Reviews

CONCERTS

New York

JOSHUA ROMAN (CELLO)

CONOR HANICK (PIANO)

CHURCH OF THE INTERCESSION 18 SEPTEMBER 2019

Joshua Roman and Conor Hanick presented an evening of music thoughtfully tailored to match the intimate and yet also somewhat cavernous space of the crypt at the Church of the Intercession. The presenter announced at the outset that there would be no clapping between pieces, enhancing the intensity of each work and creating a certain emotional ambience during the silence. The opening arpeggiation of Arvo Pa’s Fratres was just right, perfectly voiced with clear intonation. The piece continued well, and Roman gets around the instrument with much finesse, but I prefer an interpretation with less vibrato and a more pure sound.

Schnittke’s 1978 Sonata followed, featuring impressive cello playing and often extreme tenderness from the piano. It is not an easy piece to hear and needed a stronger sense of hierarchy and definition within and between the phrases. The duo played with formidable intensity and force of sound but the piece needed a little more space to breathe. The final Pa, Spiegel im Spiegel, was exactly right: uncomplicated beauty, played with a simple, sonorous tone and incredible ensemble. Roman has a uniquely special sound on his C string - clear and beautiful and yet stunningly rich without being throaty.

After the performance, Roman finally spoke to the audience - which he does well - and introduced his encore as an ‘intensely personal reflection’ on where he comes from. He played - and sang - an arrangement of Leonard Cohen’s song Hallelujah that was undoubtedly the best-performed work on the programme. Roman’s connection to the song was abundantly evident, and his lyrical, heartfelt playing was quite powerful. He invited the audience to sing along in the final chorus, creating a feeling of camaraderie and warmth within the somewhat lonely crypt.

LEAH HOLLINGSWORTH

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• To browse through more than a decade of The Strad ‘s recording reviews, visitwww.thestrad.com/reviews

JACK QUARTET, EITHER/OR,

RICHARD CARRICK (CONDUCTOR)

MILLER THEATRE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 25 SEPTEMBER 2019

In this exuberant evening – dedicated to the work of iconoclastic composer Anthony Braxton – opening the new season at Miller Theatre, the Jack Quartet musicians were giddier than I’ve ever seen them. In the first half, they performed Composition no.17 (1971), rife with options. As Lara Pellegrinelli explained in admirably lucid programme notes, the four parts ‘can be played by any instrument’, and their three sections ‘in any order for any length of time’. Additional choices were made by the players, led by the first violinist (Austin Wulliman). In the memorable final bars, a sustained scratch was capped by a brief, offhand gesture in the cello (Jay Campbell).

The real fun, however, occurred after the interval, when six of Braxton’s ‘compositions’ – nos.17 (again), 18, 40(O), 101, 168 and 358 (written between 1971 and 2006) – were done simultaneously, with the Jack crew joining twelve musicians from Either/Or. The fascinating fray incorporated no.18 (1971) for string quartet, whose freewheeling requirements focus on ‘sliding sound techniques’, adding to a 40-minute, over-the-top experiment in dense, raucous urbanity. During the avalanche, violinist Christopher Otto occasionally shouted instructions to violist John Pickford Richards, each in turn giving hand signals across the stage to Either/Or (wind, brass, percussion and double bass). String quartet communication has rarely been vaulted to such a mad zenith.

BRUCE HODGES

ISRAELI CHAMBER PROJECT

MERKIN CONCERT HALL 26 SEPTEMBER 2019

The Israeli Chamber Project presented a vibrant programme organised around the idea of how folk music influences concert music. It highlighted the music of Bruch and Bart-specially, and quite cleverly presented selections from both Bruch’s Eight Pieces for clarinet, viola and piano and Bart 44 Duos for two violins – breaking them up into groups of three and interspersing them among the other works on the programme. The Bruch was played with tremendous phrasing and gorgeous sound from the trio, with great direction and long lines. The Bartffuo movements were a delight, each one played with vivacity, great energy and fantastic passion and character. The pizzicato movement was stunning in its clarity and control. Gyo Kurt৒s miniature pieces Hommage o. Schumann were played with a true sense of respect for the style, and the piano dynamics were impressively delicate. Martin?’s Three Madrigals for violin and viola were delightful: the accompaniment was always a bit inflected, influenced by the melody and chord progressions, and the violin lines soared beautifully in the first movement. The range and variety of colours achieved in the opening muted section of the Poco andante was truly astounding, and the final movement concluded with evident love for the music. Dvo?૒s op.74 Terzetto closed the programme – and it seemed that they had saved the best till last. The opening was gorgeously played, with elegant timing and phrasing. The transition into the Larghetto was artful, and the trio boasted flawless ensemble in the Scherzo, which had a proper Hungarian feel.

LEAH HOLLINGSWORTH

TALEA ENSEMBLE

TENRI CULTURAL INSTITUTE 27 SEPTEMBER 2019

Traditional ideas of string virtuosity often rely on super-fast scales or death-defying leaps from the lower strings to the upper ones. But sometimes ‘dazzling’ speaks with a whisper, such as this breathtaking evening called Meditations, with members of the renowned Talea Ensemble. Christopher Gross demonstrated extraordinary concentration in Music for Cello with One or More Amplified Glass Vases (1992) by Alvin Lucier, with the cellist in darkness for 40 minutes. Illuminated solely by candles on the floor, four vases (each with a volume of perhaps four litres) sat, containing microphones, as Gross (without a score) inched glacially, microtonally up the fingerboard. Sustained bow strokes, sometimes lasting five seconds or more, caused the vases to vibrate, and their resonances were transmitted via loudspeakers. The result was an uncanny illusion of the intimate Tenri gallery enlarged to cosmic proportions.

On her own, violist Hannah Levinson began Catherine Lamb’s Prisma Interius VI (2017) with equally mesmerising focus, drawing long bow strokes, separated by generous silences. As Levinson gracefully articulated Lamb’s delicate, slow-moving paragraphs, medieval chant came to mind. At about the 20-minute mark, violist Carrie Frey and Gross stealthily joined in, for gripping ascent into the beyond. In both this and the Lucier, David Adamcyk managed the immaculately calibrated electronic components.

BRUCE HODGES

London

LEILA JOSEFOWICZ (VIOLIN) LONDON

SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA/SIMON RATTLE

BARBICAN HALL 14 SEPTEMBER 2019

To open the LSO’s season, Simon Rattle continued a recently established tradition of new and British music including revivals of works on their way to becoming modern classics. A promised violin concerto from Emily Howard had mutated into Antisphere, a volatile, 15-minute finale to a symphonic triptych (with Sphere and Torus) shaped around curves.

There followed a revival for the decade-old Violin Concerto by Colin Matthews, first conducted by the late Oliver Knussen. It was written for Leila Josefowicz, and draws on a glittering, Frenchaccented solo-violin lexicon developed by Szymanowski and refined by Ligeti. This brand of tough lyricism plays to her strengths, and she exerted a magnetic aura in performance, firstly in a long and stratospherically pitched solo underscored by glinting wind and percussion, then descending to fire off rockets aimed at every section of the orchestra in turn. The concerto’s second section discovers a measure of resolution, first in minimalist-tinted reflection – the nexus of its engagement with Sibelius – and then in more extrovert terms. Playing from memory (not common in new music), Josefowicz fused her own personality as a performer and Matthews’s voice as a composer with a gripping subjectivity, and an element of risk inevitably absent from the premiere recording.

PETER QUANTRILL

STEPHEN WAARTS (VIOLIN)

GABRIELE CARCANO (PIANO)

WIGMORE HALL 17 SEPTEMBER 2019

Winner of the 2014 Menuhin Competition aged 17, the Dutch–American violinist Stephen Waarts opened his Wigmore Hall recital with Faurrs Violin Sonata no.1. He overly favoured purity and restraint, ultimately underserving the work’s rich Romanticism. Faultless as his playing was, he needed to allow himself more indulgence.

Szymanowski’s Myths was a different story: the first, ‘The Fountain of Arethusa’, opened up an ephemeral sound world aptly describing the rippling spring that the mythological nymph Arethusa had been transformed into. The achingly beautiful cantilena of ‘Narcissus’ clearly showed how its titular figure could fall in love with his own beauty. ‘Dryads and Pan’ was alive with the pursuit of forest nymphs, complete with a magical array of harmonics as Pan breathes over his pipes.

Another composer, another transformation: Bart Violin Sonata no.2 emerged not as played sounds but as a beguiling series of thoughts or behaviours – a remarkable feat. Then Waarts conveyed the modal folk-colouring and tempo elasticities of Bart Rhapsody no.2 with what appeared to be absolute authority, never straying into picture postcard territory. The encore, an arrangement of Brahms’s Lied Wie Melodien zieht es mir, showed a hint of the lyrical apprehension heard in the Faurre but by now the Szymanowski and Bart-erformances were seared in the memory.

EDWARD BHESANIA

ELIAS QUARTET

KINGS PLACE 20 SEPTEMBER 2019

ELIAS QUARTET

KINGS PLACE 20 SEPTEMBER 2019

Continuing Venus Unwrapped, Kings Place’s year-long celebration of women composers, the Elias Quartet placed Sally Beamish’s Reed Stanzas (2011) at the centre of this concert. The work was written for these players and it evokes both the tall reeds by Snape Maltings in Suffolk and the bare landscape of the composer’s home on the Outer Hebridean island of Harris. It opens with a distant traditional-style fiddle solo, which second violinist Donald Grant begins off stage. As he joins the other players, they add a layer of otherworldly harmonies. The first violin imitates the lapwing – song gestures brilliantly imagined by Sara Bitlloch. The restrained vibrato overall indeed evoked a reedy tonal core.

It’s hard to fault the Elias’s purpose or virtuosity in Beethoven’s op.18 no.1 and op.59 no.3 ‘Rasumovsky’, but, throughout, the levels of energy and expression were cranked up to eleven. The slow movement of op.18 no.1 rejected lyrical reflection in favour of existential angst. In the slow movement of the ‘Rasumovsky’, the plucked cello became the dreaded beat of Death’s own timepiece. The quartet had bounded over Romanticism and landed squarely at bone-shaking Expressionism. These blinding performances perhaps only underline the myriad treatments that Beethoven’s music can withstand. Be that as it may, while the audience roared in appreciation, my admiration was overtaken by the need for a lie-down.

EDWARD BHESANIA

CHRISTIAN TETZLAFF (VIOLIN) PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA/ESA-PEKKA SALONEN

ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL 26 SEPTEMBER 2019

This summer the Philharmonia Orchestra ran a four-month festival at London’s Southbank Centre called Weimar Berlin: Bittersweet Metropolis. Technically, Berg’s 1935 Violin Concerto post-dates the Weimar Republic, which ended in 1933 with the rise of the Nazis; but Berg was of that time.

For this vivid performance, violinist Christian Tetzlaff and the Philharmonia Orchestra under Esa-Pekka Salonen were very much collaborators. Tetzlaff’s playing was full of character and colour, a sophisticated example of great musical communication. At times he was full-bodied and intense, but he also had a lightness of touch, letting phrases trip away, demonstrating an almost skittish up bow spiccato. The orchestra, faithful to Berg’s instructions, was frequently to the fore, with Tetzlaff as much chamber musician as soloist; he ended the first movement in a halo of horns. He opened the second movement with expressive violence, a passion displayed in gesture as well as playing. The hushed ending was magical and heartbreaking.

The concert opened with three versions of Bach: Hindemith’s ragtime take on the C minor fugue from the first book of The Well-Tempered Clavier and Schoenberg’s arrangements of two chorale preludes. It ended with Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler symphony, all played with style and vibrant detail.

TIM HOMFRAY

JULIA FISCHER (VIOLIN)

LONDON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA/ VLADIMIR JUROWSKI

ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL 27 SEPTEMBER 2019

In the wake of a devastating second-half account of Tchaikovsky’s ‘Path賩que’, the more unsettling for its score-based sobriety of gesture, it took an effort of will to recollect that Julia Fischer’s command of the Violin Concerto by Britten had been outstanding for similar reasons. The Spanish Civil War is scored deeply into Britten’s concerto, yet there are few picturesque elements in the solo part beyond some rhythmic allusions in the scherzo, and Fischer played these down. Instead, she focused on the unusual expressive journey of the work from innocence to despair, opening with a Mendelssohnian purity of line and leaving the Spanish colour to the incisive support of the LPO.

Vladimir Jurowski animated the disquieting contrasts of the first movement, and he and Fischer stressed the most Russian influences on the 25-year-old composer, who borrowed ideas with no less lightfingered dexterity than his contemporary Stravinsky. Yet the Cinderella-like pirouettes of the scherzo predate Prokofiev’s ballet by several years, and Fischer (below) used them to spin on a sixpence into the cadenza on which the concerto’s world turns. With the faintest suggestion of a guitar in some astonishingly projected pizzicato and then ferociously clean Baroque sequences she fined down her tone note by note to prepare the way for the formal rigour of the concluding Passacaglia. Here, the character of her Bach playing, echoed and astutely underlined by an encore of the Sarabande from the D minor Partita, was all the more affecting for its understatement.

PETER QUANTRILL

RACHEL PODGER, BRECON BAROQUE

WIGMORE HALL 28 SEPTEMBER 2019

There were three Bach violin concertos in this concert: the A minor and E major that we all know and love, and the G minor BWV1056, reverseengineered from the keyboard concerto in F minor commonly held to be Bach’s arrangement of an original for violin. Before playing the E major work, Podger exuberantly exclaimed, ‘The best composer in the best hall!’ It was a concert played in true chamber-music style, with the one-to-a-part Brecon Baroque as alert to each other as they were to Podger. The outside movements of the A minor Violin Concerto had propulsion and energy, with a strong sense of structure underpinning the seemingly instinctive shaping of phrases, and a thrilling richness of sound at climactic points. The collaborative nature of the playing was even more apparent in the E major, where cello and violone were much in evidence as Podger wove her magic above, with playing always flexible and fluid, expressive and dynamic. The finale was fast but not driven. The central Adagio was serene, with a wonderful legato. In the central Largo of the G minor Concerto Podger, who virtually had the floor to herself, was expressive, flexible and simply beautiful.

Edinburgh

There were fewer string performances than usual on the programme of 2019’s Edinburgh festi vals, but the quality of those was oft en superb, reports David Kett le

You could hardly claim that 2019 was a particularly strong year for strings across the Edinburgh festivals, but glinting in among everything else were a few undeniable string gems. One that gleamed especially brightly as part of the Edinburgh International Festival was a three-concert survey at St Cecilia’s Hall of Biber’s Rosary (Mystery) Sonatas from violinist Rachel Podger, using - well, quite a collection of Baroque violins, all tuned diflerently according to the composer’s elaborate scordatura requirements. It was a gloriously rewarding trio of recitals (6, 8 and 9 August), in which Podger’s enthusiastic but down-to-earth explanations of technical challenges and musical symbolism contrasted beautifully with the mystical, visionary music itself. Podger delivered lithe, vividly characterised performances, often intentionally eflortful as she grappled with the composer’s increasingly outlandish demands, with graceful support from Marcin Swiqtkiewicz on the harpsichord and the organ and Daniele Caminiti on the theorbo.

Equally clean, clear and direct was Finland’s Meta4 string quartet, in town for a Queen’s Hall recital (13 August) that gratifyingly included music by two women composers. The E flat major Quartet by Fanny Mendelssohn received a restless, intensely emotional performance that seemed intent on demonstrating the work’s seriousness of purpose - laudable, perhaps, but it made for tiring, demanding listening. Just as hard-driven was Meta4’s closing Schumann A major Quartet op.41 no.3, but between came a wonderfully lyrical account of the players’ compatriot Kaija Saariaho’s Terra memoria, exquisitely balanced and conjuring the music’s strange magic beautifully. It was as though the microscopically nuanced playing the Meta4 musicians had used elsewhere had found its rightful home here.

Across town at the Usher Hall (19 August), US cellist Alisa Weilerstein proved a fascinating counterpart to an all-Chinese line-up of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra under Long Yu in Dvorak’s Cello Concerto. Weilerstein oflered a hot-headed, supercharged account, forcefully projected with a narrow, intense vibrato and reedy tone, and it stood out magnificently against the smooth sheen of the orchestra’s gently gleaming sound - its velvety strings were particularly memorable. Soloist and conductor were at one in their lavish rubato - it felt like almost every phrase was pulled around in one direction or another; and while the slow movement could probably have done with a touch more tenderness, the swelling, surging lines of Weilerstein’s hearty finale brought the music to a vigorous and passionate conclusion.

You can’t talk about Edinburgh in August without mentioning the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and special recognition should go to the Russian String Orchestra under conductor Misha Rachlevsky for sheer hard work, giving upwards of three concerts a day across diflerent Fringe venues. For their afternoon show, gamely titled Misha’s Gang, they cycled four diflerent programmes of repertoire mixing well-worn lollipops with far more demanding fare - think Schoenberg’s Verklae Nacht or Prokofiev’s Visions fugitives. And while there were undeniable rough edges in the playing of this 14-piece ensemble of young musicians (hardly surprising, given the enormous quantity of repertoire they churned out every day), there’s no mistaking its verve, gusto and sheer enthusiasm - which at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe can often carry the show entirely.

RECORDINGS

BACH Cello Suites BWV 1007-1012

Emmanuelle Bertrand (cello)

HARMONIA MUNDI HMM 902293.94 (2 CDS)

Exhilarati ngly brilliant, historically informed performances

As with the recent recording of Bach’s Violin Sonatas and Partitas by Giuliano Carmignola (reviewed March 2019), this set of the Cello Suites is the result of the soloist’s late conversion to historically informed performance practice, triggered in this case by an encounter with an early 18th-century instrument by Carlo Tononi. Gut-strung and played at a lower pitch (415 Hz) with an appropriate bow, it yields a wealth of sounds and colours that make listening to this recording - made in a warmly resonant Parisian church - a continuing pleasure (albeit one slightly marred by the soloist’s ever-present heavy breathing and occasional moaning).

Emmanuelle Bertrand’s traversal of the cycle is exhilaratingly brilliant, with lively tempos, crisp articulation and some nicely understated rubato. There are a couple of unexpected readings, which with four musical sources (none of them in Bach’s hand) is probably unavoidable. Bertrand employs embellishments so discreetly that they almost take one by surprise. It is her sure instinct for the shaping and colouring of a phrase that remains in the mind, though, as do the countless different ways she finds of breaking a chord or resolving a trill.

Bertrand unfailingly zooms in on the music’s Affekt - to use the Baroque terminology - and expresses it with consistently seductive sounds throughout this beautiful set.

CARLOS MARIA SOLARE

BEETHOVEN String Quartets op.18 nos.1–6

Quatuor Sine Nomine CLAVES RECORDS 1919/20

Measured and thoughtf ul playing gives the music its full voice

These are performances that allow Beethoven’s music to speak for itself, and are all the better for it. Speeds on the whole are temperate, with none of the racing allegros and galloping finales favoured by many. In the F major Quartet much of the first movement is gentle, for all the striking alternations offorte and piano. The second movement has an air of melancholy which grows to real anguish, and the last two movements trip along, full of high spirits. In the G major Quartet, after an easy-going Allegro, a graceful Adagio and a crisp Scherzo, the Finale bursts forth full of colour and wit. In the D major they make much of the constantly changing musical landscape. The first movement is expansive at one moment, vivid and dramatic at another. The second is full of mystery, probing through Beethoven’s forays into remote keys. The finale has a constant spring in its step.

The C minor intensity of the Fourth Quartet is there, but so is the E flat major sunlight. The middle movements are predominately delicate, and the finale is full of humour. The variations in the Fifth Quartet are delightful, with hushed awe in the fourth and a high-spirited romp in the fifth. The finale matches the prevailing happy spirit of the performance. The Scherzo of the B flat major Quartet has the required uncertainty over where the beat comes, and the ‘La Malinconia’ opening of the fourth movement is profound. The recording gives the quartet space within a generous acoustic.

TIM HOMFRAY

BERIO Sequenza VIII per Violino Solo BIBER Passacaglia in G minor SCHUMANN Sonata in D minor op.121 SCIARRINO Capricci per Violino Solo, nos 2 & 5 Franziska Hoher (violin) Severin von Eckardstein (piano) AVI-MUSIC 8553446

A young violinist’s impressive programme and thoughtf ul performances

This recital by the young Heidelbergborn violinist Franziska Hoher presents four solo works as preludes to Schumann’s great D minor Sonata. Biber’s Passacaglia is gravely played, with little vibrato but lovely tone. Salvatore Sciarrino’s Capriccio no.2 (Andante), mostly very soft, starts almost in a whisper, with ghostly tremolos and fine control of dynamics. Capriccio no.5 (Presto) is again finely calibrated.

Berio’s Sequenza VIII, haunted by Bach’s Chaconne, is very demanding technically but Hoher makes every note audible, even at the lowest volume, giving us an excellent range of dynamics. The sudden stabs that punctuate its progress are well done, as is the final dying away into nothingness. Her performance, slightly more expansive than Irvine Arditti’s, is less drily recorded.

In the Schumann, she and the splendid Severin von Eckardstein make the most of the unsettling character of the massive opening movement and throughout convey Schumann’s perturbation of spirit. Hoher’s tone is warmer here but still pure. Her Henle edition seems to have purged the staccato that the old violinists used to play in the Scherzo. A minor criticism is that one or two pizzicato notes in the theme of the variations barely register. This is indeed a thoughtful, thought- provoking programme.

TULLY POTTER

DVORAK Complete String Quartets vol.3: no.8 in E major B57; no.6 in A minor B40; no.3 in D major B18

Vogler Quartet

CPO 777 626-2 (2 CDs)

Balanced performances present revealing insights into the composer’s development

‘Disliking exaggerated humility and despite the fact that I have moved a little in the great musical world, I remain what I always was: a simple Czech musician.’ So saying, Dvo?੠effectively set the seal on his posthumous reputation. Yet even his natural modesty could not disguise his supreme achievement, so that despite not really hitting his stride until he was around 34, his earlier orchestral and chamber music is littered with disarmingly lyrical near-masterpieces, from symphonies and concertos to piano trios and string quartets.

What is particularly revealing about the three quartets recorded here are the small leaps forward one can sense between the expansive classicism of the Third Quartet of 1869/70 – at over an hour with repeats, comfortably Dvo?૒s longest piece of chamber music – the distinctly more ‘folkish’ and texturally varied Sixth (1873) and the Eighth’s enhanced individuality, dating from the same axiomatic year (1875) as the Fifth Symphony and Serenade for Strings.

The Vogler Quartet, enhanced by the chamber-scale intimacy of the recording, succeeds in negotiating the precarious musical tightrope between special pleading and plain-speaking with a captivating naturalness and infectious vitality that points up the freshness of Dvo?૒s invention – arguably his strongest suit – more compellingly than, say, the Prague Quartet in its complete cycle for DG. If ultimately the Panocha Quartet (Supraphon) sounds more authentically Czech, the Vogler imbues this music with a Brahmsian integrity that is highly persuasive.

JULIAN HAYLOCK

HER VOICE

FARRENC Piano Trio no.1 op.33

BEACH Trio op.150 CLARKE Trio

Neave Trio

CHANDOS CHAN 20139

Championing three women composers from the 19th and 20th centuries

The Neave Trio champions the voices of three thoroughly deserving composers on the disc Her Voice: Amy Beach, Rebecca Clarke and – least familiar to me – 19th-century Louise Farrenc, who was a professor of piano at the Paris Conservatoire. Her trio opens the disc, crackling with energy and joie de vivre, and in the capable hands of the Neave players Farrenc’s poised and elegant writing shimmers.

Amy Beach’s 1938 Trio, written when the American composer was in her seventies, gets an equally powerful reading. The dreamy cello melody of the opening Allegro – luxuriantly played by Mikhail Veselov – blooms into tender interplay between the strings. Violinist Anna Williams echoes Veselov’s delicate touch, underpinned by eminently sensitive pianism from Eri Nakamura. It’s a finely etched and persuasive performance, from the chromatic romancing of the middle movement Lento to the Allegro con brio, with its syncopated shades of an Inuit melody.

A dramatic finale comes in the shape of British-born Rebecca Clarke’s remarkable Trio of 1921. The tone is set from its first astringent chords, and the Neave players delight in Clarke’s desolate, post-Romantic melodies, thrilling to her extremes of light and shade. Recorded sound is dynamic and vivid.

CATHERINE NELSON

TIME & ETERNITY

HARTMANN Concerto fune MARTIN Polyptyque ZORN Kol Nidre SYGIETYNSKI Dwa serduszka MACHAUT Kyrie from Messe de Nostre Dame BACH Chorales FIŠER Crux Camerata Bern/Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin) Beata, Sarah & Monika Wo (singers) etc

ALPHA 545

A passionate, challenging and ultimately fascinating ‘concept’ album

Patricia Kopatchinskaja, the high priestess of the violin concept album, is back with her latest fascinating concoction, based on one of her ‘staged concerts’ that centres around two violin concertos accompanied by string orchestra(s). The result is a sequence that takes us from the Jewish Kol nidre to the Christian Resurrection by way of death, destruction and Christ’s Passion. Not exactly a laugh a minute, then, but instead an intense 80 minutes or so of concentrated music making. Opening with John Zorn’s Pa-like Kol nidre, fading away to the sound of a tolling bell and studded with brief multi-faith prayers, the whole warmly recorded programme needs to be appreciated as a single entity and seems destined to make its emotional effect whatever the listener’s faith, or lack thereof.

Kopatchinskaja’s interpretation of Hartmann’s Concerto fun硲e may not necessarily please those looking for a ‘library’ account, given her volatile approach to tone and even metre, but there’s no mistaking her passionate identification with the music’s external panorama, which alludes to the Hussite hymn ‘You fell as victims’ and ‘Eliyahu hanavi’, also sung separately by a trio of folk singers.

Martin’s late Polyptique for violin and double string orchestra, written for Menuhin, portrays six of 14thcentury Sienese artist Duccio di Buoninsegna’s altar panels detailing the Passion, and receives an equally compelling performance from Kopatchinskaja and her Bernese colleagues, the latter also affectingly playing well-chosen Bach chorales, largely from the St John Passion, between each of its movements.

MATTHEW RYE

MOZART Divertimento in B flat major K254, Piano Trios: no.1 in G major K496, no.3 in B flat major K502, no.4 in E major K542, no.5 in C major K548, no.6 in G major K564

Michael Barenboim (violin) Kian Soltani (cello) Daniel Barenboim (piano)

DG 483 7506 (2 CDs)

A ‘friends and family’ trio displays musical chemistry and superb artistry

Although the public status of these ‘live’ recordings is unclear, the high quality of the performances and engineering is plain to the ear.

The evergreen Daniel Barenboim is fleet of finger, light of touch and subtle with pedal, particularly in the concertante piano writing of K502 and K542, and his accounts, more vivid than those with Nikolaj Znaider and Kyril Zlotnikov (Warner Classics 3446432), faithfully showcase his artistry. His musical chemistry with his violinist son Michael is particularly evident, not only in the numerous passages of piano–violin dialogue (for example, in the first movement of K254) but also in their unified approach to phrasing, articulation and expression.

Cellist Kian Soltani relishes his instrument’s gradual emancipation from a quasi-continuo role into almost an equal partner, notably in the development sections of the opening Allegros of K496 and K542. Throughout, the harmonic direction of phrases is deftly pointed by subtleties of emphasis and timing, as in the final Allegro of K542 and in much of K548. The variation finale of K496, though brisk, is well characterised, with some brilliant piano ad libitum passages and flamboyant arpeggios towards its end, and the catchy folk-like finales of K548 and K564 also hit the spot. Sound quality and balance are exemplary.

ROBIN STOWELL

? MOZART String Quartet no.15 in D minor K421 SCHUBERT String Quartet no.15 in G D887

Quatuor Voce

ALPHA CLASSICS ALPHA 559

Eloquent playing, blurring the boundary between major and minor

Remarkably, both Mozart and Schubert were only 27 years old when writing their respective 15th quartets, yet had by then achieved creative maturity, comfortably surpassing any of their contemporaries – save for Haydn and Beethoven. Both were masters of their craft, adapting established techniques and formal procedures with a visionary intensity which (especially considering their historical context) still has the power to shock. This could well act as a musical metaphor for the Quatuor Voce, whose cantabile eloquence and tantalising espressivo restraint can be traced back at least as far as the classic Italian Quartet of the 1960s. Yet underlying the beguiling naturalness of their phrasing, and without resorting to HIP (historically informed practice) shock tactics, microcosmic inflections of internal balancing, articulation, dynamic and tonal colour combine to create a deeply compelling sense of emotional narrative.

Given its interpretative trajectory, the Quatuor Voce’s exquisitely deft handling of Mozart’s minor-key cries de coeur, which semantically reverse established procedures by having the major mode cloud the music’s emotional essence, comes as no surprise. However, the Quartet really comes into its own in the Schubert, in which the distinction between major and minor becomes so elusively obfuscated that at times it is hard to keep pace with the composer’s sleight-of-hand transitioning. To hear the Voce players tracing the music’s high-speed expressive interchanges with such acute sensitivity, captured in thrillingly tactile, lifelike sound, has been one of the highlights of my listening year.

JULIAN HAYLOCK

VOYAGEUR

RAVEL Sonata for violin and piano no.1; Cinq M諯dies populaires grecques (arr. Maria Milstein); Berceuse sur le nom de Gabriel Faur繠Sonata for violin and piano no.2; Kaddish (arr. Lucien Garban); Tzigane; Pi碥 en forme de habanera

Maria Milstein (violin) Nathalia Milstein (piano)

MIRARE MIR416

The Milstein sisters take us on a journey of French repertoire and song transcriptions

When French violinist Maria Milstein’s 2017 debut recital disc on Mirare (also with her pianist sister Nathalia Milstein) stood out for its off-the-beaten-track inclusions – Gabriel Piernrs Violin Sonata of 1900, and Milstein’s own arrangements of art songs by Reynaldo Hahn – there’s a nice sense of continuity to this all-Ravel follow-up celebrating the composer’s openness to other cultures: roughly the same period, and while the lion’s share is established repertoire for the violin, there are also a couple of more individual gems, most notably another song transcription of Milstein’s own, this time Ravel’s Cinq M諯dies populaires grecques cycle.

The established repertoire sounds very fine, too. Take the programmeopening posthumous Violin Sonata no.1, coming sweet, slender, supple and refined from her 1729 Bergonzi, with its long lines sustained to perfection. It’s also captured beautifully: the violin close but not too close, with a hugely attractive dryness, as the piano blooms supportively just behind. Tzigane displays the same strengths, its poised quasi cadenza rolling into an equally supremely controlled, firmly rhythmic and crisply articulated moderato that climaxes in a shower of en pointe sparkle.

Moving on to the Cinq M諯dies populaires grecques: when you’re dealing with an entire song cycle, rather than picking and choosing, it’s inevitable that some songs will feel the absence of the voice more than others. For me the strongest is the opening ‘Chanson de la mari襒 whose lines best lend themselves to this new incarnation. In fact I almost prefer it without the voice. But that’s not to say that there aren’t pleasures to be enjoyed across the other four. In short, another strong album.

CHARLOTTE GARDNER

ELLES

SCHUMANN Three Romances op. 22 BOULANGER Trois Pi碥s HENSEL D㬭rung senkte sich von oben CLARKE Viola Sonata FUCHS Sonata Pastorale PIDGORNA

The Child, Bringer of Light

Marina Thibeault (viola) Marie-Ƕe Scarfone (piano)

ATMA ACD2 2772

Three centuries of lovely and effective music seen through the female gaze

A slight reshuffling of its contents would have made this lovely programme of compositions written by women from three centuries even more effective as a recital. The ethereal harmonics and eerie ponticello sounds of Anna Pidgorna’s unaccompanied The Child, Bringer of Light (2012) would have made for a nice contrast placed among the darkly Romantic effusions that constitute most of the bill of fare, rather than at the end, where it comes as a bit of an afterthought.

That bit of nit-picking apart, Marina Thibeault, perceptively partnered by Marie-Ƕe Scarfone, makes an excellent case for performing Clara Schumann’s violin Romances (written in 1853 for Joseph Joachim) and Nadia Boulanger’s cello Pi碥s (composed in 1913) on the viola. Requiring only minimal adjustment, these charming miniatures benefit from Thibeault’s plangent tone and expressive phrasing. The soloist’s grasp of long-term structure and rhythmic assurance keep Lillian Fuchs’s potentially rambling unaccompanied Sonata Pastorale (1956) firmly on its tracks; the piece’s ‘semplice’ atmosphere is nicely caught, much being made of its sonorous drones.

Rebecca Clarke’s Sonata receives a somewhat understated reading; one could have wished for a more expansive interpretation of the final Adagio, but tempos are finely gauged, and Thibault exhibits a crisp spiccato in the piece’s central Scherzo. Warmly recorded in Domaine Forget’s concert hall (Qu补c), the recital ends – in my personal reordering! – with Fanny Hensel’s setting of a Goethe poem as a melodious encore.

CARLOS MAR뿠SOLARE

SHOSTAKOVICH Cello Sonata op.40; The Gadfly, op.97 ROSE Sonata for cello and piano op.20

Katherine Jenkinson (cello) Nicholas

Holland (cello) Alison Farr (piano)

STONE RECORDS 5060192780895

An intriguing pairing of dramatic cello sonatas, new and established

Although Lawrence Rose’s Cello Sonata follows a similar movement trajectory to that of the Shostakovich, his music owes more to Hindemith’s angular style. The invention is fluent, but inevitably suffers in comparison with the coupling, simply because the ideas are not as defined or memorable. Nonetheless, Rose’s Sonata is given a persuasive account by Katherine Jenkinson and Alison Farr, particularly in the more lyrical expression of the Adagio, although a wider dynamic and tonal range might have helped to project the musical invention even more convincingly.

Somewhat surprisingly, the recording quality for Rose’s Sonata is significantly better than the ensuing rather muffled ambience that dogs the Shostakovich, with the cello sounding recessed in comparison to the piano. It’s a pity about the poor sound as the performance is largely well drawn. I’m puzzled as to why Jenkinson slows down the tempo each time before the octaves in the Scherzo, and the Largo is so drawn out that it is difficult for the performers to retain musical continuity. A sizzling Allegro, however, brings the work to a dramatic close.

Undoubtedly, the track on this disc that will attract most attention is the Prelude from The Gadfly in a very effective arrangement by Levon Atovmyan for two cellos and piano. Here Nicholas Holland partners Jenkinson with panache, and both cellists offer a sumptuous and richly melodious account.

JOANNE TALBOT

SHOSTAKOVICH String Quartets nos 2, 7 & 8

Pavel Haas Quartet

SUPRAPHON SU4271-2

A quartet in its element in the intense, highly charged music of Shostakovich

Harshness and fragility belong to the quartet repertoire as much as a smile and a love-letter, but I have found them the predominant key signatures of the Pavel Haas Quartet, at least on record. With the music of Shostakovich, however, the ensemble is in its element.

Some quartets shrink from the symphonic scale of the Second or attempt to tame it, whereas the Pavel Haas fully embraces the work’s engagement with the Beethovenian tradition, especially in the long Recitative-Adagio second movement. I like the queasy, muted waltz that follows and the unapologetic grandeur of the variation finale, launched as if on a long voyage by a noble solo from violist Ji?럋abಮ

Their nervy, bleached tone is well suited to the desolate central panel of the Seventh Quartet, played as if wandering through a derelict house at night before ripping up the floorboards in the finale with a controlled frenzy. The body of the album lies in the Eighth, however, where the post-Classical pure tone they adopted for ‘Death and the Maiden’ lends an eerie gravitas quite foreign to the overt lamentation of ensembles schooled in the Russian– Jewish string tradition.

Excellent booklet notes by the pianist Boris Giltburg point out the extended quotation in the fourth movement’s lament from the Lady Macbeth opera that landed Shostakovich in hot water, and it is registered here with artless simplicity, subtly striking home the point that the subject of his greatest works is not Stalin or Communism but himself and his own place in history.

PETER QUANTRILL

FANTASY

TELEMANN Fantasy no 1 in B flat major, no 4 in D major, no 5 in A major

SCHUBERT Fantasie in C major D934 LARK Appalachian Fantasy KREISLER Viennese Rhapsodic Fantasietta RAVEL Tzigane

Tessa Lark (violin) Amy Yang (piano)

FIRST HAND RECORDS FHR86

A violinist to watch – this Lark is most definitely on the ascent

If ever the arrival of a disc on my desk has made me catch my breath in joyful expectation then it’s this debut from Kentucky violinist Tessa Lark, because she’s been one of my personal ‘ones to watch’ for a few years now. For starters there’s her competition success – silver medallist in the 2014 Indianapolis Violin Competition, and 2012 winner of the Naumburg. Perhaps more pertinently, though, she’s also been winning the trust and support of some of the most respected young artist foundations around, becoming the recipient of a 2018 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship and a 2016 Avery Fisher Career Grant. She’s also bowled me over live, at a London recital.

So now here is Fantasy, and it’s every bit as strong as one would have expected. Conceptually, as the title suggests, it’s a celebration of the flights-of-imagination, free-form composition known as the fantasy. Repertoire-wise, it’s wide-ranging: four centuries, with Telemann at one end, and Lark’s own Appalachian Fantasy of 2016 at the other. In fact those two offerings encapsulate Lark’s qualities rather neatly: ‘modern’ Telemann readings whose lightness and dance quality feels as indebted to Lark’s Bluegrass folk-fiddling roots as to her lightly worn historical awareness, and with their contrapuntal writing beautifully voiced. Then her Appalachian Fantasy, a superbly coloured, multifaceted folk medley vividly evoking the vast plains of her home turf, complete with an opening which also cleverly honours the previous Schubert Fantasie (which itself is played with immense sensitivity by her and Yang) by translating his song into Kentucky tongue. Add a strong Tzigane – equally in tune with her own folk roots – and I’m already looking forward to whatever Lark does next.

CHARLOTTE GARDNER

JOHN WILLIAMS ACROSS THE STARS WILLIAMS excerpts from film scores including Schindler’s List, Star Wars and Harry Potter

Anne-Sophie Mutter (violin) Recording Arts Orchestra of Los Angeles/John Williams

DG 479 7553

Star violinist turns her hand to the movie music of our time

If anyone can lay claim to have extended the ‘golden era’ film music tradition of Mikl, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Max Steiner and Franz Waxman into the 21st century it would have to be John Williams, whose 51 Oscar nominations (so far) is virtually unprecedented. For string players, perhaps his most notable score is Schindler’s List, whose poignant violin solo (played on the soundtrack by Itzhak Perlman) has become something of a modern classic. Struck by the violinistic potential of many of his scores, Anne-Sophie Mutter asked Williams to consider making the series of arrangements that form the basis of this disc.

There are twelve tracks in total, all consummately orchestrated and sounding highly effective in their new guise. Mutter is a very different kind of player to Perlman, not so inclined to wear her heart on her sleeve nor given to impassioned outbursts of voluptuous tone, yet she makes even Schindler’s List her own by imbuing its sinewy cantilena with a noble restraint and simmering intensity. Hedwig’s Theme from the Harry Potter franchise typifies the general approach of integrating soaring cantabile with soloistic fireworks, all despatched with consummate ease. Yet the most striking thing about this disc is that whether it is music from Sabrina, Cinderella Liberty, Memoirs of a Geisha or Far and Away, Mutter invests every phrase with the same level of inspired intensity as if she were playing Bruch, Lalo or Tchaikovsky, matched by the purring sophistication of DG’s gently cushioned sound.

JULIAN HAYLOCK

PINNACLE RIDGE

Music by Brahms, Gade, Monti, Nicolic, Pavkovi?, Peppe, Sarasate and Williams

Kosmos Ensemble

NIMBUS ALLIANCE NI6389

Fiery chamber-folk fusion from a charismatic trio

Kosmos is a chamber-folk trio led by violinist Harriet Mackenzie which aims to create bridges between classical music and folk. All pieces on Pinnacle Ridge were arranged by the ensemble to work for violin, viola (Meg-Rosaleen Hamilton) and accordion (Miloš Milivojevi?), and these instrumental forces prove ideal for the music chosen. The dominant inspiration is Gypsy and Jewish music, and local folk traditions from Eastern Europe and the Balkans (Serbia especially, which is from where the excellent Milivojevi? hails).

The classical pieces you would expect are all here, though often with a twist: Zigeunerweisen (with parts redistributed among the trio, and a Hungarian folk melody inserted in the middle), Brahms Hungarian Dance no.5 and Monti’s Csárdás. Against this context, the pieces from, or inspired by, elsewhere – the album’s title is from a Scottish reel inspired by a mountain range on the Isle of Skye – stick out stylistically. That’s a compliment to the Gypsy fire of this ensemble. MacKenzie’s playing is charismatic, with a bold tone, and the ensemble playing is lock-step tight.

The sound is rough around the edges in places – with a few slips – but that’s in the nature of both this music and the feeling of a live performance.

TIM WOODALL

SILENCED VOICES

String trios by Frid, Hermann, Kattenburg, Klein, Krasa and Kuti

Black Oak Ensemble

CEDILLE CDR 90000189

Another chance to sing out for more voices lost to the Holocaust

Twenty years, ago, Decca’s Entartete Musik project made familiar names of Gideon Klein and Hans Krasa among other young Jewish composers who perished in the Holocaust. T୥c (simply, Dance) by Krasa and Klein’s String Trio now belong to the standard repertoire and rightly so: in their own ways they show that Bartad no monopoly on nervy, folk-inflected modernism, and they likewise respond to performances not overburdened by retrospective pathos.

In that regard there is no faulting this debut album by the Chicagobased Black Oak Ensemble: rhythmically tight and, like the best trio recordings, conveying a sense of a fuller ensemble. Where it stands out from the crowd, however, is in the revival of four more forgotten composers. Alone of them all, Geze Frid survived the war as a member of the Dutch resistance; the central Andante cantabile of his op.1 Trio sings sadly of happier times and the finale avoids the feverish intensity which becomes a signature mood for the other composers.

Nevertheless, the Black Oak musicians capture a wry, jaunty quality to the Serenade by S୤or Kuti which combines with relatively straightforward voice-leading to suggest a kinship with Shostakovich. The single-movement Trio by Paul Hermann is more mature and reflective in mood, unfolding in a subtle combination of rondo and variation form. Occasionally here and elsewhere I found the vibrato of violinist Desir Ruhstrat a touch wiry but she brings a welcome lightness of spirit to the album’s most arresting discovery, a five-minute trio by the Dutch composer Dick Kattenburg. The piece covers a huge expressive range in its brief span, not for a bar overshadowed by its dark times and finding a hard-won tonal resolution – played here with beautifully pure tone – that really does hint at a tragically silenced voice.

PETER QUANTRILL

BOOKS

The Nighti ngale’s Sonata: The Musical Odyssey of Lea Luboshutz

Thomas Wolf

378PP ISBN 9781643130675 PEGASUS BOOKS £19.99

I found this book fascinating. Like other Jewish musicians from the Russian sphere of influence, Lea Luboshutz (1885–1965) lived in times that were too ‘interesting’ for her own safety and peace of mind. Her grandson has researched the restrictions on Jews in Imperial Russia exhaustively, and although I knew something of their way of life from other sources, I had not previously read such a thorough exposition. The book’s title refers to Lea’s 1717 Stradivari, the ‘Nightingale’, and the Franck Sonata, her favourite piece.

The name Luboshutz – one can see why Lea and other family members ditched the original ‘Luboshits’ on coming to the West – has long been familiar to me from Lea and her younger brother, pianist Pierre; but I had not realised there was a middle sibling, cellist Anna, who enjoyed a distinguished career in the Soviet Union. They were born in Odessa and father Saul dreamed of a family trio like the Cherniavsky Trio of siblings from that city – the author seems unaware of that fabled ensemble, who travelled the world. Lea started the violin with her father and at eight was taken on by Emil M?ynarski at the Odessa Conservatory. Auer offered to teach her in St Petersburg but her parents could not afford for one of them to accompany her. As they had relatives in Moscow, she went there in 1900 to the distinguished Czech pedagogue Jan Hr쬡lodue course she had two periods of study with Eug筥 YsaoBelgium. In 1903 she became involved with radical lawyer-politician Onissim Goldovsky, an excellent pianist, and she was with him until his death in 1922 although they never wed. In the 1920s she had a duo – and probably A fliing – with Josef Hofmann.

Lea was best known as a soloist, mixing with such luminaries as Casals and Koussevitzky. She visited the US in 1907 but had to cut her tour short because she was pregnant. Emigrating after the Revolution, she found her way back to the US, where she continued her career and taught at the Curtis Institute from 1927.

Having previously played an Amati, she acquired her Strad in 1928. She knew tragedy, losing not just Goldovsky but one of her sons (in a climbing accident). Her elder son Boris Goldovsky had a good career as a pianist and opera impresario, and her brother Pierre was half of the famed Luboshutz-Nemeno twopiano team. Lea retired in 1947.

Thomas Wolf, himself a musician, knows his stuff , writes well and makes few errors in a text teeming with detail. He includes a number of photographs, interesting in themselves: those of Lea Luboshutz depict a handsome woman and a strong character. I hope he will forgive me when I say that the last section of his narrative, dealing with his generation of the family and particularly his brother Andrew, fails to grip me as Lea’s story does.

Given her eminence, it beggars belief that Lea recorded only three brief pieces by Popper, Arensky and Cui for G&T around 1909. Thanks to the collector Julian Futter, I have long had them on a private CD of historical Russian violinists that he compiled. They are brilliant, especially the Popper–Hal찠Elfentanz. Wolf says she resisted offers from American record companies. Let us pray that some live performance turns up, preferably of the Franck Sonata.

TULLY POTTER

B.C. Before Cremona: A Path through History to the Violin

John Huber

96PP ISBN 9783941532137 PPV MEDIEN €87

The origins of the violin have long been a source of fascination for anyone connected to the instrument. It has traditionally been considered to have been the invention of Andrea Amati in Cremona in the late 16th century. Cremona became the town synonymous with the violin and its supremacy as the home of violin making remains unchallenged to this day. Most commonly, books on the history of the violin will begin in this city and chart the development of the instrument through to the genius that was Stradivari and up to the present day. But what of the ‘prehistory’ that led to the point where Amati, Gasparo et al brought into being the instrument that we still recognise today as the embodiment of physical and musical ‘perfection’?

In this book John Huber seeks to answer that question. He has identified a series of pivotal points in world history that created the different technological and musical pathways leading eventually to Cremona.

The ‘big bang’ of bowed stringed instruments was the moment that the bow was first applied to the string of a plucked instrument. The place was most likely the Eurasian steppes where horses were first domesticated in the fifth century. The development and spread of the technique of bowing was quickly disseminated along the Silk Road and found its way via many tributaries to China, India, Persia, south-east Asia, Egypt and of course westwards to Europe. During the Middle Ages the Islamic world spread from the Iberian peninsula to the Indian subcontinent. The development of musical instrument technology is deeply connected to this geographical expansion. A new style of instrument construction was brought to Spain in the ninth century and the profession of instrument making was born.

Huber describes the impact of the extraordinary year of 1492 and its effect across Europe: Spain finally managed to overcome Granada, the last Islamic area in the country, and subsequently banished all Muslims and Jews. They fled to the Netherlands, France, Turkey and Italy and after them came a major redistribution of ideas, wealth, technologies and contacts. This shift is seen in places like Fo which went on to export its products and, more importantly, its instrument makers to all corners of Europe.

This is a history book that places the origins of the instrument in a very real geographic and cultural context where the main protagonists are identified. Huber has laboured with care to produce a volume that fills many of the gaps in our understanding of the prehistory of violin making. It takes us to places that are unfamiliar but inevitably lead to an increased understanding of the very familiar instruments that we make and play.

This book is an enjoyable read, laid out in two-column pages peppered throughout with maps, illustrations, paintings and pictures of instruments that may be new to many - the ancestors of lute, viol and violin. The footnotes are excellent and provide invaluable support to the main text.

SHEM MACKEY

Embodied Vibration

Pedro de Alcantara

246PP ISBN 9780199899333

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS £20.99

In recent years there has been a decisive shift in string playing and teaching that aims to look at the entire performer, their body, mind, and emotions, rather than strictly what the left and right hands are doing. This holistic approach seeks to decode what is happening in the thought process that can impact, positively or negatively, on what is happening in the hands and fingers.

If I could describe the content of Pedro de Alcantara’s latest book on this subject using only three words, I would use: awareness, freedom and experimentation. De Alcantara’s approach is one that seeks to expand the thinking, and thus the experience, of the performer. Many of his ideas stem from creating a wider space of awareness, feeling freer and conjuring up the ability to experiment without any inhibitions. His main thesis, which he states at the outset, is that: ‘the integrated musician balances out mind and body, structure and improvisation, the rational and irrational.’ He seems less interested in giving concrete answers than in providing the tools for readers to explore and follow their own paths.

Even though rooted in free thought and improvisation, many of his ideas do have practical exercises accompanying them, which get at the heart of the concept. Most of these have demonstration videos or audio clips that can be found on the book publisher’s companion website. The videos are relatively short, and enhance the sometimes convoluted instructions for the exercise.

Generously filled with supporting pictures, charts, graphs and musical examples, this book is a fascinating read. De Alcantara pulls from a number of different philosophies, schools of thoughts and inspirations, synthesising them in a cohesive way to present his theories. His tone remains personable and encouraging throughout, despite, at first read, a good portion of the material being a bit complex and difficult to grasp. Some of the exercises are challenging, while others are fundamentally basic, broadening the readership.

Any string player looking for ideas on how to challenge their approach to their instrument and expand their thinking on the creative process, will find this book useful and satisfying.

BRIAN HODGES