Reviews

THIS MONTH’SRECOMMENDED RECORDINGSOur pick of the new releases

New York

HEIMAT QUARTET

WEILL RECITAL HALL, CARNEGIE HALL 4 MARCH 2019 It is a pleasure to hear a quartet that both takes music seriously and also enjoys it - as was the case with the Heimat Quartet, which made its Carnegie Hall debut this month. Founded in 2014 in Boston, the Heimat performed Mozart’s String Quartet in G major K287 with a warm sound and much joy. Unfortunately, intonation was frequently a distraction. Cellist Brendon Phelps stood out in the Andante cantabile, playing with a rich but clear sound and beautiful shaping and leading.

The world premiere of Anthony Vine’s Wave Roomfollowed, and the quartet did an admirable job, presenting it with sincerity and gravitas, representing well the work’s intention (as noted in the programme): ‘The music attempts to engage a reflexive mode of listening, wherein one takes notice of their own perceptual faculties, and begins to perceive themselves listening.’ Although it was not exactly enjoyable, the work was an interesting and provocative part of the programme.

Dvorak’s infrequently heard A flat major Quartet op.105 closed the programme with a beautiful introduction by cellist and violist. As the movement developed, first violinist Patrick Shaughnessy experienced intonation issues, but created soaring melodies and long lines above inner-voice unrest. The Molto vivace was extremely well executed. Although the final movement was a bit dense, the quartet brought the concert to a close with a vivacious ending.

LEAH HOLLINGSWORTH

BRENTANO QUARTET

KAUFMANN CONCERT HALL, 92Y 9 MARCH 2019 My best concert advice is never to pass up an opportunity to hear the Brentano Quartet. The New York premiere of Martin Bresnick’s String Quartet no.4 ‘The Planet on the Table’ (2018) opened the evening, providing a ‘musical meditation on [a Wallace Stevens poem], on the transformational value of art, on the power of the creative act’, according to first violinist Mark Steinberg.

The Brentano Quartet has the ability to captivate the ear, and the intensity and total commitment with which the players approached this work was no exception. Cellist Nina Lee played tremendously in the second movement - her ponticello was ethereal and her soaring melodic lines were haunting, mournful, and achingly lovely. The players created an atmosphere of stillness and expectation in the third movement, and painted a sound picture of hope in the fourth. The final movement developed material from the first in new ways and the quartet managed a light-hearted sensibility that was neither trite nor blase. Radio host Fred Child gave a powerful reading of selections of Stevens’s poetry after the quartet performance.

Beethoven’s incomparable String Quartet in A minor op.132 followed, with projections of Stevens’s poetry in the background. The timing of the projections was impeccable: thoughtful, provocative and utterly beautiful, although at times I found it distracted from the experience of the music. Steinberg’s playing was both precise and also understated, his power coming not from the richness of his sound or the intensity of his dynamics, but from the intensity and intentionality of each note. The second movement had a lovely lilt, with spacious phrases and a gentleness that was strangely water-like (‘flowing always the same / though never the same way twice’ projected from the Stevens). The slow movement was breathtaking and perfectly proportioned: ‘exquisite’ fails to do justice. The quartet ended with balance, intelligence of phrasing, and a rich depth of beauty that comes from only the greatest of artists.

LEAH HOLLINGSWORTH

ANNE-SOPHIE MUTTER (VIOLIN) DANIEL MULLER-SCHOTT (CELLO) LAMBERT ORKIS (PIANO)

CARNEGIE HALL 12 MARCH 2019 It’s unusual for an audience to cheer a world premiere, but luxury casting for Sebastian Currier’s Ghost Trio- Anne-Sophie Mutter joined by cellist Daniel Muller-Schott and pianist Lambert Orkis - produced an audience reaction fervent enough for an encore: the sixth, pizzicato-happy ‘Syncopated’ movement. Currier’s ingenious conceit uses shards of piano trios from the past - Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn - which appear and disappear in puffs of microtonal smoke.

Two Mozart sonatas - in E minor K304 and B flat major K454 - showed Mutter and Orkis at their most attentive and synchronised. In the earlier one, Mutter began with no vibrato, before subsequent phrases blossomed like tropical plants. Poulenc’s 1942-43 Sonata, which closed the evening, boasted a sparkling surface, but with a forlorn undertow of struggle.

Aside from the premiere, Debussy’s Sonata was the apex, with Mutter adopting a velvety sensuousness, completely removed from her crisp display in Mozart. As a friend in San Francisco wrote, after seeing the same programme (minus the Currier premiere), ‘Tone, tone, tone’, and never was her 1710 Stradivari put to more seductive use. Among many virtues was her chameleonic ability to change her sound - and her approach - for disparate works.

Two encores struck gold - both by Andre Previn, who had died two weeks earlier. First came ‘Spirited’, the initial movement of his 2009 Piano Trio, and from 2001, the central ‘Song’ from Tango Song and Dance.Before Mutter and her colleagues unspooled Previn’s touching, cinematic phrases, she expressed hope that the beloved conductor and composer was enjoying himself, communing with Mozart and jazz great Oscar Peterson.

BRUCE HODGES

AIZURI QUARTET MARYBONHAG (SOPRANO)

TENRI CULTURAL INSTITUTE 22 MARCH 2019 Although one could imagine Carrot Revolutionas a new vegan initiative, in this case it is the title of Gabriella Smith’s sparkling 2015 opus, commissioned by the Philadelphia-based Barnes Foundation for the Aizuri Quartet (right).It also appears on the group’s Grammy Award-nominated debut album, Blueprinting,released in December 2018.

Smith’s infectious essay combines scratchy rhythms and spunky pizzicatos with wood slaps from the cello. Microtonal sighs create harmonic complexity, and the whole thing eventually winds down like an itinerant machine coming to rest.

Based on the words of Brene Brown, the four sections of Evan Premo’s String Quartet no.1 ‘Deeply Known’ (2018) explore vulnerability. Its (mostly) peaceful iridescence is engaging, including a reference in the third movement to the popular gospel tune from the 1920s, This Little Light of Mine.

But the climax of the Aizuri players’ incisive concert (for a rapt crowd in the gallery-style space of Tenri Cultural Institute) came with Schoenberg’s String Quartet no.2. Despite some precarious intonation at the start, the result was ultimately cathartic, with soprano Mary Bonhag in passionate form in the last two movements.

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In between came a palate-cleanser of sorts, Komitas Vardapet’s charming Armenian Folk Songs, given verve and melancholy. The final ‘Kaqavik’ (The Partridge) mimicked the title bird, and showed the Aizuri at its most sensitive and delicate.bruce hodges

London

MARAT BISENGALIEV (VIOLIN) SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA OF INDIA/MARTYN BRABBINS

CADOGAN HALL 25 FEBRUARY 2019 The Symphony Orchestra of India’s first ever UK tour presented a fascinating opportunity to hear what it can do; and as it kicked off its Cadogan Hall final concert with Weber’s ‘Oberon’ Overture, first impressions were good: an opening horn call came as magically cloaked and silky as one could wish, answered by warmly polished strings. Then, while the string sections’ overall blending wasn’t always as polished as they sounded individually, and while the violins’ Allegro con fuoco semiquaver passagework lacked enpointedefinition, the energy, lightness and early Romantic sensibility were all there. Certainly it contained the promise of an orchestra about to deliver on the rest of the programme’s full-blown Romanticism.

This was an impression belied by the performance of Bruch’s Violin Concerto no. 1, where sadly Martyn Brabbins and the orchestra deserve credit not simply for their great sound and committed reading, but for holding things together when dealing with a soloist who showed little awareness of them at all. In fact, from his curiously stop-start and laboured opening statement, Bisengaliev (left)was an uncomfortable enigma, with messy position changes and passagework, unpleasantly flat-toned upper registers, hard-edged vibrato and a narrow colouristic palette, all making this a performance one could justifiably have walked out of.

Thank goodness, then, that it was the orchestra alone that had the concert’s final say, with a Rachmaninoff Second Symphony showcasing expertly handled drama and lush-toned beauty with an especially fine cello sound. Add a palate- cleansingly sweet and light Salut d’amourencore, and there was at least a happy conclusion to this landmark visit.charlotte Gardner

AUGUSTIN HADELICH (VIOLIN) BBC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA/SAKARI ORAMO

BARBICAN 2 MARCH 2019 Hadelich’s recording of the Ligeti Concerto was hot off the press (see article, April 2019) when he performed it as part of the climax to a ‘Total Immersion’ day. This was dedicated to Ligeti’s ever-entrancing sound world - and while the Norwegian Radio Orchestra players had the luxury of multiple takes in the studio to get his fiendish cross-rhythms under their fingers, the BBC Symphony Orchestra is used to playing this kind of music right first time.

On this occasion, within a demanding programme, the reduced ensemble sounded almost too much at home under Oramo’s efficient direction. It was left to Hadelich to supply the tightrope danger and black-run adrenalin that propel the concerto forwards. His handling of high harmonics was breathtaking, evoking exactly the kind of uncanny, distanced emotion Ligeti had in mind when he coined the term ‘deep-frozen Expressionism’ for his earlier music.

Yet the Concerto dates from a long period in the 1980s when the composer embraced the power of melody and made it his own. Hadelich did likewise with the second movement’s quirkily memorable aria, bending the pitch like a folk violinist and projecting his pizzicato accompaniment to the ocarina quartet right to the back of the Barbican. His no-holds-barred approach made the cadenza by Thomas Ades a fitting climax, bringing back themes from previous movements but with bells and whistles like a modernist Joachim.peter quantrill

JANINE JANSEN (VIOLIN) ALEXANDER GAVRYLYUK (PIANO)

WIGMORE HALL 12 MARCH 2019 My word, Janine Jansen can fill a hall. I saw two empty seats, and worried slightly for the health of those who hadn’t turned up. She showed just why she has such pulling power in a concert that combined musical strength, personality and virtuosic flair. In the first movement of Schumann’s Violin Sonata no.1 in A minor she and Alexander Gavrylyuk, a tremendous partner throughout, produced high drama, as if recounting a passionate poem. The second was a dialogue between two different characters, one free and expressive, the other a flibbertigibbet. In the third, too, there were strong contrasts, of dynamics and of bowing power, with light staccato playing and emphatic chords. Could anyone hearing this performance not be convinced of the quality of this undervalued music? Jansen also made a good case for Clara Schumann’s Three Romances op. 22.

Jansen finished the first part of her concert with Brahms’s Second Violin Sonata. Here there were extremes of vehement rhythmic punch and silky melody, an air of confidentiality alternating with episodes of fun in the central movement, and a complex personality exposed in the third. After the interval, Jansen and Gavrylyuk gave a powerhouse performance of Franck’s Sonata, full of hushed lyricism and bravado flourishes. The finale, joyful, heroic and with ecstatic climaxes, s summed up the sonata and the evening. A delicate - encore of Lili Boulanger’s Nocturne provided an j exquisite close.

TIM HOMFRAY

Helsingborg

LAWRENCE POWER (VIOLA) HELSINGBORG SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA/STEFAN SOLYOM

HELSINGBORG KONSERTHUS 14 MARCH 2019 You have to see the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra’s season to believe it. Every concert has a world premiere and/or music by a woman, and the overture-concerto-symphony format is pretty much extinct. ‘We wanted a concert about the viola, so we had to call you, ’ said conductor Stefan Solyom to Lawrence Power during this particular smorgasbord. Before Power had played a note, the orchestra’s principal viola gave us a beautiful solo in Emmy Lindstrom’s Serenad.

Power played two Dowland songs, Flow my tearsand If my complaints couldpassions move,varying colours from verse to verse. He then gave a heartfelt performance of Britten’s ‘variations in search of a theme’, Lachrymae.If the orchestra could sound mushy under Solyom’s direction, it provided plenty of razor-sharp edges in Bernard Herrmann’s Psycho Suitethat followed.

In his symphony with solo viola Harold in Italy,Berlioz wanted the viola to represent an actual person. Power proved an eloquent facilitator of that wish, making it all about the sound of his instrument despite his strong physical presence. He started out standing with the solo harp during his first entry, and ended in the auditorium. There were technical feats - those sul ponticello arpeggios were as a light, fresh breeze - but Power brought soul, optimism and stature to Berlioz’s radical work and tempered the orchestra’s occasional overexcitement.

ANDREW MELLOR

RECORDINGS

ALWYNThree Winter Poems; String Quartet no.3 CARWITHENString Quartets nos.1 & 2 Tippett QuartetSOMM CD0194

Neglected British music has a very welcome champion

It defies belief that music of such striking invention and quality as William Alwyn’s Three Winter Poemscould have lain unperformed during his lifetime. Composed in 1948, its tonal and stylistic reference points - the ‘Snow Shower’ Serenade third movement unmistakably takes its lead from the Assez vifof Debussy’s String Quartet - were presumably considered passe at the time. Yet when played as sensitively as by the Tippett Quartet - whose 2016 disc of quartets nos.10-13, also for Somm, is no less outstanding - with radiant insight and affection, captured in glowing, naturally balanced sound, they emerge as utterly captivating. Fascinatingly, the Third Quartet in two movements (1984) also recalls in places the post-Wagnerian chromaticisms of 1890s Debussy, and the Tippett Quartet embrace its sensual, opulent sound world with beguiling lustre and allure.

Not only was Doreen Carwithen Alwyn’s second wife, but she was also his student some 30 years previously at London’s Royal Academy of Music. Her two string quartets (1945 and 1950 respectively) are more neoClassical and vibrant in quality than Alwyn’s, and the Tippett captures the forward energy of no.1’s first movement with alacrity, while ensuring that the Molto adagio of no.2 opens with a profound sense of calm and stillness.

JULIAN HAYLOCK

ANTHEILViolin Sonatas Alessandro Fagiuoli (violin) Alessia Toffanin (piano)AVI-MUSIC C-AVI 8553239

Debut recording for sonata by a 20th-century ‘bad boy’

Friend to Joyce and Pound, scourge of critics on both sides of the Atlantic, George Antheil (1900-59) said goodbye to the provocative experimentalism of 1920s Paris to resurface in the US as a composer of sonatas and symphonies determined to leave behind his former reputation as a ‘bad boy of music’. Tropes of neo-Classicism, Cubism and even Dadaism lend the first three sonatas an anarchic spirit of invention that yet survives with a Soviet Russian accent in the motor rhythms of the Fourth.

In all his guises, Antheil is well served by this Italian duo. Recorded quite close to the microphone, Alessia Toffanin is a hard-hitting accompanist both in the Rite of Springrhythms of the First Sonata and on the drums - a part written for Pound - in the North African coda of the zany and eclectic Second. Better still is the Third, learning from Satie as well as Stravinsky on a curiously mesmerising 18-minute tour around a few offhand motifs.

Beautifully controlled bowing, even tone and a fine sense of the absurd lend distinction to Alessandro Fagiuoli’s playing, but his heavyhanded take on the Fourth - which feeds bits of the First and Third through a sort of Shostakovichtoothed sausage machine - lacks the manic energy and devilish glee of Vera Beths and Reinbert de Leeuw (Auvidis Montaigne). Nevertheless, if you can live with the claustrophobic sound, Fagiuoli and Toffanin make the most persuasive case for the Third in its first recording.

PETER QUANTRILL

OBLIQUE STRATEGIES BACHCello Suite no.1 in G major BWV1007 DEANEleven Oblique Strategies KODALYSonata for solo cello in B minor op.8 HENRYSONBlack Run (from North American Suite) Andrei lonita (cello)ORCHID CLASSICS ORC100096

Superb solo debut from a recent BBC New Generation Artist

To open a debut solo album with Bach’s Cello Suite no.1 may not be the obvious way to present oneself as a distinctive new musical voice. However right from the opening measures of this most famous of works, Romanian cellist Andrei Ionita’s playing demands attention: the sinewy depth and richness of the tones he’s drawing from his 1671 Rogeri, the fluid technique, the way his Prelude’s architecture and musical argument is cleverly grown through subtle transformations of articulation and attack, and the fleet-fingered Courante’s deft balancing of delicacy and danceability with a scurrying, capricious, almost untamed quality.

The album’s title work, Brett Dean’s ten-minute cycle of character pieces composed for the 2014 Grand Prix Emmanuel Feuermann of which Ionita was a prizewinner, is an equally ear-pricking interpretative and technical hole-in-one. Movement titles such as ‘Listen to the quiet voice’ and ‘Disconnect from desire’ ring true. Then, having lured you in close for its final ‘In a very large room, very quietly’ with the eerie beauty of his whispered harmonics, the way his ensuing explosion into Kodaly’s B minor Sonata makes you reel back again; before his power and lyricism over its sweeping lines swallow you in once more.

Svante Henryson’s 2001 bluegrass- inspired Black Runthen circles us back to dance for an ear-popping, toe-tapping virtuosic slalom ride of textures, tones, techniques and special effects all piled on top of each other, which Ionita handles so superbly and joyfully that you’re left breathless and smiling yourself. Recorded sound is excellent. Rarely have I been so impressed on so many fronts by a debut recital album.

CHARLOTTE GARDNER

INNOVATORS

BARTOKString Quartet no.2 op.17 BEETHOVENString Quartet in F minor op.95 Serioso DEBUSSYString Quartet Benyounes QuartetCHAMPS HILL RECORDS CHRCD 147

Quartet’s tenth-anniversary disc is something to celebrate

Marking the tenth anniversary of the Benyounes Quartet, this disc profiles a versatile group that is equally convincing in each of its three works, which together span a century. In the first movement of Bartok’s String Quartet no.2, the players balance dense chromaticism and counterpoint with flourishing lines that yield an enigmatic, abstracted lyricism. The second movement - earthy but not jagged, and with well-judged fluctuations of tempo - leads to a finale whose semitonal clashes, as a result of the players’ timbral balance, appear as spectralist consonances.

Beethoven’s ‘Serioso’ Quartet is characterised by a forward drive - the development of the first movement has a particular urgency - as well as a natural freedom of expression and suppleness of phrasing, while a note of stormy drama underlies the finale; here the coda erupts with enrapturing fleet-footed articulation.

Debussy’s Quartet is perhaps the most technically demanding of the works, but the Benyounes manage to balance warmth of tone and breathable phrasing with brittle precision (for example in the rhythmic pizzicato-heavy second movement). Throughout, the playing is never over-embellished but rather reveals a tensile strength at the music’s core. With a lively, well balanced sound and decent programme notes to match, all that’s missing is a red-ribbon bow.

EDWARD BHESANIA

BEETHOVENCello Sonatas nos.1-5; Horn Sonata op.17 (arr.for cello) Leonard Elschenbroich (cello) Alexei Grynyuk (piano)ONYX 4196 (2CDS)

Cellist brings a marvellous spontaneity to Beethoven’s sonatas

Not unreasonably with a modern Steinway for company, Leonard Elschenbroich pitches the sound of his Beethoven in the early Romantic era, around the time of Schubert’s Arpeggione Sonata. Portamento and rubato are his friends, warming and stretching Beethoven’s often- experimental writing for the cello while catching the spontaneity and craziness of the two early sonatas. He’s even more at home in the mid-period masterpiece that is op.69, never sounding more like a gregarious neighbour to the ‘Emperor’ Concerto than here.

The last two sonatas are pitched much lower in the instrument, and Elschenbroich occasionally struggles (he’s hardly alone) to match the boisterous humour of the piano however sympathetic the recorded balance. However, he brings to op.102 no.2 a fierce, questing intelligence that stands up to distinguished colleagues past and present. At least until the grave hymn at the heart of his last sonata for the instrument, Beethoven was apparently so averse to writing slow music for solo cello that performers and listeners must cherish what they have, in the epigrammatic introductions to the early sonatas, and elsewhere fall into the slipstream of his boisterous rondos; I very much enjoy how Elschenbroich and Grynyuk never hurry Beethoven along but meet him on his own terms.

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Their bonus is welcome and imaginative: not the usual variation sets but the composer’s own arrangement of the early Horn Sonata.

PETER QUANTRILL

EVOCATION

BEN-HAIMEvocation, Songs without Words1, Violin Concerto2, Three Studies, Berceuse Sfaradite1, Toccata Itamar Zorman (violin) Amy Yang (piano)1BBC National Orchestra of Wales/Philippe Bach2BIS-2398 (SACD)

A rewarding recital of music by a middle-eastern emigree

Having left his native Germany after the Nazis’ rise to power in 1933, Paul Frankenburger started a new life in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine, adopting the name of Paul Ben-Haim. All the pieces included in this stunningly recorded SACD post-date this momentous event by some years and illuminatingly chart the composer’s continuing preoccupation with Middle Eastern music. The earliest work here is the Berceuse Sfaraditefrom 1945 (recorded by Itzhak Perlman on one of his first recitals); its harmonies reminiscent of Faure make for a fascinating contrast with the Songs without Wordsfrom 1951, by when the folkloristic inflections thoroughly imbue the whole musical fabric.

This project has obviously been a labour of love for Itamar Zorman, whose playing - on a 1734 Guarneri ‘del Gesu - is technically impeccable. Zorman is attentive to the music’s humorous moments - say, in the Ballad from Songs without Words- but also achieves great expressive heights, while being always conscious of a piece’s larger shape. He and the BBC forces under Philippe Bach hold convincingly together the huge arcs of Evocation,a 20-minute lament written in 1942, and of the slightly longer Violin Concerto from 1960, a most successful synthesis of the Western and Middle Eastern musical idioms. Ben-Haims late (1981), unaccompanied Studies are more stern stuff; they include that most European of compositional traits, a fugue, in which the German musician, as it were, looks back to his roots. A rousing Toccata, skilfully arranged from a piano showpiece, brings this rewarding recital to its exciting close.

CARLOS MARIA SOLARE

BRITTENCello Suites nos.1-3 Alexander Ramm (cello)MELODYA MEL CD 10 02568

Tchaikovsky medallist channels Rostropovich in Britten’s cello music

Russian cellist Alexander Ramm, silver medallist at the 2015 Moscow Tchaikovsky Competition and 31 this May, can boast direct tutorial lineage through his teacher Natalia Shakhovskaya to the inspiration behind Britten’s three cello suites, Rostropovich. In these performances, he certainly displays an uncommon affinity for the music, its style and its emotional ebbs and flows.

Thanks to a transparent, supportive recording, every detail of his playing tells, though the moment is never more important than its place in the whole. There’s a robustness to his playing of the First Suite that never sounds overwrought, and he finds plenty of room for refinement, too, producing a rich bloom of sound from his Gabrielle Jebran Yakoub cello. The Third Suite has an unmistakeable sense of the valedictory in Ramm’s hands, with a mellow melancholy that seems to get to the heart of the music.

I’m not in a position to assess the Russian booklet note, but it reads undeniably awkwardly in the unidiomatic English translation provided, and a Putinesque prudery demotes Peter Pears to ‘lifelong friend’ of the composer. But these don’t detract from what is a first-rate recording of this music.

MATTHEW RYE

HAYDNCello Concertos: no.1 in C major no.2 in D major VIVALDIConcerto in B flat major for violin, cello and strings Christoph Croisé (cello) Sherniyaz Mussakhan (violin) Eurasian Soloists Chamber OrchestraAVIE AV2402

Deliciously sprightly playing from soloist and pan-continental orchestra

Youthful joie de vivreand virtuosic intensity abound in this new disc by young Swiss cellist Christophe Croisé with the Eurasian Soloists Chamber Orchestra.

The orchestra, founded in 2015 and hailing from some ten different European and Asian countries, produces a sparkling, vital sound, with the harpsichord well to the fore in the opening ritornellos. Croisé draws a notably wide palette of tones from his 1712 Gofriller cello, from a sudden hooded piano half way through a phrase, taking it in another direction, to the pure, clear doublestopping of the Gendron cadenza in the C major’s Adagio, all captured in warm, realistic sound.

Croisé is sparing with his vibrato, particularly in the slow movements, and favours changing the timbre when a D major Adagio’s opening phrase returns, floating it high on the D string. His virtuosity is everywhere in evidence, but nowhere more than in the exuberantly bustling finale of the C major Concerto, which is taken at a breath-taking pace in this vibrant and immediate recording.

Kazakh violinist Mussakhan directs the select forces of the Swiss-based orchestra and joins Croisé as soloist in Vivaldi’s B flat double concerto, setting the bar ever higher for the cellist to imitate as the two compete in the high cross-string spiccato stakes.

JANET BANKS

HAYDNString Quartets in C major op.20 no.2, in C major op.54 no.2 and in G major op.64 no.4 Jubilee QuartetRUBICON RCD1039

Fresh, exemplary playing on an outstanding debut recording

The multi-award-winning Jubilee Quartet’s outstanding debut disc features eloquent accounts of three Haydn quartets, performed with spontaneity and pleasing communicative flair. Musical characterisation is vivid and decisive, enhanced by a sensitive appreciation of harmony, phrasing and structure and wide-ranging dynamic gradations. Ensemble is unwaveringly unanimous and Rubicon’s recording is clear, immediate and well balanced. Liner information, however, is somewhat minimalist.

These players demonstrate a striking warmth of feeling in the slower moments, notably in the emotionally charged dynamic shifts in the Capriccio of op.20 no.2 and the tense, brooding chorale of op.54 no.2, which is agreeably transformed by lead violinist Tereza Privratska into impassioned quasi-improvisatory fantasies. Privratska also excels in her elaborations of the sustained cantabile melody of the Adagio of op.64 no.4, the rustic Menuetto movement of which features her in more playful mood, particularly in its pizzicato-accompanied trio. All four players rise to the various technical challenges of the fast movements with precision and panache. They dispatch the fugal finale of op.20 no.2 with sotto voce subtlety until its forte explosion towards the end, making much of the drama and rhetoric of the muscular opening Vivace of op.54 no.2 and revelling in the polyphonic developmental elaboration of the opening theme of op.64 no.4’s finale.

ROBIN STOWELL

PURCELLString Fantasias in Four Parts BRITTENString Quartets nos 1-3; Three Divertimenti Doric QuartetCHANDOS CHAN 20 124(2) (2CDS)

Britten’s own viola takes centre stage in the composer’s quartets

These recordings of Britten’s String Quartets have a special connection to the composer: the violist Helene Clement plays Britten’s own viola, made by Francesco Giussani in in 1843, which previously belonged to Britten’s teacher Frank Bridge; they include six of the Fantasias by Purcell, a composer Britten adored; and the recordings were made on the composer’s home ground of the Maltings, Snape.

The First Quartet has some startling dynamic contrasts at times, between thepppopening of the first movement and the Allegro sections, and between the all but inaudibleopening of the second movement and the ferocity of the interjections, before it gets into its bone-dry stride. A clear thread runs through the complex emotional landscape of the Andante calmo, with rapt playing in the Tempo tranquillo. The finale kicks off in a blaze of highly strung energy.

In the opening movement of the Second Quartet the Doric players neatly convey the shifting senses of certainty and unease. The leader Alex Redington brings a louche touch to his double-stopped octaves in the busy Vivace, and the shifting characters in the finale Chacony are beautifully caught.

There is a fine sense of the music shifting in and out of focus in the opening of the Third Quartet. Redington plays the high, slow moving solo in the third movement with shining tone and peerless legato, and the final movement, ‘La Serenissima’, has a wonderful expressive melancholy. The three Divertimenti have bold primary colours, with grace in the central waltz; Purcell’s Fantasias are vibrato- free and expressive. The recording is clear and resonant.

TIM HOMFRAY

RIHMDritte Musik; Lichtzwang (In memoriam Paul Celan); Gedicht des Malers Tianwa Yang (violin) Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland- Pfalz/Christoph-Mathias MuellerNAXOS 8.573812

Making a powerful case for intense and sometimes forbidding music

This first volume in Naxos’s survey of Wolfgang Rihm’s music for violin and orchestra makes for demanding, challenging, sometimes tense listening, but it’s a deeply rewarding experience nonetheless. Bringing together three meaty works from across the contemporary German composer’s career, it also boasts a near-ideal soloist in Chinese violinist Tianwa Yang, who plays with astonishing precision and vigour throughout, as well as with what’s clearly a profound engagement with this sometimes forbidding music.

Yang maintains a piercing clarity in the stratospheric, sine-wave-like tones of Lichtzwang(1976), an uncompromising work that pits the defiant soloist against often unrestrained violence from the orchestral brass and percussion.

Yet there’s a dark sense of lyricism to Yang’s impeccably sculpted phrases, and a sense of her energy spent by its desolate conclusion. There’s more wit and flow in Rihm’s Dritte Musik(1993), almost a concerto grosso in its prominent parts for piano, accordion and percussion, and Yang brings a wonderfully slithering expressivity to its unpredictable mood shifts. She’s immensely detailed, too, observing the composer’s minute details of dynamics and articulation to the letter, with vivid results.

With its caressing lines and its radiant, glowing scoring, the Ysaye-inspired Gedicht des Malers(2014) is the most immediately approachable work here, and it draws a glorious sense of rhapsodic fantasy from Yang, who makes her 1730 ‘del Gesu sing sweetly in its seemingly endless arching melodies. She receives assertive, finely detailed support from the Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz under Christoph-Mathias Mueller, and recorded sound is warm and clear.

DAVID KETTLE

SALONENCello Concerto Yo-Yo Ma (cello) Los Angeles Philharmonic/Esa-Pekka SalonenSONY CLASSICAL 19075928482

Debut recording of a new concerto played by its dedicatee

As Esa-Pekka Salonen says in the CD booklet, his Cello Concerto had been brewing for 30 years or more before finally appearing in 2017, performed by its dedicatee Yo-Yo Ma and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra with the composer conducting. There are many metaphorical ideas built into the work, including a comet and its tail, clouds, and the orchestra as a gigantic lung. The first cloud comes at the beginning, a luminous cluster of orchestral sound with tintinnabulating percussion, from which Ma emerges with a long, discursive line, which he plays with gentle beauty and sensitivity to the weaving contours of the melody. Wind instruments emerge to accompany and imitate the cello. Ma ruminates, his sound rich and expressive, until towards the end of the movement there is a welling of energy, with outbursts of rapid-fire sequences of notes, gnomic phrases reaching upwards in pitch before subsiding back as if exhausted.

In the second movement, after a dramatic outburst from the orchestra, Ma introduces a quiet, slowly rising line, which leads to a skittish duet with alto flute. In the finale the cello definitively asserts itself as protagonist, and Ma performs a part that is increasingly challenging with powerful personality and theatrical flair. The recording is well balanced, with cello to the fore.

TIM HOMFRAY

WORKS FOR SOLO CELLO SALONENYTA III; Knock, Breathe, Shine; Sarabande per un coyote SAARIAHODrea ming Chaconne; Petals; 7 Papillons; Spins and Spells Wilhelmina Smith (cello)ONDINE ODE 1294-2

Mesmerising performances of cello works for the 21st century

Both these composers seem focused on widening the orbit of virtuosity for solo cello but without losing sight of the necessity to communicate vividly to the listener. Esa-Pekka Salonen maintains a loose leverage on tonal centres, grabbing virtuosity by the throat and challenging the performer to go to the very limits of her technique. The force of his musical invention is compelling and the gestures whirl by with fantastic immediacy.

Sometimes, as in the pizzicato section of Knock,the material sounds almost like pantomime with marvellous touches of humour. In contrast, a haunting more lyrical style of writing defines Breathe.At the other end of the spectrum, Salonen’s Sarabande per un coyotetakes the Chiacona - a set of variations over a four-bar ground - by Italian Baroque composer Giuseppe Colombi as a starting point. He represents the Coyote running through craggy terrain as depicted by challenging harmony and dissonance. American cellist Wilhelmina Smith has studied every centimetre of the score and unleashes its drama in a brilliantly characterised rendition.

Kaija Saariaho’s writing is equally demanding, but generates a more ethereal sonic world, with sul ponticello and harmonic trills fluttering delicately in Dreaming Chaconne.Here Saariaho also takes Colombi’s Chaconne as a springboard as part of a larger project, involving several other composers called the Mystery Variations. In Spins and Spells,she adopts scordatura using major 6ths and 3rds instead of the conventional tuning in 5ths, thereby generating compelling new sound combinations. Once again Smith delivers another mesmerising performance and emerges as a consummate communicator of the new virtuosity.

JOANNE TALBOT

SCHUMANNPiano Trios: no.1 in D minor op.63, no.2 in F major op.80, no.3 in G minor op. 10; Fantasiestucke op. 88 Horszowski TrioAVIE 2405 (2 CDS)

Fresh, supple and fantastic renditions of Schumann’s serene trios

First, some words of praise for how closely the Horszowski Trio follows Schumann’s tempo and expressive markings. In the opening movement of the D minor Trio (no.1), for example, where one has come to expect relaxations of tempo for the brief second subject and the magical section in the development section led by pulsating pianississimo piano triplets, the Horszowskis keep the music flowing serenely. This combined with an attractive airy textural clarity, despite the music’s middle-register dominance, imparts a litheness and freshness to the entire series that avoids the slightly cosy, relaxed quality that this glorious music sometimes inspires.

This has a particularly uplifting effect in the F major Trio (no.2), which dances along in the outer movements with an exhilarating, Mendelssohnian deftness of touch. The Horszowski Trio’s gently poetic, chamber-scale inflecting of Schumann’s slow movements perhaps lacks a certain furrowed-brow gravitas, yet in the context of the readings as a whole they feel entirely appropriate. The trio’s refusal to gild the lily indulgently proves particularly effective in the op. 88 Fantasiestucke, in which Schumann distils his creative essence (most memorably in the opening Romanze) into the most heartrendingly simple gestures.

The recording, captured in New York’s American Academy of Arts and Letters, is as well balanced and truthful as the performances are themselves.

JULIAN HAYLOCK

TAN DUNRhapsody anc Fantasia; Fire Ritual (2018) Eldbj0rg Hemsing (violin) Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra/Tan DunBIS 2406

‘World music’ violin concertos receive fiery, thrilling performances

Theatrical, charismatic and intricately detailed, these two violin concertos by Tan Dun are the perfect showcase for his sensuous sound world (see April 2019). As a teenager Tan became the conductor of a travelling Peking Opera troupe: echoes of its colourful style are never far from his delicate textures, recorded here with brilliance and vibrancy.

The first concerto, ‘Rhapsody and Fantasia’, grew out of an ancient opera melody. From this, Tan conjures an eclectic but immensely likeable work that somewhat improbably pits dance-worthy beats (in two movements entitled ‘hip- hop’) against a rich seam of lyricism from the violin. Under the baton of the composer himself, Norwegian Eldbj0rg Hemsing shows a deep affinity for this music, from the lush, yearning lyricism of the Rhapsody’s middle-movement Malinconia to the more esoteric Fantasia, in which lovely pinpricks of orchestral detail add shade to the violin’s searching lines.

The five-movement ‘Fire Ritual’ of 2018 builds on the earlier work’s sense of ceremonial, the violin pitted against the war-like, powerfully expressive declamations of the orchestra. After the brittle march of the third movement, the tumult clears for the solo violin to emerge. The shared, gorgeous melody of strings and soloist in the fourth movement gives way to a final, sorrowing melody from the violin, perfectly judged by Hemsing: a haunting end to a compelling disc.

CATHERINE NELSON

WILLIAMSViolin Sonata; Sextet for Oboe, Trumpet, Violin, Viola, Violoncello and Pianoforte; Suite for Nine Instruments; Romanza for Oboe and Clarinet; Sarabande for Piano Left Hand; Rondo for Dancing for Two Violins and Optional Cello London Chamber Ensemble/ Madeleine Mitchell (violin)NAXOS 8.571380

A Welsh composer’s lesser-known music has a chance to shine

One of Wales’s leading composers, Grace Williams has her champions on home ground - not least the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, which mounted her large-scale Missa cambrensis(‘Welsh Mass’) in 2016 - but this disc, comprising six premiere recordings, is a chance for her music to reach a wider audience.

Mitchell and Konstantin Lapshin give an attractive account of the Violin Sonata, with its rhythmical outer movements (though the third also has an engaging, at times gnarly, substance) and a slow movement whose modality and parallel harmonies recall Vaughan Williams, one of Williams’s teachers along with Egon Wellesz. There are occasional passages where Williams is not at her most inspired, prompting both violinist and pianist to sometimes lose impetus too.

The four-movement Sextet is varied in texture and mood and culminates in a folk-like (but distinctly un-Italian) tarantella; it receives a sparkling performance from the ensemble assembled. The Suite for Nine Instrumentsis perhaps the stand-out work, bold in style with a Fagade-like crispness and an atmospheric Andantino that borders on the mystical.

A trio of smaller-scale pieces nicely fills out the programme, even if the two-minute, early-Classical pastiche, the Rondo for Dancing,seems an insignificant work. The recording is clear and up-front though the acoustic is relatively dry.

EDWARD BHESANIA

BOOKS

Valentin Berlinsky: A Quartet for Life Maria Matalaev284PP ISBN 9780995757400 KAHN & AVERILL £18.95

Books about quartets do not come along very often and they vary widely in quality. This one about the Borodin Quartet has its drawbacks, partly because the cellist Valentin Berlinsky (1925-2008) did not live to see it published, and partly because he presents a partisan view of events. As I had a number of chats with him over the years, I was conversant with his highly subjective point of view, but others are advised to keep a salt cellar handy as they read.

The problems begin with the very foundation of what became first the Moscow Philharmonic Quartet and then, in 1955, the Borodin Quartet. Berlinsky was always at pains to claim that he was the original cellist, whereas it was Rostropovich - he said he was in the group for some time, Berlinsky claimed it was two weeks. The great violist Rudolf Barshai also featured strongly in getting the quartet off the ground, but in this book Berlinsky goes out of his way to rubbish Barshai at every turn.

His observations on Shostakovich are of great interest, but he always overplayed the group’s connection with the composer, especially after Barshai’s departure. Marketed in the West as the interpreters par excellence, the Borodin players introduced many of their own mannerisms, foreign to what Shostakovich wanted.

The chapter on Sviatoslav Richter is fascinating, as he was the quartet’s favoured guest pianist. It is nice to have Berlinskys thoughts on David Oistrakh, on Rostropovich, on teaching and on trying to make a career in the nightmare of the Soviet Union. Once we get to 1955 he is pretty accurate on the Borodin’s career and personnel changes. He is even candid about a bust-up with the second leader, Mikhail Kopelman.

The pen portraits of the quartet’s teachers and mentors, the day-to-day struggles, the touring, the rehearsals, the ‘constitutions’ that the Borodin drew up in order to achieve smooth running of their affairs - all of these things will interest the general reader. The interviews with Berlinsky himself and the group’s long-time violist Dmitri Shebalin are in that weird stilted language familiar to us from similar talks with other Soviet artists, but some things do come through the carefully guarded Sovietspeak. The interview with the cellist’s daughter, the pianist Ludmila Berlinskaya, is more straightforward and very touching.

As the text went through a number of hands, not including the English translator, a few strange ‘facts’ about other quartets have crept in, for instance that the Smetana Quartet had a repertoire of just twelve works, and that Oistrakh’s ensemble made just two recordings (I have about half a dozen). The various lists will be very helpful to music historians and enthusiasts, especially ‘Memorable Concerts’ and the Borodin’s repertoire. The book is attractively produced although the pictures are grainy.

TULLY POTTER iPractice: Technology in the 21st Century Music Practice Room Jennifer Mishra, Barbara Fast152PP ISBN 9780190660901 OUP £19.99

This book seeks to inspire students, teachers and performers alike to explore how technology can bring more variety and productivity into their practice. Written by Jennifer Mishra, a widely published stringmusician and educator, and Barbara Fast, professor of piano at the University of Oklahoma, it acknowledges that many successful practice methods exist and have been widely written about. The authors are not offering new methods, but show very clearly how technology can be used to freshen up existing ones.

Almost everyone has access to the necessary technology. A phone or tablet can record lessons, access videos and recordings, and provide instant answers to questions on technique or musicianship. There are apps or pieces of software that can help with any number of elements of practice. Moreover, existing technology is always improving. This book pointed out to me, for example, that there are apps like the Amazing Slow Downer’, which allows a musician to play along with a tricky passage at a reduced speed while retaining the original pitch and allowing continuing understanding of the whole score. Notation software can be used to simplify the look of complicated scores. One can simply change time signatures, rewrite a demisemiquaver passage in quavers, or change accidentals enharmonically for easier visual understanding.

The strongest message in the book is about how social media could be an aid to music practice, which can be an isolated and isolating activity. Mishra and Fast espouse the use of blogging and vlogging, Skype or live-streaming. Using tools like this it is easy to get instant reactions to music making, to interact with an audience or teacher, to practise concerts, and even set up scenarios like auditions. An online practice diary or tracker can help us feel part of a sports training group or team, with our activities logged and improvements noted for all to appreciate.

There is an excellent companion website (www.oup.com/us/ipractice) which contains interviews with musicians (including members of the New York Philharmonic) and teachers, who discuss their favourite practice methods. There are also demonstrations of apps and software and colourful versions of the graphics that appear in the book.

Mishra and Fast are aware that technology moves on rapidly, and that apps and programs mentioned will be superseded. This book, however, is future-proof as its primary message is to open people’s minds to exploit, in a creative way, whatever technology is available. It has certainly shown me that practice diaries can be interactive and fun, allowing pupils to take more ownership of their own improvements.

ALEX LAING

Life, Death and Cellos Isabel Rogers306PP ISBN 9781788421119 FARRAGO BOOKS £8.99

Life, Death and Cellos,by poet and cellist Isabel Rogers, is about the successes - or rather the disasters - of the Stockwell Park orchestra. Writing in a chatty style, Rogers has brought a lot of ideas into this, her first novel.

The story begins as conductor Joshua and cellist Erin enjoy a curry after a rehearsal. Unfortunately both of them get food poisoning and Joshua has to find a deputy for the upcoming concert. He appoints Oscar, who is both overweight and distinctly unpleasant in various ways that would have been better left to the reader’s imagination. The orchestra is presumably so terrible that he suffers a heart attack in his efforts to get the best out of them and drops dead, in the process crushing its benefactress, Mrs Ford-Hughes. Understandably she is furious - not only does he nearly suffocate her but he also breaks her collarbone.

In order to pacify their injured patron, the orchestra committee offers Mrs Ford-Hughes the chance to fulfil her lifelong ambition to sing a solo at the next concert, little realising that she has much in common with the tone deaf, screeching 20th-century soprano Florence Foster Jenkins. As part of the same programme, the leader of the cello section, Fenella, is given the opportunity to play a concerto on the Stradivari cello which she has just inherited from the recently deceased Oscar.

There follows a lengthy section of the book in which the orchestra rehearsals are described in detail and Rogers pontificates on such things as the physics underlying tuning in perfect 5ths on a stringed instrument, and even instructs her readers on how to withdraw the spike from inside a cello. However, things do liven up.

Fenella, while carrying her cello in the street, is overheard boasting about her new instrument and is attacked and hurt as it is snatched from her. Rogers holds the reader’s attention well as she writes this gripping section of the novel, as the detectives set to work tracing the whereabouts of the Strad. As a consequence of Fenella’s injury, Erin, Joshua’s ex-girlfriend, gets the chance to step in to perform the Elgar Cello Concerto on Fenella’s cello, much to her chagrin.

This novel would have benefited from focusing on one character and telling the story from their point of view. As it stands, however, the book doesn’t make for a riveting read overall.

VICKI HARDING