RECORDINGS

METAMORPHOSIS

BEETHOVEN String Quartet in C sharp minor op.131 LIGETI String Quartet no.1 (Métamorphoses nocturnes) Jupiter Quartet

MARQUIS CLASSICS MQSCD 81499

Intensity of approach is bewitching in Ligeti but takes Beethoven to the edge'

Beethoven and Ligeti make for a provocative pairing in this ambitious disc from the Boston-based Jupiter Quartet - though it’s only a partially successful one. In Ligeti’s Bartók-onacid First Quartet, the Jupiter players are simply superb: theatrical, full of dark humour, alive to the composer’s switchback flips of style. And they achieve it all with an unerring fidelity to the letter of the score, peering through the work’s abundant grotesqueries and bizarre sonic inventiveness to Ligeti’s meanings - sometimes sinister, sometimes playful - underneath. It’s a joy from start to finish, and often bewitching in its uncanny beauty.

From the rather over-emphatic sforzandos in the opening solo lines of Beethoven’s op.131, however, the Jupiter’s account of that quartet feels somewhat hard-won and effortful, asthough self-consciously tackling anEverest of the repertoire rather than approaching the work with the same directness the players employed with the Ligeti. There’s beautifully nuanced playing nonetheless - their characterisations of the fourth movement’s variations are particularly enjoyable - but a harshness to the quartet’s sound begins in the extremely quick fifth-movement scherzo and reaches a climax in the finale, pushed punishingly hard, and astonishingly raw and strident.

The intensity is undeniable, but it doesn’t make for easy - nor particularly pleasurable - listening, although the close, detailed recorded sound captures the account with unflinching honesty.

DVORÁK Cello Concerto in B minor1; Lasst mich allein; Goin’ Home; Songs My Mother Taught Me op. 55 no.1; Allegro Moderato from Four Romantic Pieces op.75; Silent Woods op.68 no.5

Kian Soltani (cello) Cellists of the Staatskapelle Berlin, Staatskapelle BerlinVDaniel Barenboim1 DG 483 6090

Musicianship and intellect combine in tasteful, captivating performances

With such distinguished forces as the Staatskapelle Berlin with Daniel Barenboim at the helm, one is guaranteed a musical journey in aRolls-Royce in this warmly recorded live performance of the Dvorák Cello Concerto. As expected, the ensemble is really honed, presenting much detail in the orchestral parts. The only slight disappointment comes in the very opening of the work, which sounds alittle too weighty and lacks a certain degree of momentum. Nonetheless, Kian Soltani brings eloquence and atasteful, almost classical delivery tothe solo part. His approach offers such a breath of fresh air, eschewing idiosyncratic mannerisms and presenting exquisitely coloured andshaped melodies in an uncluttered manner with an immaculate technical delivery.

The fleeting moments of regret are tender and moving - an expressive lyricism that continues in the Adagio and the closing section of the Finale. The tempo is perfectly judged as there is always the sense of moving forward, but not at the expense of passages of repose.

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Partnering the Concerto with a set of Dvorák miniatures transcribed for cello ensemble is inspired.The effective arrangement of Lasst mich allein is particularly appropriate as the melody also features in the second movement of the Concerto, but in this particular selection of ‘goodies’, my favourite is undoubtedly the Allegro moderato from the Four Romantic Pieces.This is a gloriously sensitive and captivating performance, with the use of pizzicato in the textures obviating too dense a timbre. Here musicianship and intellect are truly in harness.

JOANNE TALBOT

ELGAR Cello Concerto VAUGHAN

WILLIAMS/MATTHEWS Dark Pastoral

Dai Miyata (cello)

BBC Scoto'sh Symphony

Orchestra/Thomas Dausgaard

DENON MDG 650 2181-2

Short but sweet: a convincing completion of an unfinished work

If this disc appears to short-change the listener in terms of recorded minutes (just under 40), its emotional weight more than makes up for this. Japanese cellist Dai Miyata, winner of the 2009 Rostropovich Competition, wears his heart on his sleeve in these two English works, playing with passion and assurance.

Dark Pastoral, premiered at the 2007 Proms, is David Matthews’s completion of the slow movement of a concerto that Vaughan Williams started for Casals in the 1940s. Although only one-third Vaughan Williams, it is entirely convincingly in the composer’s style. Miyata plays with a loving and instinctive understanding of the music, using a_fast vibrato to produce a very sweet sound high on his 1698 ‘Marquis de Cholmondeley’ Stradivari. e balance between the warm sound of the orchestral strings and Miyata’s yearning, elegiac tones is impeccable.

Balance is not quite so perfect in their lyrical, Romantic interpretation of Elgar’s Concerto. At_climactic moments the close recording of the solo cello means you hear breathing and rasping of horsehair on string, while the orchestral accompaniment is at times too heavy under pianissimo cello notes. However, the many flashes of insight and the impressive sudden hushes as solo and orchestra suddenly dip as one still make this a_performance well worth hearing.

JANET BANKS

D’ERLANGER Piano Quintet DUNHILL Piano Quintet in C minor op.20

Goldner Quartet, Piers Lane (piano)

HYPERION CDA68296

Tobacco and banking dynasties are the unlikely sources for two distinct voices

These two piano quintets date from the earliest years of the 20th century and, while never being as distinctive as Elgar’s later essay in the medium, both display a mixture of charm and depth of feeling that makes their resuscitation here welcome and worthwhile. Baron Frédéric Alfred d’Erlanger (1868 -1943) was a naturalised Briton born in Paris of German and American parents, part of a banking dynasty in which he would later work himself.

He is better remembered, if at all, for_his .nancial patronage than for his compositions, which included a_Violin Concerto premiered by Kreisler. But despite his wealth, his Piano Quintet of 1901 shows him to_have been more than a mere dilettante as a composer - it’s a rigorous, cyclical work in C minor, typically pan-European Romantic but wearing its influences lightly.

Thomas Dunhill (1877-1946), brother of the tobacco purveyor, was a leading figure in London’s chamber music scene, and his Piano Quintet of 1904 is another serious work, combining the high-flown lyricism of_Fauré with a little hint of Brahms. Less piano heavy than the D’Erlanger, it allows the Goldner players to shine, especially in the intertwining melodies of the heartfelt Elegie. Indeed, both quintets receive ideal, attentive performances, lovingly shaped and paced and with only the slightly recessed piano sound detracting from the experience.

MATTHEW RYE

MENDELSSOHN Cello Sonatas: no.l in B flat major op.45, no.2 in D major op.58; Trio in D minor op.49

Viola de Hoog (cello) Mikayel Balyan (piano) Marten Root (flute)

VIVAT 120

Period-instrument duo shows its prowess in athletic, colourful playing

Viola de Hoog and Mikayel Balyan’s accounts of Mendelssohn’s two sonatas consolidate their reputation as a period-instrument duo of re.ned virtuosity, unanimous reciprocity and subtle musicality.Their tempos are excitingly ambitious in the effervescent outer movements, but few details are compromised and the outcome only occasionally feels rushed. De Hoog draws a sonorous tone from her c.1750 Gagliano, notably in the central section of op.45’s ternary Andante and in op.58’s tranquil Adagio. Balyan extracts a kaleidoscope of tonal colours from an 1847 Érard piano, playing fistfuls of rippling passagework with striking clarity and athleticism.

Balyan is also the principal driving force in the Trio op.49, here captured in a rarely heard arrangement. As Mendelssohn himself forewarned, the flute proves a poor substitute for the violin in recreating the ardour and_intensity of this work’s outer movements, but Marten Root’s nine-keyed reproduction instrument after Wilhelm Liebel (c.1830) comes into its own in the tranquil Andante and feet scherzo. Although Root’s contribution is occasionally engulfed in the dense texture, balance issues have largely been well managed in a church acoustic that affords the instruments ample bloom. Overall, though, this is period-instrument playing rather than historical performance.

ROBIN STOWELL

MOZART Complete String Trios Jacques Thibaud String Trio

AUDITE 97773

Trio’s pitch-perfect approach to Mozart yields many delights

The Jacques Thibaud String Trio has Mozart’s E .at major Trio K563 down to the finest of arts The musicians’ playing is robust, vibrant and full of character right from the start, where they are both sotto voce as marked and musically commanding. The opening of the development is truly quiet, and has an air of enchantment, but when the semiquavers .y in this movement they are exuberant. They play with grace and elegance in the second movement Adagio, its steady, dignified flow punctuated by the occasional slackening of tempo at cadences. After the high spirits of the first Menuetto the Trio enters a different landscape, more intimate and seeming to .nd its way as it goes, gently and rhythmically free. In the central Andante the players come to happy life in their concertolike solos, and they scurry wonderfully through the demisemiquavers of the final maggiore section. The .first trio of the following Menuetto has po-faced humour, and the finale is graceful.

The CD includes Mozart’s arrangements of various preludes and_fugues by J.S. Bach and one by W.F. Bach. Mozart may have written several of the preludes, although this is debated. Still, they are beautifully played, with sensitive shaping of lines and interplay between voices.

TIM HOMFRAY

MUHLY/HELBIG/LONG Cello Concerto 'Three Consents’

SHOSTAKOVICH Cello Concerto no.21

Jan Vogler (cello) WDR

Sinfonieorchester/Cristian Mäcelaru;

Mariinsky Orchestra/Valery Gergiev1

SONY 886448412366

Thrilling performance of a multicultural cello concerto that straddles continents

‘I’m a German, I live in America and I’m married to a Chinese woman.’

This was Jan Vogler’s starting point for a cello concerto in three movements, each uniquely written by_a different composer: Nico Muhly, Sven Helbig and Zhou Long respectively. Presented under the collective title Three Continents, each movement has its own distinctive title. Muhly’s ‘Cello Cycles’ is a set of_variations on a set of repeating chords, which reverses normal semantic procedure by having the soloist as an emotional constant while the orchestra goes through a series of_quick-.re changes in sonic profile. Helbig’s ‘Aria’ is a moving oasis of calm that subtly gathers in intensity before handing over the musical baton to Long’s ‘Tipsy Poet’ scherzo finale, a bracing soundscape inspired by Du Fu’s Song of Eight Unruly Tipsy Poets.

Vogler’s chameleon-like ability to_adapt with lightning reflexes to changes in the musical environment creates an edge-of-your-seat frisson in_the outer movements and also radiates a haunting sense of timelessness in the central ‘Aria’. He_also matches his sound to a_remarkable degree with the WDR Symphony Orchestra’s lithe clarity and sparkling flexibility under a devoted Cristian Macelaru.

A change of venue from the Kölner Philharmonie to the Berlin Konzerthaus, and a change of co-protagonists to the Mariinsky Orchestra and Valery Gergiev in Shostakovich’s Concerto no.2, brings with it a slightly warmer sound picture and an enhanced sense of orchestral depth of field. Vogler’s commanding virtuosity in this intimidating score really takes some believing (remarkably it is a ‘live’ recording), although some may feel that Shostakovich’s more visceral outbursts and sardonic double-takes lack the searing musical indictment of the finest versions.

JULIAN HAYLOCK

SAY Violin Sonatas nos.1 & 2;

Violin Concerto '1001 Nights in the Harem’; Cleopatra

Friedemann Eichhorn (violin) Fazil Say (piano) Ayküt Koselerli (percussion) Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern/

Christoph Eschenbach

NAXOS 8.574085

Turkish pianist-turned-composer shows his talent in writing for the violin

During the last quarter-century the Turkish musician-in-exile Fazıl Say has reinvented himself from mercurial pianist of Classical-era repertoire into a figure of more protean accomplishments, political agitation not the least of them. Like so much art of Say’s homeland, his output for violin is hard to pin down and doesn’t .t any ready-made categories. However the Second Violin Sonata (2019) does not display his brand of eclectic naturalism to advantage. Just as the recitative-like opening movement describes the government-supported despoliation of a gold-rich mountain in strenuously literal terms, so the fragile fluttering of the ‘Wounded Bird’ slow movement, and the subsequent collapse into the ‘Rite of Hope’ finale’s minimalist doodling, springs few surprises.

Wind back to 1997 and the compact .Five-movement structure of Say’s First Violin Sonata lays its gnarly Bartókian roots bare, especially in this terrific, composer-accompanied performance by Friedemann Eichhorn. Say pays tribute to Eichhorn’s ‘artistic soul’ in the booklet essay, but it’s the beautifully graded, astringent tone palette he draws from the 1731 ‘Lady Jeanne’ Stradivari that grabs me, especially in the brief Cleopatra competition piece and the violin concerto that Say wrote in 2007 with Patricia Kopatchinskaja in mind. Much of the percussion component feels sprinkled over the top, but the densely layered texture of Say’s harmony is authoritatively handled by Eschenbach, and Eichhorn’s seductive turns of phrase above the stave throw a more erotically charged light on the piece than Kopatchinskaja’s own mercurial and eccentrically balanced recording.

PETER QUANTRILL

SCHUBERT String quartets: in E fìat major D87 and G minor/

B fìat major D18; Quartettsatz in C minor D703 KOTCHEFF Unbegun (Homage to Schubert) Alinde Quartet

HANSSLER HC19071

Schubert 200th-anniversary project has a good start with inspired programming

Looking ahead to 2028 and the 200th anniversary of the composer’s death, the Alinde Quartet will annually release a disc of Schubert string quartets for the next eight years, alongside a specially commissioned work. It opens the series with two of Schubert’s earlier works (nos.1 and 10 in the offcial numbering), composed in c.1810 and 1813 respectively and premiered informally at home by members of his family (including Schubert on viola), when the composer was still in his early to mid-teens.

Finding the ideal sound world for Schubert’s quartets is by no means easy, yet the Alinde strikes a near-ideal balance between internal clarity and textural warmth, shone through by sparkling intonation. Interpretatively it is very much the same story - the players shape Schubert’s unashamedly Mozartian phrases with disarming naturalness and affection, yet retain a buoyant, crisply articulated classicism without a hint of self-conscious HIP. Gentler on the ear than the Melos (DG), more intimate in scale than the Leipzig (MDG), sweeter-toned than the Kodály (Naxos) and utterly captivating in the hurtling emotional changeability of the Quartettsatz, this marks a most auspicious start to their complete cycle.

Thomas Kotcheff's ten-minute Unbegun, composed especially for this series, is based on the first six bars of Schubert’s 1827 song Alinde D904 (from which the quartet get its name), its startling glissandos and sense of galvanising drama finding release in an overwhelming sunshine outburst of open strings. Placed after D87 and just before the Quartettsatz, it thrillingly offsets the music that surrounds it, providing ample justification for the quartet’s inspired programming.

BABEL

SCHUMANN String Quartet in A major op.41 no.3 SHAW Three Essays SHOSTAKOVICH String Quartet no.9

Calidore Quartet

SIGNUM CLASSICS SIGCD65C

Quartet music from three centuries comes together in a breathtaking disc

Communication forms the overarching theme of this exceptional disc from the New York-based Calidore Quartet. Though truth be told, with playing of this generosity and insight, it hardly needs a motif to bring things together. There’s a joyful freshness and exuberance to the Schumann Third Quartet - written to express the composer’s previously forbidden love for future wife Clara Wieck - with a surprisingly softedged opening movement that nonetheless never lacks character, and just the right skittishness to the second movement’s never-settling rhythms.The Calidore players are expert, too, at capturing the ambivalence in Shostakovich’s Ninth Quartet (in which the composer expresses semi-concealed solidarity with persecuted Jews), finely balancing its perky extroversion and its brooding menace so that we’re never sure which comes out on top.

Most breathtaking amid a universally impressive disc, however, are the Three Essays by the Calidore’s fellow New Yorker Caroline Shaw, which employ music to symbolise and question political misuses of language. With its poppy syncopations, its uncompromising complexity and its thrilling immediacy, it’s a remarkable work that makes a virtue of its chameleon styles. Shaw wrote it for the Calidore players to premiere at the 2018 BBC Proms and they’ve clearly taken the music deeply to heart: it’s hard to imagine a more vivid, committed performance, and one that looks deep inside the music to the themes it expresses. Recorded sound is vivid and warm, with the four players placed beautifully within the sonic space.

DAVID KETTLE

HOME @HOME

Works by Arlen, Brahms, Cano, Falla, Faure, Gershwin, Hadjidakis, Herre, Heymann, Kipling, Kosma, Louiguy, Mancini, Otis, Rachmaninoff, Rota, Satie, Schubert, Ward, Weber and Weill Daniel Hope (violin) Aliya Vodovozova (flute) Till Bronner (trumpet) Michael Metzler (percussion) Christoph Israel, Jacques Ammon, Tamara Stefanovich, Sebastian Knauer (piano) Matthias Goerne (baritone), Joy Denalane, Max Raabe (vocals) Max Herre, Iris Berben (speech)

DG 4839482

One of the most delightful ‘socially distanced’ albums you’ll hear this year

Here on the Deutsche Grammophon label is what must be one of the most impressive of lockdown home recordings. Daniel Hope and his friends have been broadcasting a diverse range of repertoire on YouTube from his home in Berlin, of which this is a scintillating sample. His living room, by the sound of it, has an acoustic that would do credit to a Gothic cathedral, doubtless aided by recording equipment not found in the average Berlin household, which gives a close-up of his sumptuous playing and balance with his various colleagues.

The music ranges from classical to Hollywood, mostly arranged by the artists, sometimes as they went along. With Christoph Israel, the pianist we hear the most, he plays Schubert’s An die Musik with appealing simplicity, gives a bleak account of Satie’s first Gnossienne, and brings subtle phrasing and sheer beauty of sound to Fauré’s Après un rêve and Rachmaninoff’s Vocalise. But there is so much more: Weill’s Youkali; Rota’s yearning Godfather Waltz; Mancini’s Moon River, in which Hope’s rich, eloquent vibrato and instinct for rubato show so well.

Among his colleagues he is joined by jazz trumpeter Till Bronner in Kosma’s Les Feuilles Mortes, soul singer Joy Denalane in Clyde Otis’sThis Bitter Earth and Iris Berben reciting Kipling’s fwhile Hope and Israel play Falla’s Asturiana. There is a lot to enjoy here, heartfelt, quirky, sometimes cheesy - all delightful salon entertainment.

TIM HOMFRAY

IL GENIO INGLESE

Works by Matteis, Locke,

Schop, Finger and Banister Alice Julien-Laferriere (violin) Ground Floor

HARMONIA MUNDI HMN 916117

Journey back to Restoration London in a satisfying and well-researched recital

This most enjoyable recital gives an interesting overview of violin music in Restoration London, a period that saw the instrument gradually replacing viol consorts in audiences’ favour. Pride of place in the programme is given to the Neapolitan violinist Nicola Matteis, one of several Italian musicians who settled in Britain when a royal wedding in 1674 brought an Italian princess to London as wife to the Duke of York. Those indefatigable music-loving diarists, John Evelyn and Roger North, have left invaluable testimonies of Matteis’s instrumental prowess, which we can now appreciate by means of music from his 1685 collection, Ayres for the violin. A suite in A minor is perhaps the most violinistically virtuosic, particularly in its unaccompanied prelude, that features arpeggio figurations and an intriguing modulatory section; there follow movements with suggestive titles like ‘movimento incognito’ or ‘sarabanda amorosa’. The ‘alamande’ brings forth some sharp spiccato from Alice Julien-Laferriere, who consistently plays with an agreeably earthy tone and delivers admirably clear runs in the suite’s final gavotte.

The CD begins with Johann Schop’s Lachrime Pavaen, an intricately embellished setting of John Dowland’s evergreen piece. Later on, a suite in D minor by the Moravian-born Godfrey Finger sounds positively Purcellian with its French-style overture followed by several chromatically tinged genre pieces. A melancholic suite in E minor by Matthew Locke seems to look back wistfully to pre-Civil War times. The musicians of Ground Floor accompany their soloist idiomatically throughout this vividly recorded recital and come into their own in Matteis’s Guitar Suite, stylishly ‘orchestrated’ for guitar, harpsichord, harp and cello.

CARLOS MARÍA SOLARE

PEACOCK

SUBRAMANIAM Bullet Train; Lamenting; Peacock; Dharmavathi1; Wilderness; Talking Fingers BRAHMS (a rr. Subramaniam, Lakatos) Hungarian Dance

Dr L. Subramaniam (violin) Roby Lakatos (violin) Kavita Krishnamurti (vocals) 1 Jeno Lisztes (cimbalom) Tanmoy Bose (tabla) Frijo Francis (keyboard) DSR Murthy (mridangam)

AVANTI CLASSIC AVTC 1056

A fantastic fusion album finds fertile ground between Hungary and Italy

The virtuoso Hungarian fiddler Roby Lakatos teams up with star Indian violinist L. Subramaniam for this charismatic disc, entitled Peacock, which combines Lakatos’s fearsome style of Gypsy fiddle with Subramaniam’s mastery of the classical Karnatak tradition and his thorough grounding in Western music. The two first collaborated back in 2015, when Subramaniam brought Lakatos to India for the Lakshminarayana Global Music Festival, and a handful of the tracks recorded here were written for that tour by Subramaniam.

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The opening track, Bullet Train, feels pedestrian, with Lakatos and Subramaniam echoing each other’s phrases back and forth. With the rich textures of Lamenting, the pair seem on firmer footing, their soaring melodies underpinned by circling layers of cimbalom and keyboard.

The fusion version of Brahms’s Hungarian Dance has a slightly crazed feel to it but is thoroughly infectious. Lakatos and Subramaniam play the famous tune as a duet, all set to an insistent tabla beat. Peacock is perhaps the most successful. The flavour of the Karnatak music tradition runs through it, with mesmerising tabla under syncopated, tripping rifls from Lakatos and Subramaniam. A later section sees the players in more ruminative mood, exploring both Indian and Western scales. Layers of cimbalom and piano expounding major chords towards the end even lend a flavour of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra.

Talking Fingers brings stunning tremolo pizzicato from Lakatos, and gorgeous tone colours from Subramaniam on the low D string of his five-string violin. Recorded sound has a rich and luxuriant immediacy, adding to the appeal of this disc.

CATHERINE NELSON

SOLACE

BACH Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin (excerpts): Partita for Violin Solo no.3 in E major: Preludio; Sonata for Violin Solo no.l in G minor: Fuga; Partita for Violin Solo no.2 in D minor: Sarabande; Sonata for Violin Solo no.2 in A minor: Allegro; Sonata for Violin Solo no.3 in C major: Largo; Partita for Violin Solo no.3 in E: Gavotte en Rondeau

Ray Chen (violin)

DECCA 485 1137 (DOWNLOAD ONLY ;

‘Lockdown’ Bach recital offers welcome musical consolation in 2020

Musicians have proved ever adaptable of late, from taking part in those early split-screen performances to gradually returning to (socially distanced) concert life. Ray Chen’s response has been to record a lockdown EP in his living room. Chen himself set up the equipment, briefed remotely by producer Jonathan Allen.

No repertoire could be more appropriate than Bach’s solo Sonatas and Partitas - uniquely able to force a violinist into deep isolation. Chen has selected six movements, each loosely allied to a certain mood and together meant to create an overarching journey.

There’s no loungewear-cosiness to these performances: Chen is alert, with a beautifully clean touch and subtly varied articulation. In the opening Preludio from the E major Partita he is nimble but not complacent and he amply defines the diverging/ converging counterpoint. Similarly, the triple-stopped chords of the Fuga from the G minor Sonata are precisely delivered.

There’s solace in the Sarabande of the D minor Partita before the A minor Sonata’s Allegro pulses with life, the widest leaps never sounding awkward. The Largo (C major Sonata) is lyrical yet aspirational and the Gavotte en Rondeau (E major Partita) ends the selection with an optimistic dance.

The added reverb is a necessary conceit (no different to studio recordings) and the instrument sounds truly vibrant. Overall, this is a heartening example of triumph over adversity.

EDWARD BHESANIA