RECORDINGS

BEETHOVEN Cello Sonatas op.5; Variations on ‘Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen’ PLEYEL/BAUDIOT Nocturne (Souvenir de la flûte enchantée)

Raphaël Pidoux (cello)

Tanguy de Williencourt (piano)

HARMONIA MUNDI 902410

Stylish and capably executed cello sonatas, if missing some magic

First performed for Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia by the composer alongside one of the Duport cellist brothers in the king’s service, Beethoven’s pair of op.5 Cello Sonatas offer little challenge to cellists. Even still, though they are stylish enough and capably executed here, Raphaël Pidoux struggles to make his mark on the pieces. As well as being down to the writing itself, this may also be due to the instrument (a 1734 Guarneri) and the sound engineering (which could have lifted the cello more, in balance and in tonal bloom). Pidoux’s partner, Tanguy de Williencourt, plays an 1855 Carl Julius Gebauhr piano that post-dates these works by half a century, although its leatherlined hammers give sharper articulation than modern pianos, and its weaker damping leads to tangy resonances.

The variations on ‘Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen’ from The Magic Flute offer more opportunities to the cellist and even if Variation no.1 could be more playful, the central, minor-key fourth variation takes on an attractive dark colouring. The penultimate variation unveils a lyrical, wistful longing.

Drawing on themes from the same opera, the Nocturne by Camille Pleyel (son of the piano maker Ignace) and cellist Charles-Nicolas Baudiot is a charming confection.

EDWARD BHESANIA

THE BERLIN ALBUM BENDA Trio Sonata in E major GRAUN Trio Sonatas: in A major, G major KIRNBERGER Trio Sonata in D minor PRINCESS ANNA AMALIA OF PRUSSIA Fugue in D major SCHULZ Trio Sonata in A minor JANITSCH Trio Sonata in G major Ensemble Diderot

AUDAX RECORDS ADX13726

Flair and flamboyance characterise a musical collection from the German city

There are lots of good things in this collection of mid-18th-century trio sonatas, written in Berlin at a time when music was thriving in both courts and public concerts. Georg Benda and Johann Graun, both excellent violinists as well as composers, were leading figures of the time, fostering a distinctive theatrical and melodic style. Two of Graun’s trios appear on this CD, the first of which, in A major, requires the first violin to tune the bottom two strings up a tone. It has the hallmarks of a fine artist having fun, with rapid passagework, florid arpeggiation and a few cadenzas.

In several of these trios there is a technical flamboyance almost worthy of a concerto. The Ensemble Diderot violinists Johannes Pramsohler and Roldán Bernabé meet all the challenges with character and flair.

They dance in sprightly imitation in Benda’s E major Sonata. In Johann Kirnberger’s D minor Sonata they spring off the syncopations and weave through running passages with crisp, articulated playing and a real sense of dialogue, and indeed trialogue with the fine cellist Gulrim Choï.

Johann Schulz’s A minor Sonata brings melancholy dignity to a mostly jolly collection, and Johann Janitsch’s G major ends the disc with nimble Scottish snaps. Philippe Grisvard’s continuo keyboard playing is excellent. The recorded sound is clear and close.

TIM HOMFRAY

MYTHOLOGIES CLYNE Masquerade1 ; This Midnight Hour ; The Seamstress ; Night Ferry ; <<rewind<<

Jennifer Koh (violin) 3 Irene Buckley (voice) 3 BBC Symphony Orchestra/ Marin Alsop 1 Sakari Oramo 2 3

Andrew Litton 4 André de Ridder 5

AVIE AV2434

Contemporary composer symphonic showcase that’s full of electric energy

Anna Clyne’s zappy handling of the symphony orchestra, full of electroacoustic elasticity as the beautiful booklet note spells out, has made her a safe bet in the delivery of orchestral showpieces. For example, Masquerade – the work that opened the Last Night of the Proms in 2013, in the recording heard here. It’s good to hear this restless orchestral firework right next to The Midnight Hour, which has the same urgent drive but tempers it.

The two other orchestra-only works here, Night Ferry and <<rewind<<, similarly thrash out one mood or stick in one groove, perhaps flipping to one opposite state for passing contrast. Clyne’s music always does interesting things on the surface and is more intuitive than architectural. Some of its gestures feel frustratingly off-the-shelf (the furious mechanisms of The Seamstress and the scaled storms of Night Ferry), while entire works can feel as though they’re missing something bigger – internal revelation or even external performance (a ballet, a film).

Of primary interest to readers of The Strad is The Seamstress, a concerto for violin and speaker reciting Yeats’s poem. It is best described, as the booklet does, as a series of visions – a Scheherazade-like piece with an equivalent narrative weave. There’s the hint of passacaglia that feels underexploited but a strikingly beautiful harmonic sequence in the second half under the line ‘I made my coat a song’ that gets right under the skin. Koh approaches the solo violin part with the element of shamanism it needs. Quibbles and reservations elsewhere, but The Seamstress is a resonant piece that hits upon something. Sound differs across these five BBC recordings but is consistently present and clear.

ANDREW MELLOR

ROMANTIC DREAMS FARRENC Piano Quintet no.1 in A minor op.30 SAINT-SAËNS Piano Quintet in A minor op.14 Ironwood

ABC CLASSICS ABC4819887

Period-instrument ensemble plays French repertoire with sensitivity

Featuring a restored 1869 Parisfactory Érard concert grand piano and ‘period’ stringed instruments, Ironwood’s historically informed interpretations of these mid-19thcentury piano quintets are outcomes of meticulous research. They draw effectively on performing practices described in relevant pedagogical treatises and preserved on early recordings, including some by Saint-Saëns himself.

Scholar-pianist Neal Peres Da Costa predominates in both works, his contribution reflecting the virtuoso pianism of their composers and the articulated precision and asynchronistic performing style of that time.

He meets head-on the various technical and expressive challenges, particularly in the Farrenc’s opening movement, taken more steadily than prescribed, and in the Saint-Saëns’

Presto, scarred slightly by some heaviness and unevenness of touch.

The string players enjoy some moments of solo prominence, notably in the slow movements and in the finale of the Saint-Saëns, and add appropriate, if intentionally reserved, vibrato and portamento; however, they are often too distant in the balance, especially when the piano is in its higher registers or plays repeated fortissimo chords, as in the Farrenc’s Adagio.

The recording is otherwise spacious and clear, and these artists are commendably sensitive to harmonic, phrasing and structural detail, performing with unanimity throughout and introducing subtle rubato, accentuation and tempo modification to enhance expression.

ROBIN STOWELL

HAYDN String Quartets op.74 TRAD Folk Music from Scotland Maxwell Quartet

LINN CKD641

Another magical melding of Haydn and Scottish music from the Maxwells

For all those who enjoyed the Maxwell Quartet’s widely acclaimed 2019 debut album of Haydn’s op.71 quartets punctuated by Scottish folk music it’s time to celebrate, because the follow-up is just as good.

A true sequel, it picks up where the first album left off by giving us the three op.74 quartets (part of the same set of six as op.71, which Haydn wrote after his 1793 London visit and then split into two opuses which he sold to separate publishers), punctuated by further Scottish fare. On a programming front it’s just as magical. Take the way the hurdygurdy imitations of no.1’s finale immediately find their echo in the ensuing Coilsfield House’s opening bagpipe drone.

Likewise, the Maxwell’s playing style itself creates further echoes everywhere. On the one hand there’s the rustic edge the players bring to no.1’s opening forte chords, before quickly re-entering the drawing room. On the other, there’s the crisp polish of even the folkiest inflections in their Scottish music. There’s also just the right element of theatre, as heard to fabulous effect over the first movement of no.3 ‘The Rider’, with its cleverly employed rubato and sharply defined dynamic contrasts. In short, this is a treat.

CHARLOTTE GARDNER

PAGANINI 24 Caprices op.1; Caprice d’Adieu in E major Ning Feng (violin)

CHANNEL CLASSICS CCS 43221

Stunning virtuosity from a violinist who holds a musical universe in his hands

This disc, containing Paganini playing that drives every other performance out of my mind while I am listening to it, makes me a Ning Feng fan. The Berlin-based Chinese violinist, whose teachers included Hu Weimin, Hu Kun and Antje Weithaas, was 37 and clearly at his peak when he made it in January 2020.

Ning’s mastery of the technical difficulties is so complete that he can concentrate on the narrative, poetic operatic content of each piece. I have never before been reminded, in no.2, of the barking dog in Vivaldi’s ‘Spring’. The ‘Once upon a time’ opening of no.4, before Paganini’s Byronic hero is off on his adventures, is beautifully realised. No.6 is spine-tingling. A bel canto aria is made of no.7.

No.9 is a poem, while no.10 could accompany the antics of Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton. The laughter in no.13 is really sinister.

Horns in no.14 and fanfares in no.17 are literally bold as brass. No.22 is a splendid song with coloratura interlude and no.23 features heroic declamation.

No. 24 is lighter than usual, the left-hand pizzicato in Variation 9 amazing. And that is not all: as an encore, Ning gives us the Caprice d’Adieu which Paganini wrote for Eduard Eliason, a carefree goodbye like Schubert’s Die Taubenpost at the end of Schwanengesang.

Ning is beautifully recorded by Jared Sacks in the Remonstrantse Kerk, Renswoude: the 2017 Samuel Zygmuntowicz fiddle rings out with an instant, hair-trigger response.

TULLY POTTER

BRITISH MUSIC FOR STRINGS I PARRY An English Suite ELGAR Swinnerton’s Dream (arr. Kunstovny) JACOB A Symphony for Strings Südwestdeutsches Kammerorchester Pforzheim/Douglas Bostock

CPO 555 382-2

Welcome start to a new series of 20th-century British string music

There are few more unfairly neglected yet deeply rewarding areas of the repertoire than British string music, which makes this new series, expertly annotated by Lewis Foreman, especially welcome. The 14-strong

Pforzheim ensemble under renowned British conductor Douglas Bostock play with affectionate warmth, tonal lustre and glowing precision, captured in immaculately balanced, atmospheric sound, notable for its extended bass clarity.

Gordon Jacob was a remarkably gifted musician, who could seemingly turn his hand to anything with the same degree of phenomenal expertise, as witness the three-movement A Symphony for Strings, composed in 1943 for the Boyd Neel Orchestra.

Typically neo-Classical in impulse, Jacob imbues his material with a humanity and stylistic imprimatur that goes way beyond ‘new-wine-inold-bottles’ generic patterning.

Jacob made an expert transcription of Elgar’s Organ Sonata, something that double bass player Hans Kunstovny was unaware of when in 2006 he arranged it for string orchestra as Swinnerton’s Dream (a reference to the original dedicatee of the Sonata). For those frustrated by the clouded resonance from which the glorious original almost invariably emerges, this fine performance will have the impact of a fresh discovery.

Hubert Parry’s An English Suite is the best-known work here, and Bostock and his expert band of players make the most of its stylistic reappropriations, while retaining an emotional equanimity that creates a powerful sense of structural cohesion.

JULIAN HAYLOCK

SCHUBERT Violin Sonatas: in D major D384, in A minor D385, in A major D574 ‘Grand Duo’; Rondo in B minor D895

Ariadne Daskalakis (violin)

Paolo Giacometti (fortepiano)

BIS-2373 (SACD)

The second and final instalment of period-instrument Schubert is a delight

The 19th-century vibrato–cantabile tradition was once so prevalent that no matter what music one was playing, teachers would be on the lookout for the dreaded ‘still’ left hand. Even before the bow made contact with the instrument, it was widely considered good practice to get the left-hand vibrating in advance and keep it going beyond the end of each phrase, even when the bow had been lifted away. I mention this because even when played with such exquisite control and subtlety as by Ariadne Daskalakis, those of us of a certain age might still recall cries of ‘Vibrato, vibrato, vibrato!’ when experiencing the crystal-clear opening phrases of the ever-popular D major Sonata D384.

This is the interpretative-stylistic key that unlocks the door to this second (final) instalment in Schubert’s complete works for violin and keyboard. Rather than anachronistically treating these magical scores as embryonic Brahms or Franck, Daskalakis and Paolo Giacometti trace the music back to its Mozartian origins. As a result, one is more aware than usual of Schubert gently pushing the instruments of the period towards new expressive horizons. At virtually every turn the ear registers differences in balance, projection, tone, articulation, colour and (of course) vibrato when compared with performances on a modern set-up. The performers’ velvety, gently cushioned sound world is matched by radiant engineering that creates the beguiling impression of salon intimacy.

JULIAN HAYLOCK

SHOSTAKOVICH Cello Concertos nos.1 and 2

Marc Coppey (cello) Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra/Lawrence Foster

AUDITE 97.777

Fierce playing captures all the brilliance and brutality of Shostakovich’s music

Marc Coppey brings spectacular virtuosity and electrifying tension to these performances. The opening of the First Concerto grabs you by the collar and trawls you vividly through the bitter eloquence of Shostakovich’s writing. We are on the edge of our seats, the tempo forging ahead with brittle and brilliant orchestral playing. But it’s not only searing intensity. The ensuing Moderato has poignancy and beautifully lyrical playing, before the eerie opening resurfaces in ghostly harmonics. The cadenza is compelling with convincing dynamics and exaggerated paired slurs that are all but trudging. The sizzling finale soon holds centre stage, rhythmic and powerful to the last note.

The Second Concerto is more elusive in character, but Coppey and Foster generate a vivid narrative in this warm recording. They shape the opening melodies with lyricism, conveying pain in the awkward angular intervals. A theatrical gesture characterises the Allegretto opening, like a visitor ominously knocking on the door. A sense of menace is never far from the surface with brutal glissandos savagely tearing through the texture. The finale parodies the military in the horn parts, vividly echoed in the cello cadenza. The irony is deftly defined by Coppey, who makes the biting double-stops and octaves overtly precise. This is an utterly compelling tale told by masterful storytellers.

JOANNE TALBOT

STANFORD String Quintets: no.1 in F major op.85, no.2 in C minor op.86; Three Intermezzi for cello and piano op.131

Members of the Dante and Endellion Quartets, Richard Jenkinson (cello) 1

SOMM RECORDINGS SOMMCD 0623

Hybrid ensemble presents some rare gems and a debut recording

There are lush textures in Stanford’s quintets, which are performed with rich, warm tone by this hybrid ensemble and aided by close recording in a resonant church acoustic. There is busy, inventive writing in the first movement of the F major Quintet, made clear by sensitive playing, with some fine prominent viola cameos (from either Yuko Inoue or Garfield Jackson).

Stanford’s love of Ireland inhabits the Andante, which slips into melancholy musing, with keening melodies, and the opening of the finale is restless, sometimes halting, streaked with quick, light arpeggios. The leader Krysia Osostowicz is eloquent here, before launching into a jig, crisp and high-spirited, underpinned by Richard Jenkinson’s full-bodied cello.

This first recording of the C minor Second Quintet is overdue, particularly given the quality revealed here. In the broad first movement the players weave together its considerable narrative tension, its moments of lyrical release and feeling of continuous flow. After the constant invention of the Andante, there is sparkling playing of the fleet Allegro molto, which is almost Mendelssohnian in its lightness. The Finale grows to an ultimately grand and satisfying resolution.

Between the two quintets Jenkinson gives elegant, sophisticated accounts of the Three Intermezzi, moving easily between turbulence and gentle melody.

TIM HOMFRAY

TÜÜR Lost Prayers; Synergie; Lichttürme; Fata Morgana Signum Quartet, Tanja Tetzlaff (cello)

ECM 481 9540

Baltic composer’s music yields heartfelt and often astonishingly good moments

This is a delicious piece of programming, in which all four pieces by Erkki-Sven Tüür are intensely structurally related while none are copies or rehashes. The earliest is Fata Morgana (2002), in which spread-upward arpeggios on the piano form pillars between which violin and cello achieve something like a trance state. There are moments of playful and almost rhetorical serialism – a tone row included – and Baltic pain etched in typical parallelmotion harmony.

With more gossamer textures to begin with, Synergie (2010) for violin and cello explores ascending journeysin-miniature towards the same chord while the conversation in between becomes ever more intense. Lichttürme (2017) for piano trio forensically examines the same harmonic vector with Messiaen-like colours and rhythmic devices. Tüür’s second string quartet Lost Prayers (2012) uses the lurching, grinding chords that open as yet more structural pillars. It’s clear enough when those lost prayers are found, and what a beautiful moment it proves to be.

Apart from some plain phraseology in Fata Morgana, these performances are heartfelt but frequently reach something else.

In ensemble playing, matching is harder than reacting and some of the mirror-playing from Florian Donderer and Tanja Tetzlaff in Synergie is astonishing. The harmonic balance of the string quartet’s thick chords is demonstration-level. All the other various techniques are there, but so is a rare sense of marinated feeling. The special acoustic of the Sendesaal in Bremen, excellently captured, surely helps.

ANDREW MELLOR

PLAISIRS ILLUMINÉS VERESS Musica concertante per 12 archi BARTÓK Duo Pizzicato GINASTERA Concerto per corde op.33 LIGETI Baladă şi joc KURTÁG Jelek VI (Signs, Games and Messages) COLL Les Plaisirs Illuminés1 ; LalulaLied Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin)

Sol Gabetta (cello) 1 Camerata Bern/Francisco Coll

ALPHA 580

Breathtaking vividness and attention to detail illuminate this collection

The word ‘vivid’ might be something of a cliché in classical CD reviews, but it hardly gets close to describing these fiercely committed, microscopically detailed, grab-your-attention-anddon’t-let-go performances from violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Camerata Bern, where she’s artistic partner. That breathtaking vividness is most clearly on display in the 2018 double concerto by Spanish-born Francisco Coll that gives the disc its title: inspired by a Dalí painting of the same name, it’s a hallucinatory showpiece that veers wildly between dream and nightmare, and draws impeccable, high-precision playing from Kopatchinskaja and her cosoloist Sol Gabetta, both beautifully supple in their responsiveness to Coll’s fantastical invention.

Kopatchinskaja kicks the disc off with a thoroughly persuasive account of Sándor Veress’s Musica concertante for 12 archi, written for Camerata Bern in 1966, and offering plenty of opportunities for the ensemble’s soloists to shine, which they do spectacularly.

And it’s hard not to get completely caught up in the heart-on-sleeve expressionism of Ginastera’s Concerto per corde of the same year, from its sinister, volatile Scherzo to its thrillingly energetic Finale, full of bite and furious energy – and the ideal vehicle for Kopatchinskaja’s intense approach.

Smaller chamber pieces by Kurtág, Bartók and Ligeti provide moments of respite from the frenzied invention around them, though Coll’s LalulaLied – written for Kopatchinskaja to vocalise as well as play – seems a little arch.

Nonetheless, this is a thrilling disc, demanding and somewhat draining both physically and emotionally, but it makes a strong case for these lesser-known works in performances that frankly couldn’t be much more dramatic. Recorded sound is appropriately close and detailed.

DAVID KETTLE

WALTON Piano Quartet; Toccata; Two Pieces for violin and piano; Violin Sonata Matthew Jones (violin) Sarah-Jane Bradley (viola) Tim Lowe (cello) Annabel Thwaite (piano)

NAXOS 8.573892

Unmissable album of confident works from the composer’s youth

What an angry young man William Walton must have been, and what excellent company, bristling with talent, ideas and a bumptious confidence that took him from Oldham to Oxford, where library scores of Schoenberg and Bartók struck him like a thunderbolt. Already, though, the teenage Piano Quartet demonstrates prodigious assurance, even in the much-revised finale (Walton continued to struggle with the ending) and, led by Matthew Jones, these performers conclusively establish the individuality of his early works.

Compared with these players, even the team of experienced Walton performers on Meridian, led by the composer and pianist John McCabe, sounds hectic and relentless in the Quartet’s scherzo, which opens out into a big nobilmente melody that is one of the few giveaways on this album of the composer’s Englishness. From four years later, the Toccata for violin and piano is a cadenzarhapsody of intense and fully formed personality unconfined by national borders (or the niceties of violinistic idiom), to which Jones and his pianist wife Annabel Thwaite bring terrific energy and conviction.

In an extended booklet note on the Naxos website, Jones discusses the character of the Violin Sonata as revealed through the autograph score and recent manuscript edition, and accordingly lays off the intense vibrato of Menuhin’s recording. His rubato also imparts an improvisatory freedom and Szymanowski-like rapture to the first movement that connects it back to the Toccata, though (as with much of Walton’s later work) there is a pervasive tone of melancholy lyricism which has muted or at least stifled the bracing contrasts of the earlier piece. Taken in sum, however, the album is essential listening for Waltonians old and new.

PETER QUANTRILL

WEINBERG String Quartets: no.2 in G major op.3/145, no.5 in B flat major op.27, no.8 in C major op.66

Arcadia Quartet

CHANDOS CHAN 20158

Eloquent album that ought to shift this neglected music into the mainstream

The Arcadia Quartet is not the first ensemble to tackle the 17 quartets of Mieczysław Weinberg on disc (the Danel Quartet recorded them over a decade ago), but I am tempted to predict that this new venture, of which this is the first volume, could be the one that shifts this neglected music into the mainstream.

No.2, composed in 1939–40 and revised in 1989 (hence the double opus number), was still supposedly a student exercise, but one that in its maturity and quick-wittedness may well have inspired Shostakovich to resume his own exploration of the medium. No.5 (1945) sees Weinberg adopting a more serenade-like form – indeed its finale has that very title, while no.8 (1959) is a more compact single-movement structure lasting a mere 15 minutes.

From the cheery opening of the Second Quartet to the more rollercoaster emotional journey of the Eighth, this is music that speaks to one from a first hearing, and the Arcadia players, even more than their earlier rivals, convey complete identification with the idiom, from its fresh-faced charm to its poignant ironies.

These are living, breathing performances, even if made in the studio (the Potton Hall recording captures everything with warmth and clarity), and make one impatient for the next instalment.

MATTHEW RYE

MIRRORS: 21ST-CENTURY AMERICAN PIANO TRIOS 

COHEN Around the Cauldron MOYA Ghostwritten Variations HIGDON Love Sweet1 COOPER An den Wassern zu Babel CIUPIŃSKI The Black Mirror BELIMOVA Titania and her Suite Lysander Piano Trio, Sarah Shafer (soprano) 1

FIRST HAND RECORDS FHR111

Musical adventures from a New York piano trio that yield evocative moments

A diet of Haydn, Schubert and Ravel evidently doesn’t satisfy the adventurous appetites of the New York-based Lysander Trio, who have recorded six commissioned pieces to celebrate their tenth birthday.

Shortest and sweetest of them is Titania and her Suite by Sofia Belimova; a glittering two-minute sketch of nocturnal magic with not a note wasted. By way of Shakespearean contrast, the campedup slides, Gothic sul ponticello and circular motion (stirring the pot?) of Gilad Cohen’s Around the Cauldron outstay their welcome some way before the end of its seven brief movements.

Most substantial, offering both immediate appeal and lasting pleasure, is Love Sweet, Jennifer Higdon’s setting of five Sapphic love poems by Amy Lowell. Both poetry and music access realms of sudden rapture and private delight, though Sarah Shafer’s distance from the microphone (or is it her diction?) requires study of the printed text.

Though no words are sung in William David Cooper’s instrumental translation of Psalm 137 (By the waters of Babylon, or more specifically Luther’s German version), the booklet should also have printed them to aid appreciation of his naturalistic, verse-by-verse setting.

If the six not-so-disparate works are linked, it is through limpid, near-tonal or neo-tonal evocations of other worlds, to most haunting effect in the Ghostwritten Variations of Reinaldo Moya (unrelated to Beethoven’s trio) and The Black Mirror by Jakub Ciupiński, whose haunted minimalism brings the album to an unquiet close. Each shade and flicker is precisely registered by both musicians and engineers though there is (as with every piece here save Higdon’s) a lingering sense of the music serving some illustrative purpose, like a soundtrack to an unmade movie.

PETER QUANTRILL

SONGS OF COMFORT AND HOPE 

Music by Rachmaninoff, Dvořák, Mendelssohn, Grieg, Korngold, Bloch, Sdraulig, Parra, Arlen and Poulenc Yo-Yo Ma (cello) Kathryn Stott (piano)

SONY CLASSICAL 19439822372

Gorgeously played album of serene favourites from a masterful duo

Back in April 2020, with most of the world in lockdown, Yo-Yo Ma started posting videos of himself playing short pieces in his home, hoping to bring comfort in the way he knew best. From his spontaneous project has grown this release with long-term recital partner Kathryn Stott – here are two seasoned musicians with nothing to prove, just communicating their love of the music in a totally relaxed manner.

A peaceful, reflective mood encompasses the entire disc. All 21 tracks are songs (‘little time capsules of emotion’, Stott and Ma call them in the booklet), many in evocatively reimagined versions. They range from traditional English (Scarborough Fair, in an imaginative arrangement by Stephen Hough), Irish (The Last Rose of Summer seen through Britten’s eyes) or American (O Shenandoah), through art songs like Bloch’s Jewish Song and Rachmaninoff’s Zdes’ khorosho to popular favourites Moscow Nights, Gracias a la Vida and We’ll Meet Again. This disc is a joy from start to finish, enhanced by radiant recorded sound, but for me Mariettas Lied from Korngold’s Die tote Stadt, with Ma’s exquisite playing in the high registers almost unbearably moving, and Poulenc’s Les chemins de l’amour, with its ecstatic portamentos up to the highest reaches, shone particularly brightly.

JANET BANKS