--played with pertinent power by Daredjan Kakouberi--but undistinctive, this sonata nonetheless expresses something more about Kotova’s generous interest in new music.

Rachmaninoff’s great G-minor Sonata, on the other hand, expressed something about her grounding in the Russian Romantic tradition, apparent in her first recording and in the Tchaikovsky transcriptions that began the recital. Kotova and Kakouberi overcame the occasional miscommunication in a generally effective ensemble, though Kakouberi’s best efforts were repressed with the piano lid open only a crack.

Schumann’s Opus 70 Adagio and Allegro completed the agenda, and the solo encores--a Russian folk song and a Bach sarabande--found Kotova reflective again.