RECORDINGS

BACH Sonatas for viola and harpsichord BWV1027-1029; Aria ‘Ergieße dich reichlich, du göttliche Quelle’ BWV5

Antoine Tamestit (viola)

Masato Suzuki (harpsichord)

HARMON IA MUNDIHMM 902259

Well-rounded recital taps a divine fountain of music

For this traversal of Johann Sebastian Bach’s viola da gamba music, Antoine Tamestit has gut-strung the ‘Mahler’ Stradivari (see July 2019) and plays it with a bespoke copy of a historic bow. With the instrument tuned at a lower pitch that audibly agrees with it, Tamestit almost uncannily evokes the sound world of the viola da gamba through his thoughtful fingering choices and sophisticated bowing. Although the music, with very few exceptions, fits exactly the viola’s register, Tamestit has introduced some changes of octave that facilitate following Bach’s three-part writing, all the more so since the unobtrusively excellent balance of the recording has the viola comfortably nestled within the harpsichord’s sound.

Tamestit has an ideal partner in Masato Suzuki, who is just as comfortable launching a brisk fugato as he is accompanying passages such as the haunting B minor slow movement from BWV1028. Both players are highly sensitive to the affekt expressed by the music at any given moment. The way Tamestit varies the timbre of a sustained note in reaction to the changing harmonies around it, or the tiny luftpause he introduces as the buoyant finale of BWV1028 turns towards the minor mode, are the work of a master colourist. The aria from Bach’s Cantata BWV5 – the singer’s part has been worked into the harpsichord – is one of his few original viola works.

Its flowing semiquavers, depicting the ‘divine fountain’ mentioned in the text, are interpreted by Tamestit with a nicely springing stroke in a most attractive encore to a wellrounded recital.

CARLOS MARÍA SOLARE

BRAHMS Trio in E flat major op.40 BRUCH Eight pieces op.83 SCHUBERT Nocturne in E flat major D897

Natalia Lomeiko (violin)

Yuri Zhislin (viola) Ivan Martin (piano)

ORCHID CLASSICS 0RC100098

Re-scorings of wind to strings hit the mark in this trio of trios

While Natalia Lomeiko, Yuri Zhislin and Ivan Martin may not be the first to record Brahms’s early-maturity Trio for horn, violin and piano, it would be hard to top these readings for the extent to which their colourings honour the original instrumentation. It’s not simply that the viola is a fairly natural substitute for the waldhorn in the first place. It’s also that these three musicians’ tones are gorgeously dark and softly cloaked, with the whole imbued with wonderfully tender nostalgia. Indeed, this is immensely satisfying Brahms all over: comfortable-feeling tempos, metrical limbo-land moments floating along with ease, long phrases expertly grown, and a well-nigh perfect balancing of brightly toned grandeur, soft bubbling and dusky intimacy.

The violin perhaps isn’t quite as natural a substitute for the clarinet, which is what’s then required as the trio turns to Bruch’s Eight Pieces for viola, clarinet and piano, an equally nostalgic set written at the start of the 20th century when Bruch was 70 and very much sounding from a bygone Brahmsian era. However, as Joanna Wyld’s sleeve notes point out, the switch is fitting with Bruch’s strong relationship with the violin; and certainly the end result indisputably works, helped by Lomeiko’s softening position work, and tempo choices on the leisurely end of the scale (especially the Nachtgesang).

Add an equally softly glowing reading of the piano trio Schubert wrote in his last year (Zhislin now taking the cello role), all captured in a warm, clear recording, and this is an album I’ll be returning to.

CHARLOTTE GARDNER

JANÂCEK String Quartets: no.l ‘The Kreutzer Sonata’, no.2 ‘Intimate Letters’ LIGETI String Quartet no.l ‘Métamorphoses nocturnes’

Belcea Quartet

ALPHA 454

Restless, gripping performances that both surprise and delight

If you like your Janáček suave, amusingly quirky, his rough edges rounded off with late Romantic finesse, this probably isn’t the disc for you. In its gripping account of his two quartets, the Belcea Quartet takes him at his word with unforgivingly abrupt tempo changes, piquant textures and a heart-on-sleeve rawness, all carried off with utter conviction and impeccable technical expertise. The result is simply breathtaking – and feels like layers of varnish have been lovingly stripped from this idiosyncratic music.

There’s a beguiling buoyancy to the Belcea’s First Quartet, played with meticulous attention to all of Janáček’s tricksy rhythms and articulations, frequent passages of elegance offset by jarring noise –in the viola and second violin’s ponticello interjections in the third movement, for example, or the wheezing harmonium of the finale’s opening chords. The players’ ‘Intimate Letters’ feels filled with the immensity of emotion it requires, from its declamatory opening to the joyful abandon of its breathless finale, with another striking ponticello effect that seems to contain barely any pitch at all.

If anything, the group’s Bartóklike Ligeti First Quartet is even stronger, and provides a playful counterpoint to Janáček’s surging passions. The Belcea has the measure of Ligeti’s offbeat, almost cubist structure, immersing itself thoroughly in his restlessly changing textures, and playing up his unashamed theatricality to compelling effect.

It shines piercing new light on all three quartets, producing accounts that are often aurally surprising but entirely convincing, captured in close, warm sound.

DAVID KETTLE

The Belcea Quartet: playing of beguiling buoyancy

BEKI SMITH/SNAPE MALTINGS

LA GRACIEUSE

MARAIS Pièces de Viole

Robert Smith (viola da gamba) Israel Golani (Baroque guitar and theorbo) Joshua Cheatham (viola da gamba) Olivier Fortin (harpsichord) Adrián Rodríguez Van derSpoel (percussion)

RESONUS RES10244

Engaging collection tracking the career of a virtuoso gamba composer

The present collection represents the tiniest tip of the huge iceberg that are Marin Marais’s roughly 600 pièces for viola da gamba and continuo.

Published between 1686 and 1725 in five books, themselves divided into suites according to key, they include all the usual dance forms – allemande, gavotte, gigue and the like – but go way beyond them by including impressive variation movements and eloquently descriptive character pieces, some of them intended as homages to the composer’s friends and patrons.

This selection includes 29 pieces taken from all five books, thus allowing listeners to track Marais’s progress from young, fire-eating virtuoso to wise elder with nothing to prove (the informative, engagingly written liner notes give further help).

The lifelike recording has the group clearly placed within the stereo image, with Robert Smith deservedly centre stage: cannily as the continuo has been ‘orchestrated’ to reflect Marais’s kaleidoscopic fantasy, this is unequivocally his show. Smith is completely at home in the music’s intricate idiom; with him, embellishments – including vibrato – are always convincingly integrated into the melodic line, agogics never calling attention to themselves. His variegated handling of chords runs the gamut from polyphonic clarity in the fugal movements to the gruff eruptions of the late, enigmatic ‘la Maupertuy’. The courtier Marais’s excursions into the ‘real’ world in pieces like ‘la Matelotte’ or ‘la Biscayenne’ bring forth an exhilarating joie de vivre from all concerned.

CARLOS MARÍA SOLARE

MENDELSSOHN Piano Trios: no.l in D minor op.49, no.2 in C minor op.66

Trio Metral

APARTE AP 198

Sophisticated and sparkling playing from a tightly knit trio of siblings

The playing of the three siblings of Trio Metral is unfailingly mellifluous, with tonal beauty and sophisticated interplay of voices. In the Mendelssohn D minor Trio’s first movement they are at once languid and suffused with energy, their tone vibrant and full-bodied; they can certainly raise the temperature when the composer is at his most passionate. The slow movement floats along, warm and elegant. In the Scherzo there is some grit with the lightness and rhythmic élan, and the staccato sparkles.

Mendelssohn asks for appassionato in the Finale, and they respond with propulsive, dynamic playing, but there is lightness here too. The transition from full fervent flight into dolce cello melody is a delight.

They convey the febrile nervous energy at the outset of the C minor Trio with constant shifts of dynamic, highlighting the melodic contours, and maintain tension and urgency throughout. In the second movement there is a feeling of underlying frailty, with some beautiful dialogue between the strings. The Scherzo scampers terrifically, the staccato semiquavers bone dry and motoric.

The nervous energy of the opening movement flows through the Finale as well, with delicate playing in the first appearance of the chorale, and grandeur later. The recording is warm, clear and well balanced.

TIM HOMFRAY

Febrile nervous energy from Trio Metral

LUSANKAR PRODUCTIONS

MOZART MANNHEIM 1778

MOZART Violin Sonatas: in G major KV301, in E flat major KV302, in C major KV303, in A major KV305, in C major KV296

Gunar Letzbor (violin)

Erich Traxler (harpsichord)

PANCLASSICS PC 10400

Unbalanced recording mars moments of elegance and beauty

This recording of Mozart’s Mannheim violin sonatas has the hallmarks of period performance, with harpsichord instead of even fortepiano, and Letzbor using vibrato sparingly. But things quickly start to go awry. These are written to be for ‘Klavier und Violine’, and yet violin is front and centre in the recording. In the first movement of the G major Sonata KV301, where the instruments are in 3rds with the harpsichord on top, the keyboard is all but inaudible. In too many places where the violin has an accompanying role, playing an arpeggio figure or repeated notes, Letzbor simply drowns out the harpsichord. Then there is the matter of repeats. They pay no heed to them in first movements, and observe them inconsistently elsewhere. Then, in the second movement of KV302, they put in some extra ones.

Sometimes Letzbor plays with beauty and elegance, as in the floating minor section of the KV301 Allegro (where they observe both repeats). The fast sections of the C major Sonata KV303 dance along nicely, but in the second movement, after the gentle harpsichord opening, Letzbor enters with a ferocity which knocks you back, even though the keyboard still has the melodic interest.

TIM HOMFRAY

RACHMANINOFF Piano Trios nos.l & 2; Vocalise

Hermitage Piano Trio

REFERENCE RECORDINGS RR-147 (SACD/CD HYBRID)

Outstanding playing in intense, heartfelt performances

Rachmaninoff’s piano trios are relatively early works composed before the profound loss of creative drive inflicted by the nearcatastrophic premiere of his First Symphony in 1897. Both are deeply moving, heartfelt utterances, the Second (1893) being effectively a requiem–elegy for his esteemed teacher Nikolai Zverev and most distinguished champion Tchaikovsky, who passed away unexpectedly during the creative process.

Striking the right balance between interpretative nobility and expressive candour is particularly challenging in music of such claustrophobic intensity, yet the Hermitage Piano Trio – pianist Ilya Kazantsev, violinist Misha Keylin and cellist Sergey Antonov – proves fully equal to the task, ensuring that no emotional stone is left unturned without resorting to mere hysteria. Out of countless examples, the very opening of the Second Trio conjures up an indelible image of distant tolling bells through which wisps of string sound emerge through the rolling mists.

The charismatic impact of the all-encompassing Svetlanov–Kogan– Luzanov recording (Melodiya) remains a must-hear, but for a coupling of both trios the Hermitage players now take pride of place alongside the Trifonov–Kremer– Dirvanauskaitė team on DG.

Exemplary annotations from Victor and Marina A. Ledin (who also produced the recording), a delectable encore in the form of Julius Conus’s 1928 transcription of the Vocalise and atmospheric yet tactile recorded sound (which sounds especially alluring in SACD) round out an outstanding release.

JULIAN HAYLOCK

SAURET Etudes-Caprices op.64 nos.14-19

Nazrin Rashidova (violin)

NAXOS 8.573975

Fascinating recordings of rarely heard virtuoso gems

I first encountered Émile Sauret (1852–1920) via his cadenza for Paganini’s D major Concerto. Nazrin Rashidova is working through his 24 Etudes-Caprices and here, as on the earlier Volume 2, uses Sauret’s own c.1685 Strad. The pieces are substantial and although the virtuosity level is high – Rashidova plays superbly – there is poetry amid the notespinning, as in nos.16 and 18. Only no.19 in A major becomes tiresome, after a beguiling high-lying opening.

Even when the music is attractive, as at the start of no.14 in E flat minor, tricky intervals test intonation.

Whole passages are in double-stops – in no.17 in E major, the two lines have different expressive markings; no.15 in B major has an eerie tremolo section; no.16 in G sharp minor has staccato. Often Sauret seems to be exploring, improvising, experimenting with bowings: the fiendish Allegro of no. 17 features the saccade stroke that Rashidova has demonstrated on video (bit.ly/2TQpMs7). She tried several bows including a cello bow to get the desired effect.

No.18 begins operatically on the G string: its Allegro con fuoco is jagged and fierce with harmonics.

I wonder what dedicatee Marjorie Hayward made of this music. I have not heard of concert performances or previous recordings.

TULLY POTTER

SCHOENBERG Verklärte Nacht

HONEGGER Symphony no.2

Baltic Chamber Orchestra/ Emmanuel Leducq-Baröme

RUBICON RCD1043

Absorbing, passionately engaged playing from full strings

Nowhere do CD documentation or record company website tell us how many players the Baltic Chamber Orchestra fields on this disc, but the ensemble – an independent sideline for the St Petersburg Philharmonic’s principal players – has the weight of a full symphonic string section in this ambient, well-balanced recording.

Emmanuel Leducq-Barôme, who founded the orchestra in 2000, leads a sweeping, emotionally charged journey through Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht. He’s not immune to ignoring some of Schoenberg’s meticulously indicated tempo fluctuations, and even the odd solo/ tutti distinction (this is Schoenberg’s revised 1943 expansion of his sextet), and balance – for instance between a piano melody and a ppp accompaniment – is not always ideally judged. But in a performance this absorbingly played, these are merely quibbles.

Honegger’s wartime Second Symphony for string orchestra transfigures night in its own different way, charting a route from the darkness of occupation to future freedom, and with its obbligato trumpet chorale leading the charge in the closing bars. Here the playing is, if anything, finer still: pristine ensemble, even in the metrical discordance of the third movement, a real bite to the string sound and a passionate engagement with the work’s expressive extremes.

In short, it’s the closest any recent exponents have come to rivalling the classic 1969 Karajan/Berlin Philharmonic account, and more vividly recorded too.

MATTHEW RYE

Superb virtuosity from Nazrin Rashidova

SCHUBERT Music for Violin Vol.l: Rondo in A major D438; Konzertstück in D major D435; Polonaise in B flat major D580; Sonata in G minor D408; Fantasy in C major D934

Ariadne Daskalakis (violin) Paolo Giacometti (fortepiano) Kölner Akademie/Michael Alexander Willens

BIS-2363 (SACD/CD HYBRID)

Pristine performances bring out the classicist in Schubert

Despite Schubert’s Romantic poetical leanings, he remained a Classicist at heart. Even in his later instrumental works, when he began expanding the temporal scale of his vision – as in the C major Fantasy, included here – his use of structural building blocks and motivic interplay remained essentially true to Mozartian principles. As a result his music is particularly well suited to having a veneer of late 19th-century rhetoric removed (as here) to reveal pristine surfaces, glistening in a revitalised world of vibrato-reduced clarity, enhanced phrasal flexibility and rhythmic dynamism.

This is especially noticeable in the relatively early, orchestraaccompanied Rondo, Konzertstück and Polonaise, which in Ariadne Daskalakis’s skilled hands cascade off the fingerboard with a litheness and shimmering delight that capture the music’s innate charm and dance-like vivacity with a beguiling sureness of touch. Dating from the same period (1816), the G minor Sonata turns intermittently to the dark side, anticipating the tantalising harmonic shadings of Schubert’s later music, as exemplified by the 1827 Fantasy. Here I wondered, despite the engaging tonal purity of Paolo Giacometti’s fortepiano, whether just occasionally the music might have been let off the leash with greater abandon, although there is no doubting the refreshing candour of these fine performances, nor the excellence of the recorded sound, which becomes exceptionally lifelike when the SACD track is activated.

JULIAN HAYLOCK

UNE RENCONTRE

SCHUMANN Fünf Stücke im Volkston op.102; Fantasiestücke op.73; Kinderszenen (arr. Murail) MURAIL Attracteurs étranges; Une letter de Vincent; C’est un jardin secret

Marie Ythier (cello) Marie Vermeulin (piano) Samuel Bricault (flute)

METIER MSV28590

Schumann meets a French composer in an imaginative cello pairing

It was eclectic French cellist Marie Ythier who first had the idea of a disc pairing cello music by Schumann with that of eminent French composer Tristan Murail. Murail, after initial surprise at the idea, embraced the concept and reinterpreted the final work, Kinderszenen, for it. Ythier, a former pupil of Anne Gastinel, opens the disc with a most engaging Fünf Stücke. Her fractional holding back in the first piece adds just the desired touch of humour and the Langsam movement is both relaxed and relaxing in its dreaminess. Vermeulin’s rippling pianism adds poetry to the Fantasiestücke, offsetting an occasional heavy-handedness in the cello phrasing.

It was the poetry of Murail’s music that inspired Ythier to link it with Schumann’s and she brings out this quality especially well in the elegant lines of Attracteurs étranges, arresting in its virtuosity and use of the whole gamut of modern techniques including microtonal tuning. The novel sonorities Murail creates are particularly well showcased by the disc’s transparent and slightly resonant sound.

These techniques come into their own in Murail’s version of Kinderszenen, taking flute, cello and piano into a fantastical world of harmonics, sul ponticello and flutter tonguing even more wacky and wonderful than that of Schumann’s imagination.

JANET BANKS

19TH CENTURY RUSSIAN CELLO MUSIC

TCHAIKOVSKY Variations on a Rococo Theme (original version for cello and piano) DAVIDOV Fantasy on Russian Songs op 7 LIADOV Fantasy on Gypsy Songs ARENSKY Two Pieces op.12; Four Pieces op.56 RIMSKY- KORSAKOV Serenade op.37 Dmitrii Khrychev (cello)

Olga Solovieva (piano)

NAXOS 8.573951

A fine cellist is a persuasive advocate for lesser Russian works

Substantial Russian 19th-century works for cello and piano are somewhat thin on the ground, so it’s inevitable that in this field Tchaikovsky proves to be the towering figure. This world premiere recording of the great composer’s cello and piano version of the Rococo Variations (as opposed to the much better-known one by Fitzenhagen) has much to offer. Harmonically the order in which the variations unfold seems more logical, although the opening passages in the original Finale are perhaps a rather weak point, thereby explaining why Fitzenhagen added or suggested the changes that are mainly heard today.

However, this performance by Dmitrii Khrychev and Olga Solovieva is both subtle and lyrically persuasive, highlighting the innate classical elegance of the work.

The technical elements, as you’d expect from the principal cellist of the St Petersburg Philharmonic, are impeccable, and equally so in both the Fantasy on Russian Songs by Davidov, and the Fantasy on Gypsy Songs by Konstantin Liadov.

Unfortunately both turn out to be disappointing also-ran salon fare, with lashings of virtuoso writing adorning rather routine melodies.

Rimsky-Korsakov’s Serenade is another unremarkable offering, and it is left to Arensky to light the beacon for more arresting material. In particular, the Four Pieces op.56 offers both virtuosity in the Humoresque and subtle melodic ideas in the captivating Romance and Chanson triste. Again Khrychev and Solovieva have this idiom under their skin, and produce carefully crafted and expressive performances supported by a suitably ambient recording.

JOANNE TALBOT

WEINBERG Symphonies nos.2 & 21 ‘Kaddish’

Gidon Kremer (violin) Kremerata Baltica, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra/Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla DG 483 6566 (2 CDS)

A beautifully presented and enthralling introduction to a resurgent composer

This pair of symphonies span almost the full breadth of Mieczysław Weinberg’s 50-year composing career. The strings-only, three-movement Second dates from 1946, not long after Weinberg moved to Moscow on the advice of Shostakovich.

Grave, haunted and subversive by turns, it vividly illustrates the subtle individuality of his voice – melodically less distinctive than his mentor’s, often rather more adventurous in development – and the dry-eyed pathos communicated by a young man who had recently lost his entire family to Nazi persecution. Finally completed in 1991 after 30 years of work, no.21 takes its sub-title (like Bernstein’s Third) from the Jewish hymn of mourning. Sustained over six movements, the mood never lightens nor yields to sentimentality even as it worries away at a fragment from a Chopin ballade. What could be a grim hour’s listening becomes an enthralling symphonic journey of reflection, acceptance and redemption thanks to this beautifully prepared and recorded account, uniting the strings of Kremerata Baltica with the full CBSO. Gidon Kremer supplies the cadenzas that punctuate the long opening movement, and Gražinytė-Tyla sings the closing lament in a feat of pure-toned, deadpan multitasking.

Weinberg’s reputation has undergone a sea-change in the past decade – there are now several fine recordings of his output for violin and cello, for example – but listeners coming to him afresh could find no more persuasive introduction.

PETER QUANTRILL

THE LONDON ALBUM

Trio Sonatas by Purcell, King, Draghi, Keller, Purcell, Blow and Diessener Ensemble Diderot/

Johannes Pramsohler (violin)

AUDAX ADX13718

Ensemble Diderot and Co explore the music of the English capital

The lengthy wait for a successor to Ensemble Diderot’s 2014 Dresden Album has ended, as with London buses, with two discs appearing simultaneously. Appropriately, London and more specifically the trio sonata before 1680 provide the foci here.

(The Ensemble’s Paris-centric release was reviewed in the September issue).

Unsurprisingly, three of Purcell’s sonatas take centre stage as the culmination of a stylistic development combining the musical language of England with the newest Italian and French elements. Best of the bunch are the Ensemble’s exhilarating reading of ‘The Great Chaconne’ (Z.807) and its account of Sonata no.9 in C minor (Z.798), which revels in the opening ‘Sonnata’ movement’s sinuous imitative chromaticisms and the Adagio’s dissonant harmonies. It also comprises a sonorously delivered Largo, a lively Canzona and a rollicking final Allegro. The supporting menu includes John Blow’s charming, through-composed Sonata in A major, a four-movement Sonata in G minor by the Anglo– Italian Giovanni Battista Draghi, German Gottfried Keller’s often flamboyant Ciaccona, Trio Sonata and Suite in G minor, and his compatriot Gerhard Diessener’s Italianate Trio Sonata in G minor, all showcasing the athleticism, idiomatic sensibility and expressive musicianship of violinists Johannes Pramsholer and Roldán Bernabé.

Regrettably, the balance of the close-miked recording at times seems bass-heavy, particularly in the Draghi Sonata.

ROBIN STOWELL

THE WORLD IS (Y)OURS

Music by Clyne, Sibelius, Fujikura, Rautavaara, Ullen and others Kati Raitinen (cello)

ARCANTUS ARC! 9012

Exciting modern cello music with not so secret links to Bach

Kati Raitinen is the Finnish solo cellist at the Royal Swedish Opera, and a musician with plenty of the passion, stamina and emotional gregariousness that business of opera demands. She has assembled a fresh-faced recital that feels resolutely 20th- and 21st-century until the copious links to Bach reveal themselves.

Raitinen’s tone, from an unknown instrument probably made in Rome around 1750, is immediately ingratiating. It brings off the recitations of Anna Clyne’s Rest These Hands (the piece benefits from being lowered from violin to cello) with the fervour of a true storyteller. There’s a lovely open quality to Sibelius’s Theme with Variations (good to hear this heartfelt if flawed rarity from 1887) and a pleasing focus in the moto perpetuo disguising an Adagio that is Dai Fujikura’s Eternal Escape.

The solo sonata by Rautavaara is the centrepiece, its all-doublestopped opener sometimes pushing the cellist into discomfort, as does the end of the Molto allegro (despite the striking, tender colours she finds high in her register). Johan Ullén’s The Dark Triad is a set of tango character pieces describing the psychopathic, narcissistic and Machiavellian. The music doesn’t always fit the characters

(aren’t psychopaths supposed to be calm, quiet and manipulative?) and Raitinen is too emotionally embracing to convince you she could be any of those things. Accordingly, leave the last track on and you’re treated to a ‘secret’ menu of joyous, collaborative cello works (perhaps multitracked) that feel very ‘her’ and include her speaking voice.

They could be improvisations; they could be Giovanni Sollima. Answers on a postcard please.

ANDREW MELLOR

THE GLEANERS

Works by Grenadier, Gershwin, Coltrane/Motian, Martin and Muthspiel Larry Grenadier (double bass)

ECM 675 7841

Bassist offers a fabulous fusion of free jazz and acrobatic classical technique

Larry Grenadier has forged a career as one of the world’s most successful and imaginative jazz bassists, working alongside greats like Pat Metheny, Brad Mehldau and Joe Henderson.

Surprisingly, this is Grenadier’s first solo album, a virtuosic collection which he humbly pitches as an ‘excavation into the core elements of who I am as a bass player’.

Given Grenadier’s background, it’s a pleasant surprise that much of this album explores the broad palette of sounds that are available on the bass using arco techniques. Passages of deep sonorous pizzicato abound in compositions like his dedication to the legendary bebop bassist Oscar Pettiford, but it’s the acrobatic bowed sections that stand out. Grenadier’s dexterity is quite something.

Vineland surges with dark majesty, growling double-stopped sections and feather-light harmonics. The dreamy Woebegone sees Grenadier blend both styles, accompanying his fulsome plucking with a chordal figure descending from the instrument’s upper register. These compositions fit neatly alongside thoughtful explorations of works by Gershwin, Coltrane and the pioneering free-jazz drummer Paul Motian. Grenadier brings the latter two figures together with a highly involving medley of Compassion and The Owl of Cranston. His roving approach captures something of the legendary artists’ restless creative spirit, which is no mean feat.

Top-quality engineering means that you hear every pop, slide and growl with brilliant clarity. It’s another fine addition to ECM’s second-to-none collection of solo bass works.

TOM SHORT

DVD

THE YOUNG DEBUSSY

DEBUSSY Premiere Suite

LALO Cello Concerto

WAGNER Tannhauser (Overture)

MASSENET Le Cid (Ballet Music)

Edgar Moreau (cello) London Symphony Orchestra/Frangois-Xavier Roth

LSO LIVE LS03073 (DVD/BLU-RAY)

Eloquent live recording captured in colourful sound and vision

Filmed on 21 January 2018 in London’s Barbican Hall by a mainly French production team, this recording, especially in the Blu-Ray format, boasts pin-sharp picture quality and unusually fluid cameramotion. These are complemented by undistracting editing between a wide range of viewing angles captured from around and (seemingly) inside the ranks of the London Symphony Orchestra. The naturally balanced, gently cushioned sound is streamed in PCM stereo with no native surround option, although most home cinema amps will happily convert the signal up to 5.1 and beyond, depending on your set-up. The LSO plays with assured virtuosity, immaculate ensemble and spotless intonation throughout, under the watchful, gently encouraging, batonless direction of François-Xavier Roth, even if there isn’t much fire in its collective belly on this occasion.

For readers of The Strad, the main point of interest here is Lalo’s Cello Concerto, played with ravishing tone and seemingly effortless technical command by Edgar Moreau, who makes light of the solo part’s occasional awkwardness. Most striking is Moreau’s eloquent phrasing and radiant cantabile – by imbuing this colourful score with a gentle nobility, it sounds more elegantly crafted than usual. The livelier moments of the outer movements might arguably have benefited from a greater sense of rhetorical drama, but the Bach encore (the Sarabande from Suite no.3) is delectable.

JULIAN HAYLOCK