Reviews

BEETHOVEN Violin Concerto in D major op.61. Romances nos.1 & 2 Midori (violin/director) Festival Strings Lucerne/Daniel Dodds (leader)

WARNER CLASSICS 9029517920

Deliciously refined playing in this warhorse leaves a great impression

The Beethoven Concerto always sounds at its happiest when played with light-toned purity and deft bow work – when the overall effect is closer to Mozart in overdrive than Brahms on a crash diet. That is partly why, after more than half a century, Wolfgang Schneiderhan’s stereo remake for DG with the Berlin Philharmonic under Eugen Jochum continues to hold sway. And also why Midori’s new recording is such a success. Like Jochum, Midori ensures that Beethoven’s inspired woodwind writing is shaped and voiced with the same degree of sensitivity as the string section, while encouraging the latter to play with chamber-scale precision and articulation – the heavenly, chorale-style textures that open the slow movement possess a string quartet-like intimacy.

Yet above all, it is Midori’s exquisite tonal refinement that leaves the greatest impression. Those familiar with her early recordings would hardly recognise this as the same player. Her trademark intonational purity and agility are as remarkable as ever, yet are now tempered by a silvery, seamless cantabile which radiates airy poetic introspection rather than concert-hall heft. Most revelatory of all is her dynamic range which, rather than focusing on mezzo piano and above, develops from mere whispers of sound, with only the customary Kreisler cadenzas – Schneiderhan plays his finger-crippling transcriptions of Beethoven’s cadenzas for the piano transcription – inspiring anything approaching fortissimo rhetoric. The dancing finale goes with a swing and the two romances are played (rightly) as delicately inspired miniatures, rather than Romantic espressivo vehicles in the Bruch or Korngold mould.

JULIAN HAYLOCK

Exquisite and refined Beethoven from Midori

CORRESPONDANCES 

BENJAMIN Sonata BARRATT-DUE Correspondances VIEUXTEMPS Élégie YSAŸE Caprice d’après l’étude en forme de valse de Saint-Saëns ENESCU Koncertstück HINDEMITH Sonata in F major op.11 no.4 Eivind Ringstad (viola) David Meier (piano)

RUBICON RCD1050

A beautifully constructed recital from a virtuoso viola player

After an orchestrally accompanied debut recording, published in 2017, that included the Walton Concerto and a viola arrangement of Sinding’s scorching Suite, the young Norwegian virtuoso Eivind Ringstad is back with a full-length recital of great musical variety. A violin showpiece is again included, this time Ysaÿe’s coruscating Caprice on Saint-Saëns’s Etude in Waltz Form, performed, as was the Sinding, in a one-to-one transcription, down to the runs of 10ths towards the end. Faithfully seconded by David Meier, who sticks to him like glue, Ringstad waltzes his way around the floor with supreme nonchalance and agility, his 1768 ‘Vieuxtemps’ Guadagnini proving a mercurially responsive vehicle, from which he coaxes some hauntingly veiled sounds throughout the programme.

Th e Élégie by the instrument’s former owner receives a heartfelt reading that threatens to go over the top during the bombastic coda, and Enescu’s Koncertstück develops an exciting momentum. The three movements that make up Benjamin’s Sonata are so many character pieces which Ringstad shapes most eloquently, moving seamlessly between soulful sadness, wistful remembrance and motoric, forwardurging energy.

Peder Barratt-Due (himself a violinist) explores some moderately harsh sonorities from both viola and piano in the title track, Correspondances, a Ringstad commission: several excursions beyond the fingerboard’s end are accomplished with aplomb. Hindemith’s Sonata brings this warmly recorded recital to an exhilarating conclusion, its wideranging variations emphatically characterised by both players.

CARLOS MARÍA SOLARE

DVOŘÁK Bagatelles op.47; ‘Song to the Moon’ from Rusalka KORNGOLD Suite op.23; ‘Mariettas Lied’ from Die tote Stadt Raphaëlle Moreau, David Moreau (violins) Edgar Moreau (cello) Jérémie Moreau (piano)

ERATO 9029524131

A gorgeous winter warmer of a family album

Music making begins at home: we’ve all had cause to remember that in recent months. This Moreau family album is a delight, not least for the intelligent programming: no forgettable chocolate box of encores but two substantial Romantic rarities. More than half a century separates them, and in the op.23 Suite, Korngold isn’t reliving his childhood glory years as a Brahmsian prodigy but trying out darker and more speculative tones of voice. Despite a slightly ill-conditioned piano and an oddly balanced recording that favours the cellist Edgar, the Moreaus’ account outstrips the competition, such as it is, for the sharp contrasts and parodistic humour of the central Groteske and stopped-clock poetry at the beating heart of the following Lied, as well as the taut line drawn throughout the Suite’s outer panels.

Dvořák originally conceived the charming Bagatelles – of which only no.3 receives the attention it deserves – for string trio and harmonium, with the two violins sharing the limelight. Pianist Jérémie is the soul of discretion but Edgar’s accompanying lines tend to dominate his siblings, perhaps through no fault of his own: all four musicians have the measure of Dvořák’s folk-tinged nostalgia, phrasing and sighing as if sharing happy memories around the fire.

Edgar’s star billing is satisfied by two aria transcriptions: played at its original soprano pitch, the Song to the Moon shows off an enviably even upper register, while Mariettas Lied is sensitively taken down the octave. A winter warmer of an album, made for and with pleasure.

PETER QUANTRILL

KORNGOLD Suite op.23; Piano Quintet in E major op.15 Spectrum Concerts Berlin

NAXOS 8574019

Dazzlingly theatrical performances embrace an operatic spectrum of colour

Korngold wrote both of these chamber works in the wake of his two most significant operatic endeavours: Die tote Stadt in the case of the Piano Quintet (1921), and Das Wunder der Heliane for the Suite (1930). But any sense of relaxation after his theatrical projects is expunged by the full-on musical and dramatic ebullience and sophistication of these two smallerscale scores, both of which challenge the listener’s ears in their wealth of almost ‘operatic’ event as much as the performers themselves when faced with their intricate part-writing, virtuoso demands and almost constant rubato. The players of Spectrum Concerts Berlin – a flexible chamber ensemble along the lines of, say, the Nash Ensemble in the UK – demonstrate complete mastery of these challenges in performances (captured in richly integrated recorded sound) that constantly dazzle and beguile.

The Suite for two violins, cello and left-hand piano (composed for Paul Wittgenstein and members of the Rosé Quartet) often sounds in danger of becoming a miniature piano concerto, but the strings here hold their own, with some especially witty and chameleon-like playing in the central Groteske movement. The sense of ensemble in the Quintet is impressive, with the best of the string playing in the poignant variations movement, conveyed with both warmth and emotional depth.

MATTHEW RYE

MOZART’S VIOLIN MOZART Complete Violin Concertos Christoph Koncz (violin) Les Musiciens du Louvre

SONY CLASSICAL G010004353645E (2 CDS)

Mozart concertos, intriguingly played on the composer’s own instrument

This set of the complete Mozart Violin Concertos has a unique selling point: Christoph Koncz is playing Mozart’s own violin, made by the Klotz family of Mittenwald in the early 18th century and still in its original (un-modernised) condition.

Koncz’s playing is often light, especially in the B flat major First Concerto, where the passagework trips blithely along. In the second movement he is gentle and expressive through the simplest of means, and the third bubbles along as he skips neatly through the semiquavers. The cadenzas are all his own, and are simple enough here; later they get more elaborate, but they are always stylish and effective.

The first movement of the D major Second Concerto is full of rhythmic energy; the second has some pure, ethereal high playing, which shows off the violin beautifully, and the final Rondeau sparkles. In the G major Third Concerto, Koncz is warmly expressive, using some light vibrato and eloquent bowing with crisp rhythms and dynamic contrasts. There is some fine oboe playing here as well: the orchestra throughout is expressive and responsive to the soloist. In the second movement Koncz gives a masterly demonstration of melodic playing.

The central Andante cantabile of the Fourth Concerto has a similarly majestic flow, and the finale has happy simplicity. In the A major Fifth Concerto, Koncz is nimble in the first movement and lovingly caresses the long lines of the second; there is warmth and drama in the Turkish section of the finale. The recording is clear and focused, although the spacious acoustic is not ideal.

TIM HOMFRAY

SCHUBERT String Quartets: no.14 in D minor D810 ‘Death and the Maiden’, no.4 in C major D46; Quartettsatz D703 Arod Quartet

ERATO 9029517247

Mature and gripping accounts from a young ensemble that’s streets ahead

The Arod Quartet is already an ensemble worth fighting to hear. Its astonishing maturity in Schubert’s ‘Death and the Maiden’ quartet provides confirmation, if it were needed, that what we have heard thus far has been merely an hors d’oeuvre. Internal and external balance are exceptional, use of vibrato is extremely well judged and the establishment and re-footing of crescendos in sequence is uncannily mathematically precise. It is all captured in a detailed, close but spacious recording.

This is a dark reading of the piece that doesn’t sacrifice Schubert’s constant answering of despair with eloquent lyricism. There is more contained anger, but that only makes the moments of resignation more powerful. The statement of the song theme is ghostly-light but the delving down and loosening up in the first variation underlines just how meaningful a statement that was; what follows is extremely elastic and unspeakably quiet at the end. The Scherzo is unusually dark and weighty; again, vibrato is never a given.

Schubert’s D703 fragment is a good vehicle for the strikingly mature playing of first violinist Jordan Victoria, although he is not afraid to rage at the phrase ends just as the whole ensemble lunges into chosen corners. Reservations creep in when it comes to the Arod’s D46. As in their Mendelssohn recording, there are instances in which the insistently brittle textures and nervous energy work against the natural flow of this more innocent music. The music might seem less frivolous if they let it speak out – going back to basics on the meaning of ‘Andante’, for example. The paradox is, this young ensemble is already streets ahead.

ANDREW MELLOR

Playing of astonishing maturity from the Arod Quartet

SCHUBERT Piano Trio no.2 in E flat major D929; Piano Trio in B flat major ‘Sonatensatz’ D28; Notturno in E flat major D897 Busch Trio

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Expressive and well-balanced playing relishes Schubert’s optimistic side

In recent years it has become increasingly fashionable to record piano trios with a relatively discreet piano image as part of an egalitarian tendency away from instrumental domination in chamber music recordings. Yet, just as Classicalperiod violin sonata releases now tend (rightly) to reverse traditional procedures by focusing on the piano, so it is the piano that clearly dominates (mostly) in the trios of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Schubert, and does so here with a dynamism that is highly compelling. As a result, Schubert’s glistening textures, which so often emerge gently cushioned from a safe distance, come shining through with unapologetic verve and athleticism, relished at every turn by pianist Omri Epstein.

Another general interpretative tendency is to cast Schubert’s later music – the E flat major Trio dates from 1827 – as though dark semantic shadows loom continuously overhead, transmuting even the lightest of gestures into doom-laden prophecy. Once again, the Busch Trio overturns this propensity by suggesting a composer who had everything to live for, while relishing his full expressive arsenal – the musicians even reinstate the long cut from the development section of the finale to enable the composer’s often joyous inspiration its due.

Violinist Mathieu van Bellen (who plays the ‘Adolf Busch’ Guadagnini of 1783) and cellist Ori Epstein (on an 1815 Ceruti) match their sound to a remarkable degree, achieving a combined clarity, gently vibratoed purity and athletic poise that integrate perfectly with the piano. Captured in well-balanced, truthful sound, free of artificial reverberation, the two fillers tantalisingly suggest a composer looking forward to even greater things – sadly, in the case of the Notturno, destined never to be fulfilled.

JULIAN HAYLOCK

SCHUMANN String Quartets nos 1–3 Emerson Quartet

PENTATONE PTC5186869

A pure but not simple approach from a quartet making its label debut

Schumann’s three string quartets are like no other. Without the piano as an expressive-textural focal point there is a strange sense of ‘something missing’ on occasion, they are not traditionally idiomatic in their scoring or part-writing, and overall The Emerson Quartet gives vintage-sounding performances they lack the striking memorability of, say, the Piano Quintet or op.88 Fantasiestücke for piano trio. And yet there is a late-Fauré-like purity about these three masterworks that is uniquely special – there is not one superfluous note along the way, nor the slightest hint of self-conscious display (although they are by no means easy to play).

The Emerson Quartet, on its debut recording for Pentatone, benefits from detailed yet gently cushioned sound, ideal for Schumann’s autumnal inspiration. Compared to the startling, revisionist readings of nos.1 & 3 from the Zehetmair Quartet (ECM), the Emerson is much closer to the Romantic interpretative mainstream of, say, the Italian Quartet (Philips/ Decca). Indeed, the predominance of cantabile-style, medium-paced vibrato and portamentoed espressivo intensity sound remarkably like early-1960s vintage Amadeus Quartet. Most importantly, the Emerson plays these elusive pieces with an infectious warmth, gentle, unhurried poise and captivating insight that feel wholly at one with the music’s unflashy inspiration. When even the blatantly pianistic syncopations of the Third Quartet’s opening movement emerge sounding completely natural, one is clearly in the safest of hands.

JULIAN HAYLOCK

The Emerson Quartet gives vintage-sounding performances

SHOSTAKOVICH Piano Trio no.1 in C minor op.8 ARENSKY Piano Trio no.1 in D minor op.32 MENDELSSOHN Piano Trio no.1 in D minor op.49 Zeliha Trio

MIRARE MIR522

Newly formed French trio demonstrates its distinctive drama and beauty

Three first piano trios from an ensemble making its own debut recording: conceptually this is nice, but what most strikes me across this programme is the extent to which the Zeliha Trio combines faithfulness to the score and high technical polish with its own distinctive sound. These three musicians clearly know who they are, which is all the more impressive as they formed as recently as 2018.

The opening Shostakovich Trio of 1923 displays the trio’s colours vividly. Composed when Shostakovich was 16, this piece’s romance is spiced by sudden switches of mood and texture that prompted one of his teachers at the Leningrad Conservatoire to complain at his ‘obsession with the Grotesque’. The Zeliha’s impeccably blended tone is a beautiful one, delivered with slenderness and grace, the ‘Grotesque’ initially suggested merely by pronounced portamentos delivered with a straight-toned eeriness. Beauty endures even as the first crescendo builds, meaning you’re caught entirely unawares by the sharp, acidic force with which violinist Manon Galy and cellist Maxime Quennesson then suddenly slice through the air at the first fortissimo. Clever.

There are further joys: the Zeliha’s vibrantly singing, lucid-textured Arensky; the stirring Mendelssohn first movement and its captivatingly, tenderly hesitant Andante; and always the pearly, precise articulation from pianist Jorge González Buajasan. Add lovely natural balance to the crystalline recording, and repeated listening is a must.

CHARLOTTE GARDNER

TAVENER Preces and Responses (arr. Isserlis); The Death of Ivan Ilyich; Mahámátar; Popule meus; No Longer Mourn for Me (arr.Isserlis) Steven Isserlis (cello) Matthew Rose (bass) Abi Sampa (Sufi singer) Trinity Boys Choir, Philharmonia Orchestra/Omer Meir Wellber

HYPERION CDA 68246

A deeply personal celebration of a composer and cellist’s creative relationship

Steven Isserlis’s long creative relationship with John Tavener, which started with The Protecting Veil, is celebrated here. The booklet lays bare the triumphs and difficulties which many deep friendships endure, charting the creative gestation and fruition of the pieces written in the latter part of the composer’s life.

Tavener is always searching and asking the undefinable questions, and this aspect characterises all these late works. He draws on a wide variety of sources for inspiration, from Tolstoy and Shakespeare to Catholicism and Islam. This creates some interesting sound worlds, and Mahámátar is particularly mesmerising. Here the Sufi singer Abi Sampa improvises over the cello line, eloquently portrayed by Isserlis. It is exquisite and memorable. Equally Popule meus creates a vivid drama with the timpani challenging the solo cello in the meditation on the text ‘oh my people what have I done to you?’ The interpretation is magnetic.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich sets a text by Tolstoy and depicts a dying man’s pain – a reflection of Tavener’s ailing health. Here the cello is cast in the dark subconscious, while the bass singer incants over a wide tessitural range. Two pieces are arrangements for eight cellos by Isserlis. The rich timbre of the cellistic forces in No Longer Mourn for Me and Preces and Responses is like being in a bath of beautiful sounds.

JOANNE TALBOT

Left–right Omer Meir Wellber, Abi Sampa and Steven Isserlis celebrate the music of Tavener

VASKS Violin Concerto (Distant Light)1 ; Lonely Angel ; Plainscapes ; Dona nobis pacem Daniel Rowland (violin, director 3 ) Maja Bogdanović (cello) 1 Consensus Vocalis, Stift Festival Orchestra/ Thomas Carroll 2 , Benjamin Goodson

CHANNEL CLASSICS CC72830

Violinist is a passionate advocate of Latvian composer’s modern classics

In terms of recordings alone – now stretching into double figures – Distant Light (1996–7) counts alongside the violin concertos by Adès and Ligeti as a modern classic of the repertoire. In this one-off live recording from a Dutch church – the culmination of a week-long festival dedicated to Pēteris Vasks – the detailed yet spacious engineering and precision of the latest version are second to none. The composer’s idiom of elevated introspection both demands and cultivates an atmosphere of still and intense concentration which is fully met by Daniel Rowland’s lean attack and palette of blue, unmixed tones in the trio of progressively more taxing cadenzas, while his leadership of the string-only accompaniment draws the players around him.

The textures but not the mood – nostalgia with a touch of tragedy – change with the couplings. The noodling melismas and choral mantras of Dona nobis pacem (1996) and Plainscapes (2002) will press all the right buttons for confirmed fans of Vasks’ brand of secular mysticism, and the ardent violin-led cantabile of Lonely Angel (1999/2006) is hauntingly done by Rowland, but they expand upon rather than evolve the concerto’s meditative aspects without the relief of its livelier, folk-tinged interludes.

PETER QUANTRILL

ITALIAN POSTCARDS WOLF Italian Serenade MOZART String Quartet in G major K80 ‘Lodi’ BORENSTEIN Cieli d’Italia TCHAIKOVSKY Souvenir de Florence Ori Kam (viola) Eckart Runge (cello) Quartetto di Cremona

AVIE AV2436

Richly characterised musical postcards for armchair travellers

You would expect a native ensemble to have strong ideas about the inner character of these ‘Italian Postcards’ from foreign composers, and the Quartetto di Cremona writes home in thick Gothic script where other quartets prefer a lighter ink and a more fluid hand. In Wolf’s Italian Serenade; the players underline Wolf’s harmonically unstable idiom, the nervous intensity and even neurosis of the Serenade’s central section.

Applied to very early Mozart, first violin Cristiano Gualco’s wide vibrato flirts with outright anachronism. The brilliance of the Minuet’s semiquaver sequences is lent an uncomfortable glare by both the forceful attack of the playing and some unflatteringly close engineering.

The carefree rhapsody of Cieli d’Italia, commissioned for the album from Nimrod Borenstein, is soon darkened by false relations and rhythmical dislocations that italicise and isolate the score’s symbolically ‘Italian’ elements. The Quartetto’s close-set sound and intense engagement also emphasise vibrant Russian colours over the neo-Classical elegance of Tchaikovsky’s sextet; the stillness and gentle economy of gesture in the Novus Quartet’s recent account emphasise the ‘Souvenir’ aspect, while the Cremonese and their friends bring Florence to life in the here and now.

PETER QUANTRILL

SONGBOOKS VOL. 1 HUANG HAI-HUAI Sai Ma (arr.Mason) MASON Tuvan Songbook; Sardinian Songbook TAGAQ Sivunittinni Ligeti Quartet

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Fearless and inventive string ensemble embraces Tuvan throat singing

The UK-based Ligeti Quartet has long pushed at the boundaries of what a classical string quartet can and should do, and this rewarding new disc strains even further against any preconceptions. It’s the first in a projected series of CDs, in collaboration with composer Christian Mason, exploring quartet transcriptions of overtone singing from across the world.

One immediate question is: why even attempt to recreate a vocal technique on stringed instruments? And indeed, there are occasional moments – especially among the four items in Mason’s Tuvan Songbook – where you can’t help thinking that the music’s low drones and whistling harmonics sound far more arresting when they’re coming from a single voice, rather than from across four stringed instruments.

But that aside, in its own terms Mason’s music is astonishingly inventive and powerful, generating a searing, hypnotic intensity among the four-piece Sardinian Songbook and its sudden eruptions of euphoric noise. The Ligeti players deliver remarkably committed, focused performances, thrillingly responsive to the subtle fluctuations in tone and attack needed to bring this music alive, and delivering a brilliantly convincing account of the churning noise of Tanya Tagaq’s primal Sivunittinni as an ear-splitting closer. It’s a potent, persuasive disc, delivered in a close, authentic recording.

DAVID KETTLE

MON AMI, MON AMOUR POULENC Cello Sonata FP143 DEBUSSY Cello Sonata in D minor; music by Fauré, N. Boulanger, L. Boulanger, Milhaud and Ravel Matt Haimovitz (cello) Mari Kodama (piano)

PENTATONE PTC5186816

Plenty to enjoy in a recital that explores a wide variety of French cello music

In 2017 Matt Haimovitz was giving a lesson on the Poulenc Sonata when, reaching for the score, he tripped and his 1710 Gofriller cello flew out of his hand and snapped in two. This, his first album since its restoration, opens with that piece. The crystalclear recorded sound is perfect for the work’s neo-Classical brittleness and there are many elegant stylistic touches from both players. The duo creates a spellbinding atmosphere of devout calm in the Cavatine and the reborn cello sounds out richly in the Finale’s broad opening chords.

Haimovitz, wunderkind of the late 1980s and now a seasoned soloist with teaching studios in Montreal and New York, creates an amazing range of pizzicato timbres in Debussy’s Sonata, making sense of the composer’s myriad dynamic and articulation marks.

The ecstatic, soaring lines of Lili Boulanger’s exquisite Nocturne are especially beautiful, while Nadia’s adventurous third piece thrills with a frenetic urgency. Haimovitz’s other arrangement, Ravel’s Kaddish, is the expressive core of this disc: the lonely, mournful opening cello line and the searing, fast vibrato in the high reaches make an intense listening experience. Milhaud’s Élégie shows off the Gofriller’s entire range, from its deep rich C-string tones up to the stratospheric final melody, played with a sweet purity.

JANET BANKS