Reviews

Your monthly critical round-up of performances, recordings and publications

THIS MONTH’S RECOMMENDED RECORDINGS

Our pick of the new releases

Andreas Brantelid takes on Haydn and C.P.E. Bach PAGE 92

Cuarteto Casals tackle Mozart’s ‘Haydn’ quartets PAGE 96

Timothy Ridout: Poetic inspiration on the viola PAGE 97

Live: USA

Light and optimism from Barry Shiffman and Tanya Gabrielian

BARRY SHIFFMAN (VIOLIN/VIOLA) TANYA GABRIELIAN (PIANO)

SHALIN LIU PERFORMANCE CENTER, ROCKPORT, MA, 11 JULY 2021

Certainly Bach’s D minor Chaconne is a virtuosic undertaking for any violinist; performing it on the viola brings another level of difficulty. While at times I missed the sweetness of the violin, violist and Rockport Music Festival artistic director Barry Shiffman played the movement on the viola with tremendous agility and intelligence. The Chaconne takes on a much darker and deeper character on the instrument, and Shiffman’s excellent sense of timing and impressive intonation throughout the doublestops yielded a more than satisfying performance.

Shiffman’s relaxed introduction to the three Florence Price works that followed the Bach – as well as his introduction for pianist Tanya Gabrielian – gave the feeling of being at a summer music festival, and it was a pleasure to hear these pieces in this context. Price’s Fantasie no.1 in G minor (1933) had a French feel, at times reminiscent of Debussy or Ravel in the duo’s lilting interpretation. The technically difficult opening and closing of the work were played effortlessly by Shiffman. Adoration for violin and piano (1951) was soulful and again performed with impressive ease and agility. The Fantasie nègre no.1 for piano (1929) closed the Price portion of the set, and Gabrielian gave a moving performance.

Brahms’s Viola Sonata in F minor provided a passionate ending to the concert, played with strength and seriousness. Shiffman’s facility and technical mastery afforded his performance a certain openness which I found particularly notable in the second movement, which was quite beautiful. The Allegretto grazioso was full of light and optimism, a joy to hear. The performance ended with energy and appropriate bravura.

LEAH HOLLINGSWORTH

KRISTIN LEE (VIOLIN) MATTHEW LIPMAN (VIOLA) FREDERICK R. KOCH FOUNDATION TOWNHOUSE, NEW YORK, NY, 12 JULY 2021

Presented as part of the Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society’s Restart Stages events, Kristin Lee and Matthew Lipman performed three familiar duo works and one less often encountered. The room’s painted decoration and large windows were a striking backdrop for their performance before a small but enthusiastic audience. The opener, Mozart’s Duo in G major K423, is the first of two that he wrote in 1783, supposedly to aid Michael Haydn. That story was retold in remarks that preceded the work (also done elsewhere on the programme). The sound of Lee’s 1759 Nicolò Gagliano violin was complemented by the rich warmth of Lipman’s 1700 Gofriller viola.

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The brother and sister Joseph and Lillian Fuchs were recalled as the dedicatees of Bohuslav Martinů’s Three Madrigals, written in 1947 during his US residence. Playing with flair and expressiveness, Lee and Lipman made each of them an adventure. Spohr’s Grand Duo op.13 was played affectionately and with lots of colour; its alternating introspective and brilliant passages were nicely delineated within a style more intimate than the similar works of op.39. The final work, Halvorsen’s Passacaglia (1894), arranged from the final movement of Handel’s Harpsichord Suite in G minor, got a full virtuoso treatment but the players’ relentless brilliance rather short-changed the several important contrasts of mood within the work.

DENNIS ROONEY

THE KNIGHTS

BRYANT PARK, NEW YORK, NY, 23 JULY 2021

To begin this casual, picnic-oriented outdoor concert, The Knights plunged into Jessie Montgomery’s popular Starburst (2012) with obvious joy. Traffic sounds added to the evening’s relaxed, serendipitous vibe. Eric Jacobsen – also a cellist with the group – conducted and drew articulation that amplified the composer’s taut rhythms.

It had been decades since I’d heard Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik played live. The Knights chose to go conductor-free, and the 13 musicians approached the score with zest and clarity. Listeners used to hearing larger ensembles may have been slightly startled to hear the composer’s giddy contrapuntal lines etched so cleanly. As twilight settled over Bryant Park, the ensemble’s exuberance in the finale seemed ideally matched with the locale.

London-born composer Anna Clyne was on hand to introduce Prince of Clouds (2012), for string ensemble and two violins – in this case, Alex Gonzalez and Colin Jacobsen – with Eric (Colin’s brother) again at the podium. After carefully retuning, the two violinists opened with slow, intertwining lines, followed by the rest of the ensemble in sober, rising intensity. As the work progressed, so did the nervous energy, with battalions of expertly punched snap pizzicatos. The contrasts between legato lines and gruff rhythms increased, until the ending appeared in a peaceful haze.

BRUCE HODGES

Live: Switzerland

VERBIER FESTIVAL JOHAN DALENE (VIOLIN) JULIEN QUENTIN (PIANO) VERBIER CHURCH 18 JULY 2021

Ravel’s Violin Sonata, three of Sibelius’s Six Pieces for violin and piano, Prokofiev’s Violin Sonata no.2, plus the world premiere of Kaan Bulak’s Violin Sonata no.1 made a meaty Verbier Festival recital from Johan Dalene in a first partnering with French pianist Julien Quentin. While the piano initially overpowered the violin in the Ravel, things soon settled into performances of glued-together mutual awareness.

The Ravel’s central ‘Blues’ movement was especially striking: the swing of Dalene’s opening pizzicato strums; the sheer bluesiness of his ensuing arco’s laconic lilt, coloured by throbbing vocal-style vibrato. But although every piece brought its interpretative and colouristic pleasures, the most intriguing was the Bulak. A concise ten minutes or so, this three-movement work appeared occasionally to be recalling Ravel’s ideas and instrument relationships, albeit very subtly. Among its ear-pricking moments were, in the first movement, wide, juicy violin double-stops leading into an upward glissando that landed in a soft, solo violin dreamscape employing modes and Middle Eastern harmonies. The second movement’s seductively snaking, folkish violin song was set against darkly percussive piano writing, while the Adagio finale offered a modern twist on 19th-century Romanticism; and while its whispered conclusion felt strangely unfinished, perhaps that was the point.

CHARLOTTE GARDNER

Live: UK

NICOLA BENEDETTI (VIOLIN) AURORA ORCHESTRA/NICHOLAS COLLON ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL 4 JULY 2021

This was the Aurora Orchestra’s first ‘live’ concert for eight months, and I imagine the first for most of the audience too. In that respect the opener by Richard Ayres – No.52 – made a perfect start, not only as a chance to hear in person a commission from last year’s BBC Proms but for its acutely sensitive musical evocation of Beethoven’s hearing loss (as well as Ayres’s). The first movement’s hymn-like string lines are gradually infiltrated by piercing harmonics, but rather than souring beauty with tinnitus the process is more akin to squeezing a drop of dye into water and watching it spread out.

Three years ago Nicola Benedetti played Beethoven’s Concerto on gut strings with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and she brought a period sensibility to this account, with patchy success. Her sound struggled to project into the Festival Hall, and many smaller notes were lost under the fingers: I found myself longing for a sustained legato phrase once in a while.

Benedetti’s own cadenza took its cue from the timpani dialogue devised by the composer to accompany his piano adaptation of the concerto. Bringing the Aurora’s winds to the front of the stage for the Largo encouraged them to play down as well as heighten their communion with the soloist. Ornamental flourishes and dynamic refinements lent excitable impetus to the finale, but it made a meagre compensation for a steady inner rhythm, and Benedetti was quite drowned out by the final tutti. After concert halls have lain dark for so long, perhaps a degree of tuning up and in is to be expected for both listeners and musicians.

PETER QUANTRILL

Live streams

CLAUDIO BOHÓRQUEZ (CELLO) CHRISTOPH ESCHENBACH (PIANO) TELDEX STUDIOS, BERLIN, GERMANY, 16 JUNE 2021

More active as a teacher (at the Kronberg Academy et al) than a recording artist, the Berlin-based Claudio Bohórquez is a musician of a slightly unfashionable kind, bringing a burnished legato and long, cantabile phrasing to everything he played on this well-planned short studio recital.

In the recital’s rather stiff preludial conversation, his artistic partner Christoph Eschenbach discussed the importance of the first pianissimo for setting the mood. A little patience was required, while the piercing expression of the pianist’s limpid voicing in Schumann’s Adagio and Allegro rather stole the show from the cellist – Eschenbach has been a master of this repertoire since before Bohórquez was born – but it was worth waiting for, in the Two Pieces by the 15-year-old Anton Webern. Time stood still in these five minutes. The young Webern could capture a mood of calm expectancy in music like no one else, and Bohórquez lingered without breaking the line, wonderfully even across the registers, applying vibrato like a caress.

In similar fashion, Bohórquez and Eschenbach made light of the high line and somewhat uncellistic writing in the Arpeggione Sonata. They gave us Schubert the melancholy wanderer and Romantic before his time, especially in the yearning meander of the slow movement, but no worse for that, and the caramel middle register of Bohórquez was a thing of beauty in its own right. By comparison, the final Louange of Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time felt unsettled and hard pressed, like an encore no one asked for. But don’t miss the Webern.

PETER QUANTRILL

LIEBECK PHOTO LIVE FROM LONDON/VOCES8

FOUNDATION.

KAIA PHOTO JENNIE OH-BROWN

JACK LIEBECK (VIOLIN) SHEKU KANNEH-MASON (CELLO) JULIAN BLISS (CLARINET)

KATYA APEKISHEVA (PIANO) VOCES8

VOCES8 CENTRE (ST ANNE AND ST AGNES CHURCH), LONDON, UK, 17 JULY 2021

Against the odds, the vocal group Voces8 put together its Summer Music Festival for 2021. This concert was based around a performance of Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, but Voces8 likes to take part in all the concerts, so this one started with Paul Drayton’s arrangement of Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending for violin and voices. The choir seemed more of an equal partner than the orchestra normally does, particularly in the central

Allegro tranquillo section, where they sang the words of the George Meredith poem that inspired the composer, as Jack Liebeck (left) swooped and dived around them, playing with limpid simplicity and fluid expression before rising away into the resonant church acoustic.

Messiaen’s Quartet had great clarity of texture and balance. In the first movement, cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason’s harmonic glissandos peeped through the free-sounding bird calls and roulades of Liebeck and Bliss. In the Vocalise Liebeck and Kanneh-Mason gave the first of many demonstrations of superb bow control during their ghostly progression in octaves, mostly without vibrato. Both the Louange movements, one for cello and piano, the other for violin and piano, were timeless, long-breathed meditations. Bliss gave a mesmerising account of the solo-clarinet movement Abîme des oiseaux, and all four players rose to the primal demands of Messiaen’s ‘extatique’ in the penultimate movement, as the angel announces the end of time.

TIM HOMFRAY

KAIA QUARTET DEPAUL ART MUSEUM, CHICAGO, IL, 24 JULY 2021 in Mexico City). As violinist Naomi Culp noted, ‘There is nothing simple about this piece,’ a slightly dark moto perpetuo that evokes the hypnotic motion of trains.

Next came String Quartet no.1 (1921) by Carlos Chávez, who combined complex rhythms with a Romantic streak (violinist Victoria Moreira compared his youthful textures to Schumann).

The first movement surges with lyricism and appealing dissonances, and is followed by an ethereal second movement. Marked ‘vivo’, the third movement is the most restless, before the muted finale ends on an ambiguous flourish.

‘These agaves are the cause of my misfortune,’ said Silvestre Revueltas about his Second String Quartet (1931), subtitled ‘Magueyes’, the plant from which tequila is distilled. In her introduction, violist Amanda Grimm noted that Revueltas dedicated the work to the woman who had called off their relationship a year earlier, presumably because of the composer’s alcoholic excesses.

Background aside, the two movements are packed with contrapuntal energy and a little controlled chaos, which the ensemble dispatched with aplomb. Uruguayan composer Elbio Barilari (b.1953) was present to introduce the world premiere of his Tango Suite (2020). Its four movements range from mournful to more urgent, with a handful of shrieking glissandos for good measure. A brief return to a buzzing figure early in the suite brings it to a close, capped with a single pizzicato note. As a warm-hearted encore, the foursome presented Escualo (Shark) by Piazzolla.

BRUCE HODGES

BACH The Art of Fugue BWV1080 Les inAttendus: Vincent Lhermet (accordion) Marianne Muller (bass viol) Alice Piérot (violin)

HARMONIA MUNDI HM905313

Accordion is the surprise magic ingredient in Bach’s fugal masterpiece

The Art of Fugue was Bach’s late-life, monumental exploration of counterpoint, written apparently for personal satisfaction alone just as the world swang decisively away from fugue and towards galant classicism. Its lack of specified instruments has led to all manner of instrumental combinations, although I’m not sure that an accordion has ever entered the frame. However, this suddenly feels inexplicable in the context of the success of this collaboration between French accordion and viol duo Les inAttendus and violinist Alice Piérot.

First, Vincent Lhermet’s accordion sounds like a thoroughly Baroqueidiomatic chamber organ; and although it can’t get around being tuned to modern equal temperament, the players have approached the softer, rounder Baroque sound world by transposing his part down a semitone, enabling the strings to tune to A=415Hz. Next, the trio’s respective timbres both sing and dovetail to a striking degree – just listen to their octave doublings in Canon 14. Tempos also feel organic, gently fluctuating to fit each fugue’s passagework, rather than remaining fixed throughout. Then all those performance decisions are wrapped up in an emotional world that hits all the right notes, combining reverence with an unforced, natural, everyday quality, including dotted figures that really dance. Natural capturing completes the package.

CHARLOTTE GARDNER

TIMES OF TRANSITION C.P.E. BACH Cello Concerto no.3 in A major HAYDN Cello concertos: no.1 in C major, no.2 in D major Andreas Brantelid (cello) Concerto Copenhagen/Lars Ulrik Mortensen

NAXOS 8.574365

Beautiful collection is a fascinating document of changing musical times

Styles of music don’t appear suddenly; they evolve, as this warmly recorded CD so amply demonstrates. C.P.E. Bach’s musical language owes much to the stile galant, whereas Haydn, in the C major Concerto, mixes vestiges of Baroque figuration with his unique and daring invention. By the D major Concerto, some two decades later, the elements of mature classical writing are obvious in the melodies, harmonies and orchestration.

Andreas Brantelid has masterfully absorbed the subtle differences in language between these three works and delivers very eloquent renditions throughout. Everything is projected with good taste working in tandem with flawless virtuosity. It’s an impressive team offering idiomatic phrasing from Concerto Copenhagen and fine continuo realisations from Lars Ulrik Mortensen, his harpsichord parts adding zest to the texture rather like a piquant lemon dressing in a salad.

Both slow movements of the C.P.E. Bach and Haydn C major feature breathtakingly beautiful and poignant melodies that allow the poetry and colour in Brantelid’s playing full scope. The flying thumb position passages that characterise the finale of Haydn’s C major are dazzling, as are the octaves that feature in the D major Rondo. Brantelid’s cadenzas are inventive and stylish, never outstaying their welcome. I strongly recommend this CD.

JOANNE TALBOT

BRAHMS Cello sonatas: no.1 in E minor op.38, no.2 in F major op.99; Six Songs for cello and piano; Hungarian Dances Emmanuelle Bertrand (cello)

Pascal Amoyel (piano)

HARMONIA MUNDI HMM 902329

Andreas Brantelid: a master of musical language

MATHIAS

LØVGREEN

A meeting of minds: Emmanuelle Bertrand and Pascal Amoyel

JEAN-BAPTISTE

MILLOT

Perfect pairing brings beguiling lyricism to Brahms

Here is a great thing: a duo always in profound and accomplished rapport. Cellist Emmanuelle Bertrand and pianist Pascal Amoyel open Brahms’s E minor Sonata gently, attentive to the ‘non troppo’ qualification of the Allegro marking. They are similarly responsive to the dolce instruction in the second phrase, and to its appearances later in the movement.

There is a gripping sustained buildup to the fortissimo intensities of the development, and the whole span of the movement is deftly shaped up to its quiet final valediction. In the Allegretto quasi Menuetto there is lightness and charm, with tightly contained energy in the lifted staccatos and, in the final Allegro, strictly played scuttling triplets contrast with passages of expressive warmth played with judicious rubato.

The F major Sonata opens with a joyous upward swoop, an infusion of vitality that carries it through to the mysteries of the rocking semiquavers of the development and beyond. The musicians start the Adagio affettuoso more briskly than some, but immediately pull back. Such variations in speed appear again in a reading imbued with yearning and wondrous lyricism. The general vigour of the third movement Allegro passionato is tempered with moments of intimate conversation, and the final Allegro molto is captivating and happy.

A selection of song arrangements, heartfelt and beautiful (and uncredited) completes the disc. The sound is well balanced and warm.

TIM HOMFRAY

BRUCH Piano Trio in C minor op.5; Four Pieces op.70; Romance op.85; String Quartet no.2 in E major op.10 Nash Ensemble

HYPERION CDA68343

Chamber music bookending a composer’s career yields some surprises

It seems odd that, although so well known for his First Violin Concerto and Scottish Fantasy, Max Bruch might suffer such neglect in the chamber music department. As Tully Potter points out in his informative booklet notes, Bruch’s chamber music was concentrated in periods at the beginning and end of his career; and yet the selection on this disc doesn’t demonstrate any leap from juvenile to grand master.

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Ardent as the playing is in the early Piano Trio – with a spirited momentum in the second movement and energetic vigour in the Presto finale – it’s a work that feels earthbound, with neither the charm of Mendelssohn nor the humanity of Brahms (the close, slightly claustrophobic recording perhaps doesn’t help). The Four Pieces for cello and piano, though written nearly 40 years later, feel no more fleshed out – admittedly they are character pieces – but they are played with great warmth and variety of registral shading by Adrian Brendel.

Likewise the Romance, composed by the septuagenarian Bruch, might appear only air-kissed by inspiration, though Lawrence Power blows in a sense of gentle fantasy.

The surprise is the String Quartet no.2, a concentrated, varied work that best shows off the Nash players’ individual skills and collective empathy – and one written by Bruch at the grand old age of 22.

EDWARD BHESANIA

BAROQUE GEMINIANI Concerto Grosso after Corelli no.12 in D minor ‘La Folia’

VIVALDI Violin concertos: in D major RV211, in E flat major RV257, in B minor RV386, in B flat major RV583 Benedetti Baroque Orchestra/

Nicola Benedetti (violin)

DECCA 485 1891

Benedetti’s Baroque yields an electrifying emotional narrative

Nicola Benedetti’s first album on period instruments, supported by a crack band of Baroque freelancers, is bracingly alive and invigorating.

Nicola Benedetti focuses on expressive freedom

CRAIG GIBSON

In a frank and revealing booklet note, she hardly touches on the scholastic side of historically informed performance but focuses instead on the expressive freedoms that working with an authentic set-up can bring.

She describes performing Geminiani’s ‘La Folia’ Concerto Grosso as embracing ‘friendship, war, love and tryst’, and the finale of Vivaldi’s B minor Concerto RV386 as ‘a love dispute gone wrong’. Clearly, for Benedetti this glorious music possesses a powerful emotional narrative, and it is this important facet that is brought thrillingly to life in these boldly engineered yet arrestingly detailed performances.

The aforementioned Geminiani opens like a processional – one can almost sense the dancers assembling – and then the fireworks start as the various guests, like characters from the commedia dell’arte, announce themselves with style, flair and (where appropriate) gusto. And so, to the three complete Vivaldi concertos – RV211, 257 and 386 – alongside the central Andante of RV583. Here, HIP, tick-list purists might take exception to Benedetti occasionally shaping and articulating phrases on her 1717 ‘Gariel’ Stradivari in a manner more redolent of an ‘informed’ modern set-up. Yet so beguiling and captivating are the results, delivered with irresistible panache, that I can’t imagine most listeners even noticing.

JULIAN HAYLOCK

CIACCONA HOLLIGER Kleine Szenen GERHARD Chaconne BACH Partitas for solo violin BWV1002, BWV1004, BWV1006 (excerpts) PAUSET Kontrapartita Ilya Gringolts (violin)

BIS-2525 (SACD)

Striking collection of solo chaconnes demands the listener’s full attention

Ilya Gringolts’s unusual programme includes significant chaconnes by Bach, Pauset and Gerhard, and the brief opening Ciacconina of Holliger’s Drei kleine Szenen, in which he combines with substantial accuracy his violin playing and vocal skills. He also realises Holliger’s spirit rapping in Geisterklopfen with striking dexterity, and convincingly conveys the microtonal language of the challenging Musette funèbre.

Gerhard’s uncompromising, twelvesection Chaconne, too, is dispatched with panache and commendable responsiveness to its free serialism.

Gringolts uses a Baroque violin set-up for Pauset’s Kontrapartita, the seven movements of which are intertwined here with the Bach movements that inspired them; but his replica bow proves the crucial tool for creating effectively Pauset’s atmospheric, subjective vision of each movement and for stimulating some historical awareness in his surprisingly casual and relaxed Bach interpretations. He almost trips over the opening bars of BWV1006’s Preludio, adopts an annoyingly stuttery rubato in the Giga of BWV1004 and delivers one of the most lithe Ciacconas (BWV1004) in the catalogue.

His HIP intentions do not extend to textual fidelity, however, for he omits repeats, adopts different articulations and occasionally adds multiple-stopping, in addition to extempore ornamentation. Personal idiosyncrasies aside, this is an invigorating recital that demands a listener’s full attention. The recording is exemplary.

ROBIN STOWELL

KARNAVIČIUS String Quartets nos.3 & 4 Vilnius Quartet

ONDINE OSE 1387-2

Early 20th-century Lithuanian quartets are worth hearing if not world-changing

The Vilnius Quartet’s quest to broaden our view of Lithuanian music arrives at the last two string quartets of Jurgis Karnavičius (1884–1941).

The first two were issued earlier in 2021. The composer is known for writing the first opera in the newly independent Lithuania, having left Russia in 1927 – where he wrote these two quartets – to return home. Karnavičius studied at the St Petersburg Conservatory but set out

to write distinctively Lithuanian music. He was moderately conservative but the two quartets here are as outspoken as they are variegated, insistent and inconsistent. Both combine classical poise, belle époque decadence and impressionism – all undermined by a conscious anxiety that is absolutely of its time and place.

Tonality is ambiguous more than aggressive, and in both threemovement works there is the feeling of material being worked that bit too hard – notably the Third Quartet’s last movement and the clear but generic, slightly folksy theme. The Vilnius is a fine quartet but lacks world-class ensemble, nuance and fortitude. The score’s very end surely needed more octane, intensity and confidence.

No.4 is more distinctive, the restless motivic churn of its opening movement throttling-down towards the yearning cello recitative that opens the melancholic slow movement. After a Don Juan-like flourish the finale picks up, its argument scattered with moments of Classical grace before a throwaway ending. Well captured by Ondine, this music was never going to change the world. Is it worth hearing? Absolutely.

ANDREW MELLOR

MOZART ‘Haydn’ string quartets: K421, K458 ‘Hunt’, K464

Cuarteto Casals

HARMONIA MUNDI HMM 902654

Unmissable Mozart, setting new standards in the repertoire

Cuarteto Casals’s survey of Mozart’s ‘Haydn’ Quartets (vol.1 was reviewed in November 2014) is brought to a fine conclusion with this captivating release. Internal balance is exemplary, with each player having their own distinctive voice, caught to perfection by the fine-detailed yet plushly upholstered sound picture from engineers Martin Sauer and Tobias Lehmann. Vibrato is used sparingly and with exquisite taste, ensemble is precise – more instinctively ‘felt’ than well-drilled – intonation is well-nigh flawless, and there is tonal equality throughout the range, without any sense of top or bottom domination.

Above all this remarkable group plays with a sensitivity of phrase, dynamic and texture that sets new standards in this much-recorded repertoire.

The sense of experiencing this music with a fresh pair of ears is strikingly present from the opening bars of the D minor K421, which emerge free of hyper-vibratoed hysteria; the sense of tragedy unfolding is tantalisingly implicit rather than writ large. Likewise, in the emotionally supercharged opening of the third movement menuetto, sheer physical heft is transmuted into a poignant distillation of the music’s very essence. The ‘Hunt’ Quartet’s outer-movement dancing is kept light as air and en pointe, entirely free of ambling rusticity, while K464 captures the gentle bonhomie familiar from other Mozart A major classics such at the K488 Piano Concerto and K581 Clarinet Quintet. A superlative disc.

JULIAN HAYLOCK

MOZART Violin sonatas: in E minor K304, in A major K305, in B flat major K454, in A major K526, in B flat major K570

Oscar Shumsky (violin)

Leopold Mittman (piano)

BIDDULPH 85003-2

Historic Mozart and Shumsky herald the return of the Biddulph label

Philadelphia violinist Oscar Shumsky (1917–2000) and New York pianist Leopold Mittman (1904-76), who moonlighted in light music, recorded these sonatas on two 1951 LPs for a small company, Allegro. The inclusion of the Piano Sonata K570, published five years after Mozart’s death and, in Charles Suttoni’s words, ‘tricked out with a completely spurious and inane violin part’, implies that more LPs were planned; but in 1952 Allegro was taken over.

DAVID RUANO

The duo seems keen to avoid the Dresden-china approach but overdoes the iconoclasm in K304, where the Allegro’s dramatic contrasting phrases are almost military. In the minuet– rondo, Shumsky keeps the main theme on a short string but the affecting second strain is nicely done. Thereafter all is well. They enjoy the Allegro di molto of K305 and the theme and variations are graceful.

The Allegro of K454 is swift and Shumsky does not always get out of Mittman’s way in the Andante; but this is a fine performance – as is that of K526, with delightful ensemble playing. Mittman anchors K570 well and has most of the interest in the Allegretto.

The recordings are ‘historical’, with boxy sound, patches of distortion and LP surface noise, but the artistry is on a high level.

TULLY POTTER

THIMOTHY

FRANK

POULENC Cello Sonata op.143 FRANCK Cello Sonata in A major DUTILLEUX Trois Strophes sur le nom de Sacher Michael Petrov (cello)

Erdem Misirlioğlu (piano)

RUBICON RCD1054

Eloquent performers are fully up to the technical demands of the music

Dutilleux’s Trois Strophes was commissioned by Rostropovich to celebrate Paul Sacher’s 70th birthday with a solo cello piece based upon the musical letters of his name.

The ensuing hexachord percolates through three poetic stanzas, which covers the extended range of the cello by using scordatura on the lower strings. The texture is punctuated by left-hand pizz, col legno, false harmonics and complex doublestops. In fact, the figuration is so intricate that it requires considerable decoding before the performance process even begins. Michael Petrov provides a winning narrative through the twists and turns of rhythmic figures and percussive chords with a really precise observation of the dynamics. The score teems with performance instructions that almost elevate timbre to structural importance, and Petrov celebrates this aspect in his vivid rendition.

Poulenc’s Sonata is equally demanding with taxing shifts between registers and tricky passagework. The performer must toil, yet give the impression of effortlessness in the teasing whimsical invention, brilliantly achieved here by Petrov and Misirlioğlu in a warm but clear recording. They enchant in the Cavatina, poignantly shaping the soaring melodies. The capricious nature of the music returns in the Finale, vividly portrayed here with neat virtuosity, following the stormy double-stops of its opening. Equally convincing in Franck’s Sonata, the players adroitly steer a path between reflection and intrepid fervour in the passionate invention of the music.

JOANNE TALBOT

A POET’S LOVE PROKOFIEV Selected Pieces from Romeo and Juliet (arr. Borisovsky) SCHUMANN Dichterliebe op.48 (arr. Ridout)

Timothy Ridout (viola)

Frank Dupree (piano)

HARMONIA MUNDI HMN916118

Song transcriptions that delightfully channel the viola’s inner poet

Even as a recalcitrant sceptic when it comes to transcriptions of songs for a wordless instrumental medium – particularly when, as in A Poet’s Love, those words are by Heinrich Heine –I confess to having capitulated unconditionally to this heartfelt rendition of Schumann’s masterful song cycle on the viola.

Timothy Ridout and Frank Dupree: poetry in motion

For the most part, Timothy Ridout has adapted the voice part one-to-one for his instrument.

His use of the C string for several particularly intense passages contrasts most effectively with the otherwise preferred ‘soprano’ register. A few idiomatic double-stops spice up one of the songs, while in another, Ridout takes over the piano’s running semiquavers to exhilarating effect. He varies his sound astutely on repeated verses, bringing forth from his Peregrino Di Zanetto instrument myriad colours that bear testimony to his profound love of this music.

Having made their mark in Schumann’s intimate sound world, Ridout and his ideally attuned partner Frank Dupree tackle the very different demands of Vadim Borisovsky’s redoubtable Prokofiev transcriptions with great panache.

With crisp articulation, ‘Young Juliet’ and ‘Mercutio’ whizz by in no time, while the climaxes in ‘Dance of the Knights’ and ‘Balcony Scene’ resound mightily. Ridout’s selection of seven movements (from the eleven transcribed by Borisovsky) ends with the eerie harmonics that evoke Juliet’s death, which sound crystal-clear in the welcoming acoustics of the atmospheric Provençale location, La Courroie.

CARLOS MARÍA SOLARE

FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT PROKOFIEV Cello Sonata op.119 SHOSTAKOVICH Cello Sonata op.40 RACHMANINOFF Vocalise (arr. Rose) Catherine Hewgill (cello)

Vladimir Ashkenazy (piano)

DECCA ELOQUENCE 4816562

Russian cello sonatas receive committed and moving performances via Australia

Vladimir Ashkenazy’s name can’t help but leap off the cover, but this all-Russian programme feels in every way an equal musical partnership.

There are some nice connections too – Ashkenazy met Shostakovich when playing his Trio, and Hewgill studied with Rostropovich, who premiered Prokofiev’s Sonata in 1950. The link between the two performers is the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, where Ashkenazy was chief conductor and Hewgill principal cello. They finally got together for two days in October 2016 to make this disc, initially released by Decca Australia.

These are strong performances from Hewgill. The eloquent C string of her 1729 Carlo Tononi cello brings to life the lower ranges of the Prokofiev, and her exceptionally full tone and rich vibrato are well suited to his lyrical mode. Both instruments feel about to burst in the huge, scalic ending to the sonata. The searching solo cello opening of Shostakovich’s Sonata is moving and convincing in Hewgill’s hands, and speaks with immediacy in the warm recorded ambience. We are thrown straight into the manic Allegro, brilliant and exciting with the piano’s percussive octaves crystal-clear, and Hewgill’s playing athletic and committed.

Her well-focused sound and full vibrato work well both in the long, arching phrases of the Largo and in Rachmaninoff’s Vocalise, a particularly beautiful final track.

JANET BANKS

STRAVINSKY The Soldier’s Tale, Élégie, Duo concertant Isabelle Faust (violin) Alexander Melnikov (piano) Dominique Horwitz (narrator) Lorenzo Coppola (clarinets) Javier Zafra (bassoon) Reinhold Friedrich (cornets) Jörgen van Rijen (trombone) Wies de Boevé (double bass) Raymond Curfs (percussion)

HARMONIA MUNDI HMM 992671

No Faustian pacts here: a wellintegrated chamber-theatre vehicle

If nominative determinism means anything it was the destiny of Isabelle Faust to be involved in the tale of someone who sells their soul to the devil. But despite the difficulty of its solo violin part, Stravinsky’s Soldier’s Tale is less the vehicle for a star soloist than an integrated chamber-theatre piece that challenges all participants, and that is how Faust treats it here.

If anything, it is the narrator in the form of French TV and film actor Dominique Horwitz who rather over-dominates; his characterful English delivery (French and German versions are also available) soon tires and, with minutes of talking between musical numbers, for repeated listening it’s worth programming the CD or media player to filter out those tracks and concentrate on the superb music making.

Faust has brought the work into the HIP era with percussion and wind instruments of the early 20th century and the two 18th-century stringed instruments (including Faust’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’ Stradivari) playing on gut strings. It’s such a deliberately abrasive piece that this all makes less of a difference than one might imagine, though it is fruitily played and kept rhythmically tight.

Faust fills out this well-recorded disc with a touchingly persuasive performance of Stravinsky’s poignant, muted Élégie and the crisper neo-Classicism of the Duo concertant with Alexander Melnikov a supportive partner on piano.

MATTHEW RYE

VIOLIN ON STAGE WIENIAWSKI Légende; Polonaise de concert op.4; Fantasy on Gounod’s Faust SAINT-SAËNS Rondo capriccioso; ‘Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix’ GLUCK Dance of the Blessed Spirits WAXMAN Carmen Fantasy Bomsori (violin) NFM Wrocław Philharmonic/Giancarlo Guerrero

DG 486 0788

The spotlight shines on a stylish theatre-themed collection

Since taking second prize at the Wieniawski Competition in 2016, the Korean violinist Bomsori has maintained strong links with Poland and Polish musicians such as a recital partnership with Rafał Blechacz. Her nimble fingerwork, quick vibrato, rapier-like harmonics and relatively slender tone cut her out for Frenchaccented Polish repertoire even at the Russian-sounding end such as Wieniawski’s op.17 Légende, and the same composer’s op.4 Polonaise de concert gets her latest album off to a winning start even if it has nothing to do with the avowed theme of music from or for the stage.

FELIX BROEDE

KYUTAI SHIM/DEUTSCHE

GRAMMOPHON

Neither does the Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso of Saint-Saëns, where Bomsori and the orchestra run into some co-ordination issues hinted at in the booklet essay’s discussion of the complex logistics involved in recording it at all late last year.

While she sounds more chaste than any Dalila I’ve heard, her instrumental version of ‘Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix’ still sings and follows the text with a sense of style that eludes her in an overprecious, china-doll account of Gluck’s Dance of the Blessed Spirits.

We’re accustomed to a fuller-fat, more Hollywood tone for Waxman’s Carmen Fantasy, but Bomsori makes it work with a balletic grace of articulation before returning to something like home territory to round off the album with its one comparative rarity, a testing 20-minute Fantasy on Gounod’s Faust by Wieniawski. There is curiously no ‘Jewel Song’, but Bomsori brings a wicked glint to the Mephistophelean ‘Veau d’or’ section and nicely distinguishes the protagonists of the subsequent love duet. All perfectly charming – but perhaps next time she could exercise her considerable talents on some Szymanowski.

PETER QUANTRILL

BACK TO STOCKHOME Music by Byström, Tubin, Nordin and Malmlöf-Forssling Rick Stotijn (double bass) Malin Broman (violin, viola) Simon Crawford-Phillips (piano) Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra/James Gaffigan, Västerås Sinfonietta/Simon Crawford-Phillips

BIS-2379 (SACD)

Brave and convincing performances of new music for double bass

Dutch-born bassist Rick Stotijn has long had a second home in Stockholm, where he’s principal bass in the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra –a fact that provides this new disc with its perhaps rather tenuous theme, while also bringing together some rewarding, provocative music with Swedish connections.

All of it serves to highlight Stotijn’s

remarkably buoyant, vivid playing, shot through with a compelling sense of storytelling, and with effortless technical control that’s invariably harnessed for deeply musical ends.

Stotijn is joined by Malin Broman on both violin and viola for the disc’s centrepiece, the double concerto Infinite Rooms by Swedish composer Britta Byström. Inspired by the infinity mirrors of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, Byström conjures intricate interlocking material for her two soloists that’s then expanded ad infinitum across the orchestra, and although the piece feels slightly overlong at seven movements, Stotijn and Broman make beautifully complemented soloists, alert to each other’s movements in their wittily intertwining parts. Three of Byström’s 20 Walks, originally intended as musical links between her concerto and upcoming repertoire, serve as intriguing moments of reflection.

Estonian composer Eduard Tubin’s Bass Concerto is far more gruff and urgent, and draws appropriately passionate, strongly projected playing from Stotijn, who’s also superbly lyrical in its rather unsettled slow movement. Most impressive, and most challenging, however, is the luminous Piano Trio (for violin, bass and piano) by Byström’s compatriot Jesper Nordin, a chamber arrangement of his double concerto for violin and cello, which subjects a northern Swedish wedding tune to all manner of computer manipulation. It draws arresting playing from Stotijn (especially in a ruminative solo in the middle of the piece that highlights his sonorous lower register), Broman and pianist Simon Crawford-Phillips in music that sometimes seems to tear apart sound itself. Recorded sound is close, clear and warm throughout.

DAVID KETTLE