RECORDINGS

BEETHOVEN ‘Triple’ Concerto op.56; Piano Trio op.36 (Symphony no.2)

Isabelle Faust (violin)

Jean-Guihen Queyras (cello)

Alexander Melnikov (piano) Freiburg Baroque Orchestra/Pablo Heras-Casado

HARMONIA MUNDI HMM 902419

High spirits and swagger characterise these splendid performances

The big, muscular sound of the period instruments in the opening tutti of Beethoven’s ‘Triple’ Concerto sets the tone for this performance.

The solo string players shape their melodies with beautiful eloquent playing, with Isabelle Faust ringing splendidly in the upper register and Jean-Guihen Queyras mellow underneath. In the passagework the three of them have rhythmic precision and a certain swagger, which they sometimes need to hold their own against the orchestra.

Queyras and Faust perform the opening melody of the Largo with finesse, and at the end of their lyrical account Queyras’s acceleration on the G leads straight into the finale (notable only because others, unaccountably, don’t, stopping dead at the double bar just where Beethoven marks attacca).

There are touches of humour in this movement, and boastfulness in the A minor episode, with a delightfully nimble final Allegro before the barnstorming finish. The orchestra under Pablo Heras-Casado is on splendid form.

Ironically, without an orchestra, but now playing an orchestral work, the three players really show their class as chamber music players in an arrangement of Beethoven’s Second Symphony, with much vigour and high spirits. The recorded sound is close with a touch of resonance, and burnished in the concerto.

TIM HOMFRAY

PRISM III BEETHOVEN String Quartet no.14 in C sharp minor op.131 BARTÓK String Quartet no.1 BACH Fugue in C sharp minor BWV849 (arr. Förster) Danish Quartet

ECM 2563

Adventurous quartet finds connections between pioneering chamber works

In their disarmingly frank booklet note, the Danish Quartet players confess to having been quite confused by Beethoven’s late quartets as young musicians. Indeed, this third disc in a series delving into those pioneering works feels like a journey of discovery, not only in its repertoire – with Beethoven’s op.131 set alongside Bartók’s First Quartet, on which its influence is clear, as well as a Bach fugue, which exerted its own influence – but also in the Danish players’ questioning accounts.

Their Beethoven is expertly shaped and articulated, somewhat cool, but delivered with a clarity of intent and unity of voice that both feel like the result of a long consideration of the music and its meanings. Their opening fugue is beautifully austere though somewhat foursquare, but it’s shot through with a remarkable sustained intensity, and following slightly hesitant extroversion in the second and fifth movements, they manage to make the work’s gruff conclusion both brusque and vulnerable. It doesn’t make for easy listening but it’s thrillingly daring, and it takes the listener on the same journey into the work’s complexities and contradictions that the Danish players have evidently taken.

Their Bartók First Quartet is just as gripping, again with rhythms as precise as clockwork and a wonderfully liquid dance of a second movement, although a rather

gritted-teeth finale, and they deliver the Bach C sharp minor Fugue with a strong sense of forward movement. This is a brilliantly compelling disc, captured in close, authentic sound.

DAVID KETTLE

BRAHMS Complete Hungarian Dances arranged for cello and piano (arr. Piatti)

Guido Schiefen (cello)

Markus Kreul (piano)

MDG 9032202-6

Entertaining and virtuosic cello-andpiano arrangements of Brahms dances

Alfredo Piatti was keen to put the cello on an equal virtuosic footing with the violin. So those who relish a serious technical workout in high thumb position with double-stops galore need look no further than these entertaining arrangements –a much more satisfying alternative to the usual studies. Guido Schiefen bravely delivers the relentless challenges of this music with fluency, and the performers have a sure sense of the rubato required to bring these dances to life.

However, I have a few reservations regarding the overall effectiveness of these works in this particular recording. Although Piatti certainly utilises the full range of the cello, either the high writing seems a little strained, or the bass register sounds too low and grumbling in relation to the piano. This issue is compounded by the fact that the piano writing is rather thick and needs particular care in terms of balance with the cello.

Unfortunately, the resonant and closely recorded piano dominates proceedings far too much here, reducing the effectiveness of the dynamic contrasts these players can deliver. Delicate passages on the cello are particularly at risk.

Admittedly there are a few dances, such as the 1st and 14th, that work better than some others, leading me to think that the problems lie much more with this particular arrangement than with the performers.

JOANNE TALBOT

BRAHMS Violin Concerto

BEETHOVEN Violin Concerto

Gil Shaham (violin)

The Knights/Eric Jacobsen

CANARY CLASSICS CC20

New interpretations bring a youthful sense of discovery 20 years on

Gil Shaham’s DG recording of the Brahms Concerto has long been a favourite for its uncanny combination of thrust and soul. Two decades on, his new recording with Brooklyn collective The Knights for orchestral backing, feels like the work of a younger man. The sweet tone Shaham gets from his 1719 Stradivari remains as distinctive as ever, but is more prone to tweeting than singing in some of the first-movement figurations. The orchestra’s mobile accompaniment extends to the slow movement, perhaps the most successful of all in its avoidance of nostalgia and discovery of something else as a valid replacement. Still, some soul is missing in this more classical reading, which just occasionally feels impatient.

There’s a penetrating booklet note full of technical insight by Styra Avins, which illustrates the far weightier technical challenges in the Brahms in comparison to the Beethoven, and often in apparently slower music. The essay is worth paying for by those considering playing these pieces, but the disc is made truly competitive by a highly refreshing performance of the Beethoven Concerto. It’s here that the close but clear recorded sound serves the music best.

Again, Eric Jacobsen’s orchestra is alert (and likewise, in a mobile Larghetto with delectable lightness) and in the outer movements you hear the conversational exchange between its upper and lower parts. Shaham’s tone can cross from the sweet to the incisive, but he lays the mechanics of this music out with rare clarity, finding meaning in everything without feeling the need to project overt expression onto it. His first-movement cadenza is grainy, his pianissimos in the Larghetto intense but secure, and his finale full of patience.

ANDREW MELLOR

BRAHMS Sonatas for viola and piano op.120; Nachtigall op.97 no.1; Wiegenlied op.49 no.4; Zwei Gesänge op.91

Antoine Tamestit (viola)

Cédric Tiberghien (piano)

Matthias Goerne (baritone)

HARMONIA MUNDI HMM 902652

Sonatas, songs and lullabies full of delicious autumnal colour

The adjective ‘autumnal’ is often employed to describe Brahms’s late pieces, and the present performances seem veritably to demand its use, imbued as they are with the darkly glowing colours of a late 19thcentury Bechstein piano, in which Antoine Tamestit’s 1672 ‘Mahler’ Stradivari is cosily embedded. Cédric Tiberghien’s sensitive touch prompts some seductively velouté sonorities from the viola, but Tamestit can also lend his tone a distinct reediness at the appropriate moments. His vibrato is most imaginatively varied, and both players are very good at Brahms’s trademark cross-rhythms, which they put across with unassuming naturalness.

www.thestrad.com

I can’t help wishing that Tamestit had occasionally referred to the original (clarinet) versions of the sonatas; Brahms was never completely happy with the viola parts as published, deeming them ‘awkward and unsatisfying’ on account of their many (unnecessary) transpositions.

Tempos are on the fast side throughout, disconcertingly so in the ‘sostenuto’ section of the Second Sonata’s scherzo, which loses solemnity at this quick pace but, conversely, comes across as more related to the movement’s main section.

Brahms obviously envisaged a female singer for his Gesänge op.91, written for Joseph Joachim and his wife. While in our enlightened times there is no reason why a man shouldn’t be singing a cradle song, for all of Matthias Goerne’s artistry, viola and baritone can get in each other’s way when operating at the same pitch. The two shorter songs, performed on the viola, make for delightful interludes.

CARLOS MARÍA SOLARE

BRITTEN Solo Cello Suites nos.1–3, Tema Sacher

Jakob Spahn (cello)

HÄNSSLER CLASSIC HC 20063

Rostropovich’s spirit looms large in these personal interpretations

Every cellist worth their salt seems to have the urge to record the Bach Cello Suites, yet Britten’s aren’t faring too badly either, gaining a healthy discography from Rostropovich onwards, especially in recent years from younger musicians. The latest contender is the Berlin-born player Jakob Spahn, a pupil of Geringas and Bohórquez who has been solo cellist of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich for a decade already, despite his relative youth. His playing here is fresh and engaging, taking us deeply into Britten’s sound world, which at the same time is intimately personal and references everything from Bach himself to Russian chant.

Spahn is barely fazed by the technical challenges of Britten’s cello writing, though the notorious ‘Bordone’ of the First Suite, with its drone, melodic flurries and left-hand pizzicato all in play at once, doesn’t have quite the smooth command of Rostropovich, yet the sense of danger actually enhances the music’s expressive ambiguity here. Elsewhere, he makes the more intractable Second Suite sing out and finds the poignancy in the Third Suite’s lingering sense of valediction without ever sentimentalising.

The Munich Künstlerhaus recording has a nice bloom and conveys the full range of Spahn’s tonal resources, which are considerable.

MATTHEW RYE

COLERIDGE-TAYLOR Piano Quintet; Clarinet Quintet; Fantasiestücke

Catalyst Quartet, Stewart Goodyear (piano) Anthony McGill (clarinet)

AZICA RECORDS ACD-71336

Beguiling accounts of striking early works by black British Victorian composer

Dating from the mid-1890s when Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was still a student at London’s Royal College of Music, given the time, place and tutor (Charles Villiers Stanford), it is hardly surprising that the influences which first spring to mind in these remarkably accomplished works are Brahms and (especially) Dvořák.

Remarkably, Coleridge-Taylor was only 18 when he composed his Piano Quintet, by which time he had mastered both structure and expression in the central European tradition to a remarkable degree. The five Fantasiestücke for string quartet and Clarinet Quintet followed just two years later, yet there is already a more profound sense of independent expression. Texturally and generically Coleridge-Taylor’s creative sources remain unmistakable, yet the shape of his ideas and the way he presents them are more strikingly personal.

Both guest musicians – gifted young pianist–composer Stewart Goodyear and New York Philharmonic principal clarinettist Anthony McGill – acquit themselves with distinction, playing with a mellifluous ease and beguiling tonal allure that fits handin-glove with these enchanting early scores. Most crucially, the Catalyst Quartet creates a palpable sense of fresh discovery, of musical joy in the process of bringing these neglected scores to life, to rival even the Nash Ensemble on Hyperion. These fine performances have been captured in meticulously balanced, radiant sound.

JULIAN HAYLOCK

www.thestrad.com

ELGAR Violin Concerto; Violin Sonata

Renaud Capuçon (violin) Stephen Hough (piano) London Symphony Orchestra/Simon Rattle

ERATO 0190295112820

Gallic elegance brings a fresh perspective to these introspective works

Elgar’s Violin Concerto is an elusive interpretative butterfly that sounds at its happiest when the soloist is communing inwardly. Play every note for all its worth and the structure can easily topple under the emotional weight; play it straight and its stream-of-consciousness thematic patterning loses any sense of organic cohesion. Renaud Capuçon navigates this tricky musical terrain with a disarming sureness of touch, his silvery tonal purity combining with a tantalising Gallic restraint that captures the very essence of Elgar’s nobilmente creative personality. And when the notes start flying, he retains absolute musical composure, most notably in the finale’s extended cadenza-reminiscences, which emerge as gentle nostalgic flutterings free of self-conscious pyrotechnical chicanery.

Simon Rattle and the LSO, fanned out around and behind him in strict, socially distanced formation, match Capuçon every inch of the way, with playing of glowing sensitivity that focuses on poetic integrity rather than Straussian bravado. Producer Stephen Johns and engineer Jonathan Stokes somehow create an integrated sound world that at times suggests the soloist and orchestra communing with one another on a chamber scale.

The Violin Sonata is another work that can easily become suffocated by shows of aching autumnal nostalgia, so it comes as a revelation to hear it played, as here, with a Fauré-like elegant poise and sophistication.

Stephen Hough offsets Capuçon’s inspired melodic tracery and gentle musings with a captivating array of tonal colours and liquid phrasing.

JULIAN HAYLOCK

MUSIC FROM PROUST’S SALONS HAHN Variations chantantes sur un air ancien FAURÉ Romance op.69; Élégie op.24 SAINT-SAËNS Cello Sonata no.1 in C minor op.32 DUPARC Lamento (Cello Sonata in A minor) HOLMÈS Récitatif et Chant (arr. Isserlis) FRANCK Cello Sonata in A major (arr. Delsart)

Steven Isserlis (cello) Connie Shih (piano)

BIS BIS-2522

Isserlis and Shih’s Proustian programme is full of spontaneity and lyrical delight

This enterprising programme focuses on the contemporary music enjoyed by French novelist Marcel Proust in the salons of high society in fin-desiècle Paris. Its two-course menu begins with music by Saint-Saëns and his pupils, including a deftly characterised variation set by Proust’s one-time lover, Reynaldo Hahn, on a melody by Cavalli. Fauré’s lyrical Romance, eloquently shaped, follows along with his poignant Élégie, infused with a kaleidoscope of colours from Steven Isserlis’s 1726 ‘Marquis de Corberon’ Stradivari. Isserlis and Connie Shih’s powerfully

projected rendition of Saint-Saëns’s First Sonata includes both its original finale and replacement and showcases their technical agility, sonorous lyricism and impressive unanimity of interpretative thought.

Franck and his pupils provide the substance for the second course, commencing with a moving interpretation of another elegiac movement, from Duparc’s unpublished Cello Sonata, and Isserlis’s free arrangement of excerpts from Holmès’s cantata La vision de la reine, sensitively dispatched. Accounts of Jules Delsart’s arrangement for cello of Franck’s Violin Sonata often fail to convince, but not this one.

With their technical mastery, perceived empathy and profound musical insights, these performers skilfully balance the work’s moments of drama, rapturous grandeur and repose with impressive control and a winning spontaneity. Recording quality and balance are exemplary.

ROBIN STOWELL

HAYDN Six String Quartets op.76 London Haydn Quartet

HYPERION CDA 66335 (2 CDS)

Supple yet gentle approach to Haydn’s op.76 makes for a winning formula

Anyone who has yet to discover the special qualities of the London Haydn Quartet’s ongoing Haydn series on period instruments – opp.9, 17, 20, 33, 50, 54/55, 64 and 71/74 are already available – should investigate this outstanding release without delay. If the Chiaroscuro Quartet (BIS) completely rethinks Haydn’s dazzling invention with micro-inflected, fleet-fingered, sleight-of-hand transparency, the London Haydn Quartet combines the best of the old and the new with an unhurried spontaneity and enchanted affection that are deeply satisfying, captured in velvety, tactile sound, suggesting the open ambience of a chamber room at Esterháza.

The polar opposite of the bright and breezy, generic interpretative approach favoured by most ensembles, the LHQ plays with a gentle temporal fluidity and supple phrasal nuancing that creates the delightful impression of the music being composed as it goes along. Rarely has the pedal-pointed opening of the D major sounded so ravishingly alluring, nor the playful asides of the G major so beguiling, with the emphasis placed firmly on deftly articulated cantabile elegance rather than racy, ear-catching sonorities.

Theirs is essentially a gentle, intimately chamber-scale approach, avoiding pseudo-orchestral outbursts in the impassioned D minor ‘Fifths’, while exchanging emotionally monochrome, furrowed-brow tempestuousness for a captivatingly unforced soundscape, free of hackneyed interpretative rhetoric. Highly recommended.

JULIAN HAYLOCK

RÓŻYCKI Violin Concerto TCHAIKOVSKY Violin Concerto

Janusz Wawrowski (violin)

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/ Grzegorz Nowak

WARNER MUSIC POLAND 0190295191702

Rare Polish Romantic concerto performed with a Hollywood smile

The discovery here is a retro- Romantic violin concerto, written in the depths of the last world war by Ludomir Różycki (1884–1953) but lost until recently (see last issue’s Session Report). In operas such as Casanova and ballets such as Apollo and the Maiden, both recently revived, the composer’s stylish eclecticism is anchored by a fastidiously refined, Frenchaccented technique. As recorded here, the concerto is quite a witches’ brew: Wawrowski has edited the solo part, and a ‘team’ led by Ryszard Bryła is credited with the orchestration.

Somewhere along the way, Różycki has gone (or been abducted) to Hollywood; I prefer the more restrained touch of Zygmunt Rychert, editor and conductor of a previous recording. The unusual two-movement form encloses a rapturous Andante within a folksy Scherzo-finale; more tracking points would make this clear. Playing a 1685 Stradivari, Wawrowski lavishes gold-and-silver tone and octaves gleaming with a George Clooney smile on a piece which both his written introduction and playing place in the company of Korngold and Barber; impressive on its own terms, but is it Różycki?

Given more than a helping hand by the engineers, Wawrowski also lays it on thick in the Tchaikovsky, especially in a very broad opening movement outdoing even Mutter and Karajan (DG) for soulful communing. Neither soloist nor conductor shows an appetite for the operatic dialogue which Jansen and Barenboim (Decca) bring to the Canzonetta.

It’s the Wawrowski show, and while he accents the finale’s folk material with some polished charm, previous albums from the same label such as ‘Hidden Violin’ (2018 – including some Różycki) have done more justice to the music as well as the artist and his instrument.

www.thestrad.com

PETER QUANTRILL

SCHNITTKE Works for Violin and Piano: Suite in the Old Style; Polka; Tango (arr. Andriy Rakhmanin); Violin Sonata no.1; Madrigal in memoriam Oleg Kagan; Gratulationsrondo; Stille Nacht

Daniel Hope (violin)

Alexey Botvinov (piano)

DG 483 9234

Violinist spins poetry out of an all-Schnittke collection

Daniel Hope’s DG releases of late have followed the path of themed compilations – Belle Époque, My Tribute to Yehudi Menuhin, Escape to Paradise – so this all-Schnittke disc feels refreshingly substantial, and it reflects a good cross-section of Schnittke’s eclectic output.

Drawn from film scores, the Suite in the Old Style (like the Congratulatory Rondo, also on the disc) is mostly a straightforward rococo pastiche – and played as such, without quotation marks. There’s a different stylistic hijacking in the Tango and irreverence in the Polka, both of which Hope brings off with flair.

The balance between mischief and menace in the Polka also colours the second movement of the Violin Sonata no.1 (1963), the ‘meat’ of the disc. A twelve-tone work, Schnittke said it depicted ‘a tonal world with atonal highways’. Hope’s stratospheric harmonics at the close of the Largo are glassy and pristine but in the finale’s deconstruction of ‘La cucaracha’, and elsewhere, a less well-behaved approach would better fit this music of extremes.

Finely recorded, the disc ends with Stille Nacht, a noirish take on the popular Christmas carol. Most affecting, though, is another occasional piece, the Madrigal in memoriam Oleg Kagan. Its ultra-spare expression inspires Hope to explore elliptical, poetic and intensely unsettling realms.

EDWARD BHESANIA

THE GREAT VIOLINS, VOL. 4: GIROLAMO AMATI, 1629

VILSMAŸR Artificiosus Concentus pro Camera, Distributus Sex Partes, seu Partias à Violino Solo Con Basso Belle imitante

Peter Sheppard Skærved (violin)

ATHENE ATH 23210

Another enterprising pairing of a 17th-century violin and composer yields some gems

The zeal of Peter Sheppard Skærved seems to have no end: here he tackles the six ‘Partias’ by Johann Joseph Vilsmaÿr (1663–1722), who worked in Salzburg from 1689 and dedicated the 1715 set to the Archbishop.

The music is mostly in dance forms, some of them abstruse, such as Brunada and Canario; and usually very brief, almost like wisps of sound which vanish into thin air. The set divides naturally into two, with Partias 2, 4 and 6 ending in more substantial movements, respectively Ciaccona, Passacaglia and Aria Variata.

In his fulsome Latin dedication, Vilsmaÿr indicates that he composed the pieces in his private chamber, and PSS takes his cue from this idea. He seems quite taken with the thought of the composer virtually improvising the 56 movements, and tailors his interpretations accordingly.

Most of the time, it works. The Girolamo Amati violin from the Royal Academy of Music’s collection has a very bright tone –a 2010 ‘Biber-model’ bow by Antonio Airenti of Genoa is used – and on repeated hearings the pieces grow on me. I can imagine more resolute performances of certain pieces, such as the Passacaglia mentioned above, but my main feeling is gratitude that the Partias have been made available in this form.

TULLY POTTER

CELLOPERA

Operatic aria transcriptions by Mozart, Bellini, Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi1 , Puccini, Tchaikovsky, Wagner and Offenbach

Ophélie Gaillard (cello) Nahuel di Pierro (bass) 1 Morphing Chamber Orchestra/Frédéric Chaslin

APARTÉ AP248

Cellist takes centre stage to perform wordless operatic arias

Song transcriptions for cello have long been popular but operatic aria arrangements are less often heard in its repertoire. Prolific French–Swiss cellist Ophélie Gaillard has set out to put this to rights, recording a programme of her favourite opera arias, arranged for cello and orchestra.

The cello, whose sound is so often compared to the human voice, is surely best-placed of all instruments to make this succeed. There is wonderful music making and a full, warm recorded sound throughout as Gaillard does her best to ‘sculpt each word’ through the inflections of her bow. Her eloquent playing is at its most smooth and lyrical in Wagner’s ‘Song to the Evening Star’ from Tannhäuser; and Giulietta’s aria ‘O quante volte’ from Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi is a joy in this arrangement by conductor Chaslin, Gaillard playing the impassioned line on her Gofriller with a stateliness and breadth of expression, joined by the cello section in close harmony.

The only track to include a voice, the famous aria from Verdi’s Don Carlo when the solo cello dialogues with King Philip, highlighted for me the crucial element inevitably missing from purely instrumental interpretations of opera: the dramatic declamation of the words and the way the music and the singer’s performance reflects their meaning.

JANET BANKS

NORDIC RHAPSODY SINDING Suite im alten Stil op.10 STENHAMMAR Two Sentimental Romances op.28 

S IBELIUS 6 Pieces for violin and piano op.79 (excerpts)

NIELSEN Romance in D major for Violin and Piano

RAUTAVAARA Notturno e Danza for Violin and Piano

GRIEG Violin Sonata no.1 in F major op.8

Johan Dalene (violin)

Christian Ihle Hadland (piano)

BIS BIS-2560

Twenty-year-old artist’s second album looks north for inspiration

It’s a slightly curious experience reviewing young Swedish violinist Johan Dalene. On the one hand, the winner of the 2019 Nielsen Competition is still only 20 years old. Yet the assurance and maturity you’re hearing when his bow touches the strings is something else, hence the heads he turned with his debut recording of the Tchaikovsky and Barber concertos.

This recital celebrating his own part of the world, partnered by Norwegian pianist Christian Ihle Hadland, is no less successful. I didn’t know Christian Sinding’s Suite im alten Stil (1888) before now, with its dark, post-Grieg romance and virtuosic writing (you can tell that Sinding’s instrument was the violin), but now I’m wondering why not. Dalene brings bucketloads of drama, technical polish and musicality to its opening Presto’s rushing passagework – Hadland on high alert in the background – and then glowing strength of tone to its lyrical Adagio. Rautavaara’s Notturno and Danza (1993) is another inspired choice, Hadland shining in every sense of that word through his flowing extended opening solo, onto which an equally shining Dalene eventually glides.

The better-known works are just as satisfying, the Grieg sounding especially winsome under their combined fingertips – full of brilliantly managed dramatic gear shifts, and always with a fabulous sense of line and architecture. It’s accomplished, highly atmospheric stuff.

CHARLOTTE GARDNER

VIRTUOSO DANCES Works by Bartók, Stravinsky,

Piazzolla, Brahms, Wieniawski, Bazzini and Szymanowski

Linus Roth (violin) José Gallardo (piano)

EVIL PENGUIN EPRC0037

An upbeat collection of dances for violin and piano to raise the spirits

Conceived as an antidote to lockdown, Virtuoso Dances does what it says on the cover: it’s a nicely balanced selection combining dance influences and showmanship. But Munich-based, double ECHO Klassik-winning violinist Linus Roth takes a while to get going.

If Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances are ubiquitous, they also offer a range of folk inflections and plenty of interpretative scope – neither of which Roth seems to take particular pleasure in. The first dance is more Romantic than rustic and the Middle Eastern, mystical third sounds hesitant.

Characterisation can sometimes seem lacking in Stravinsky’s Divertimento too, with Roth tempering the chugging squeezebox effect of the ‘Dance suisse’ and the light caprice of the ‘Scherzo’. The four Brahms Hungarian Dances are also overall a little under-coloured.

But Piazzolla’s Le Grand Tango struts and smoulders, and in a pair of showpieces – Wieniawski’s Polonaise de concert and Bazzini’s La ronde des lutins – there’s more abandon, not least in the brisk (and accurate) bow-bouncing and left-hand pizzicatos of the latter. Szymanowski’s Nocturne and Tarantella op.28 makes for a more substantial finale, with the Nocturne’s evocative, perfumed air and Spanish flavour preceding a propulsive and spirited Tarantella.

The instruments are well captured across their ranges and this is an upbeat listen – if occasionally a little under-projected.

EDWARD BHESANIA

www.thestrad.com