RECORDINGS

BACH Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin BWV1001–1006

Fabio Biondi (violin)

NAÏVE V 7261 (2 CDS)

Vivid performances borne of deep familiarity that linger long in the mind

In a revealing booklet note, Fabio Biondi reflects upon his lifelong preoccupation with Bach’s music for unaccompanied violin. When listening to his recording, it becomes obvious that all the work done – both the musicological preparation and the nuts and bolts of getting around the notes – has been internalised in such a way that it can be called upon, or set aside, according to the inspiration of the moment. Biondi’s interpretation holds many surprises, the first being the great freedom with which he approaches the musical text. His rubato is applied in generous doses, to these ears to exhilaratingly spontaneous effect. Only seldom does the basic rhythm suffer from being stretched too far, for example when a chord is broken so broadly that the bar almost becomes an additional beat.

Having at his disposal a huge number of different ways of realising Bach’s arpeggiando instructions, Biondi occasionally applies them to passages usually played as chords. His approach to ornamentation is also unconventional, but it works because the embellishments are derived from the motivic material and hence fit in unobtrusively. Biondi makes convincing sense of Bach’s irregular slurrings in, say, the C major Sonata’s final Allegro assai, one of many moments – such as the deliciously lilting E major Minuet, or the moving morendo ending to the Chaconne – that linger in the mind after several hearings of this vividly recorded set.

CARLOS MARÍA SOLARE

BEETHOVEN String Quartets op.18 nos.1–3

Chiaroscuro Quartet

BIS BIS-2488 (HYBRID SACD)

Playing full of dazzling light and shade brings fresh insight to familiar works

One might have assumed there was little left to say in this much-recorded repertoire that hasn’t been said many times before – then along comes the Chiaroscuro Quartet to prove us gloriously wrong. Perhaps the most striking aspect of these revelatory performances is the Chiaroscuro’s bracingly fearless exploration of the lower dynamic range. This isn’t just a question of playing in general less boldly than we are used to, but of exquisitely subtle tonal refinement and restraint, and sharing intimate musical asides. By employing fast and narrow vibrato sparingly (rather than trowelling it on as an all-purpose cantabile tool) and tapping into each instrument’s natural resonances (rather than ramping up the tonal amplitude) Beethoven’s bracingly inventive writing emerges with unprecedented clarity on every level.

Even the most generic of accompanying figurations never merely chug along, but energise everything around them. The cello line, free of suffocating resonance, integrates into the sound picture as an equal partner. Outmoded Romanticised notions of imbuing these trailblazing scores with furrowed-brow emotional clout, are exchanged for a semantically penetrating and supple world of dazzling light and shade, as befits this remarkable ensemble’s distinctive title.

Above all, and bucking the once-pervasive trend in period instrument performances, the Chiaroscuro produces a sound of ravishing sonic and intonational purity, captured to immaculately balanced perfection by producer Andrew Keener and engineer Fabian Frank. Over-familiarity can jade the responses of even the most dedicated Beethovenian, but experiencing these remarkable performances is akin to hearing this groundbreaking music for the very first time.

Revelatory performances from the Chiaroscuro Quartet

FABIAN FRANK

To browse through more than a decade of The Strad ’s recording reviews, visit www.thestrad.com/reviews

JULIAN HAYLOCK

BEETHOVEN String Quartets: no. 10 op.74 ‘Harp’, no.11 op.95 ‘Serioso’

Ehnes Quartet

ONYX 4216

The latest instalment in what is proving to be an outstanding Beethoven cycle

Halfway in, what a Beethoven cycle this is shaping up to become. He might not appreciate the comparison, but James Ehnes is the only violinist of our day to emulate Adolf Busch in mastering a recorded overview of Beethoven’s string music. What also links them is a warmth and fullness of tone never compromised by fierce engagement. Ehnes and his colleagues take an unusually confrontational approach to the slow introduction of op.74, setting the scene for a toughly argued main Allegro which goes back to first principles for the supposedly ‘harp-like’ figurations and lends them a spinning velocity shared by the Seventh Symphony.

An earthy richness of vibrato sets this account of the slow movement apart from most modern rivals. When Beethoven has a song to sing, here and in the variation finale, it unfolds without mannered contrasts. The scherzo’s blood-brotherhood with the Fifth Symphony’s ‘fate’ motive is pointed but not underlined by a tautly maintained pulse. An overall terseness of thought draws op.74 here closer than usual to op.95 and onwards to the elliptical world of the late quartets, rather than forging strenuous links with his Romantic or modernist successors.

The slow introduction to op.95’s finale swells with suppressed pathos, which in turn throws a satisfying formal weight on to the finale as a whole, aligning it with the compressed humour of the Eighth Symphony (op.93). The recording benefits from clean, full-bodied engineering; at 50 minutes, only the most miserly niggler will grumble about short measure.

PETER QUANTRILL

BEETHOVEN The Violin Sonatas

Clara-Jumi Kang (violin)

Sunwook Kim (piano)

ACCENTUS MUSIC ACC 80558 (4 CDS)

Superbly committed collection of all ten of Beethoven’s violin sonatas

This set was recorded over the course of last year, prompted by Beethoven’s 250th birthday before being held up by the pandemic. Clara-Jumi Kang’s playing has constant poise, whether in the A major Sonata op.12 no.2 with its drawing-room elegance and high-spirits, or the slow movement of the F major ‘Spring’ Sonata with its Olympian beauty. She is as ready to caress as to attack, and there is much here which is delicate and meditative. In the E flat major Sonata op.12 no.3 there are flashes of ferocity in the first movement, but then the central A flat major section of the secondmovement Adagio is a wonderful hushed legato, giving the illusion of an endless bow.

In the A minor Sonata op.23 there is drama in the first movement, with Kang’s bow biting into the staccatos, and a pleasing antique formality to the following Andante scherzoso. The first two movements of op.30 no.1 in A major are beautifully sculpted, and the third-movement variations are an elegant study in differing characters. By the C minor Sonata they have definitely left the drawing room, with muscular, dynamic playing from Kang preceding great depth of feeling to the Adagio. The G major op.30 no.3 opens with compelling narrative urgency and closes in the thirdmovement Allegro vivace with happy insouciance – her lightness of touch is rarely far away.

In the ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata she balances grandeur with gentleness and warmth, with some deceptive simplicity in the second-movement variations and a finale that is energetic but never heavy. That simplicity features again in the final G major Sonata with its long-spun meditative melodies.

Sunwook Kim, himself a noted Beethovenian, is superb throughout. The recording is clear and balanced with a touch of distance.

TIM HOMFRAY

BRAHMS String Quartets: no.1 in C minor op.51 no.1, no.2 in A minor op.51 no.2, no.3 in B flat major op.67; String Quintet no.2 in G major op.111 Dudok Quartet Amsterdam, Lilli Maijala (viola)

RUBICON CLASSICS RCD1077 (2 CDS)

Brahms on gut strings presents a more supple, slimline side to the composer

Some may balk at the prospect of hearing Brahms’s works divested of their customary modern tonal richness; but the leaner sonorities of the Dudok Quartet Amsterdam’s gut-strung set-ups and this ensemble’s exploration of late 19th-century performance practices prove enlightening in many ways, particularly in making more lucid the luxuriant textures of, for example, the opening movement of the Second Quintet (the second theme of which, incidentally, suffers an apparent aberration in the accompaniment on its first playing) and the quasisymphonic outer movements of op.51 no.1. These players’ espousal of tempo flexibility is also telling throughout, particularly in shaping phrases and delineating significant structural, harmonic or dynamic detail; indeed, such elasticity and the introduction of portamento might with advantage have been developed further, along with the cultivation of more varied vibrato colourings and even more historically informed exploitation of their period bows.

Assisted by a vivid and immediate recording, these performances are searching and artistically satisfying, combining freshness, polish, warmth and spontaneity with well-integrated detail, excellent balance and blend, and immaculate ensemble. The Dudoks give warm, eloquent accounts of both op.51s, responding to these works’ dramatic fervour and lyrical flow in equal measure.

Tempos are well judged, especially those of op.51 no.1’s Allegretto, which is often played too slowly, and the Second Quintet’s finale, and the Dudoks realise the sophisticated phrase lengths and modulations of op.51 no.1’s melodious Romanze, negotiate the various metrical changes in, for example, the third movement of op.51 no.2 and the opening Vivace of op.67, and characterise the variation-form finale of op.67 with commendable subtlety and finesse.

ROBIN STOWELL

COWIE Bird Portraits

Peter Sheppard Skærved (violin) Roderick Chadwick (piano)

MÉTIER MSV28619

Captivating avian homage to Messiaen by senior British composer

Many of us drew inspiration and comfort from a renewed interest in birdsong during the months of harshest lockdown in 2020. For senior British composer Edward Cowie, however, it was an opportunity to deepen a passion for the natural world that has already informed many of his works. The results were these 24 Bird Portraits, miniature snapshots of individual birds’ environment, movement, colours, character and, of course, song – as Cowie explains in his detailed booklet notes – published as four separate books containing birds of the water, wood and garden, field and sea, but here scattered joyfully together across settings.

Fervent but flexible Brahms from the Dudok Quartet Amsterdam

MARCO BORGGREVE

Inevitably, the ghost of Messiaen hovers closely behind much of this music, as Cowie himself acknowledges, and indeed he seems to pay overt homage to the earlier composer in some of his harmonies and scene-painting textures. But these are very much Cowie’s own perspectives on British birdlife, in which he seems to neatly sum up a bird’s personality and behaviour, before almost invariably closing with some surprisingly close and accurate evocation of its song, as though giving his birds the last word. The results are imaginative, captivating and really very moving.

Cowie could hardly have hoped for more committed, persuasive interpreters than Peter Sheppard Skærved and Roderick Chadwick. The violinist, in particular, tackles the subtleties of Cowie’s writing magnificently, with a brilliant control of tone, vibrato, attack and much more, put to good use in this descriptive music. The raucous cackling of Sheppard Skærved’s ‘Magpie’ and the eerie cooing of his ‘Tawny Owl’, to take just two examples of many, are particularly effective, and the haunting call of the ‘Great Northern Diver’ swimming into the distance makes for a particularly poignant closer. This is a disc of quiet wonders, captured in close, detailed sound.

DAVID KETTLE

RESONANCE LINES COLOMBI Chiacona SAARIAHO Dreaming Chaconne; Sept Papillons BRITTEN Suite for solo cello no.1 op.72 SHAW In manus tuas KOTCHEFF Cadenza (with or without Haydn)

Hannah Collins (cello)

DORIAN SONO LUMINUS DSL92252

Adventurous, impressive collection of contemporary solo cello music

American cellist Hannah Collins, both a Baroque player and winner of the Presser Music Award for contemporary interpretation, makes her solo debut on disc with this typically adventurous programme of solo cello works. An initial nod to her Baroque career, Colombi’s Chiacona, leads into Kaija Saariaho’s Dreaming Chaconne, whose rolling waves of sound contrast with the clear definition of its forerunner.

Collins’s commissions and premieres are represented by works by Caroline Shaw and Thomas Kotcheff. Shaw’s In manus tuas has the cellist singing and exploring sounds made by bowing diagonally over the fingerboard, with a beautifully expressive pizzicato melody made up of double-stops and spread chords.

Saariaho’s Papillons, studies of the ephemeral written for fellow Finn Anssi Karttunen, flutter and tap evocatively, as Collins negotiates with panache the range of exploratory techniques, from rapid string drummings with left-hand fingers to some sul ponticello harmonics.

Britten’s First Suite sounds pretty traditional in this company. This is a wholly impressive performance, the resonances of the lower strings in the Cantos captured beautifully by the vibrant recording. Collins gives the undulating lines of the Fuga plenty of space, takes the pianissimo marking in the Marcia literally, resulting in some seriously ghostly sounds, and the Moto perpetuo finale scurries along at breakneck speed.

JANET BANKS

GUBAIDULINA Dialog: Ich und Du; The Wrath of God; The Light of the End

Vadim Repin (violin) Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra/Andris Nelsons

DG 486 1457

An orchestral 90th-birthday tribute to a singular and original Russian composer

This 90th-birthday release for Sofia Gubaidulina features her third violin concerto, Dialog: Ich und Du (2018), with Vadim Repin continuing in the line of Gidon Kremer and Anne- Sophie Mutter, who premiered the first two concertos (Offertorium, 1980, and In tempus praesens, 2007). With two purely orchestral works in addition, the disc highlights some of Gubaidulina’s varied qualities – not least her deep spirituality, avant-gardist boldness, and fluid spontaneity that perhaps harks back to the improvisations with her group Astreya in the 1970s.

The violin concerto, as its title suggests, isn’t cast as a showpiece, and thankfully Repin doesn’t pretend otherwise. But with a sure hand he steers the solo writing through its declamatory and tensely aspirational progression. Conducting the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Andris Nelsons captures the music’s ritual and mystery –a score often underpinned by rumbling drums and ringing with metallic percussion. Also key are physical, ‘primarycolour’ gestures, a directness and apparent artlessness that recall the composer’s contemporary Schnittke.

Written alongside the concerto, The Wrath of God is broadly cut from the same sonic cloth, and the performance roars similarly, whereas the earlier The Light at the End (2003), which hauntingly contrasts natural alongside standard (tempered) tuning, is more immediately beguiling. The nicely captured recordings enhance this welcome tribute to a singular figure.

EDWARD BHESANIA

APPROACHING AUTUMN KODÁLY Sonata for Solo Cello op.8 ABEL Approaching Autumn GRIEG Cello Sonata in A minor op.36 Jonah Kim (cello)

DELOS DE 3585

A triumphant performance of the great central work on this solo album

A clear, blooming sound graces the opening of the Kodály Solo Sonata, with a defined rhythmic definition charging the invention. There’s no doubt that this monumental work is the standout performance here, as Jonah Kim has perfectly understood how to deliver it so eloquently by etching the different dramas encapsulated in each of its three movements. The opening Allegro maestoso bows to a combination of passion and lyricism, whereas in the ensuing Adagio, there’s a beautifully honed sense of reflection, which quickly evolves into fiery intensity. Quite apart from the flawless delivery of its Herculean technical demands, Kim particularly triumphs in the finale. The overall structure of this movement is somewhat tableau-like, but Kim’s intelligent control of rubato blends the contrasting sections, thus generating an impressive cohesion.

Both the Kodály and Grieg Sonatas owe much to indigenous folk music, a feature that clearly inspires Kim’s interpretations. Of course, the Grieg is also characterised by an intense roller coaster of emotions, especially in the first and last movements, and the sense of exhilaration in this performance has us on the edge of our seats. But the simple folk-like charm achieved by Kim and Robert Koenig in the slow second movement is equally winning.

Although Kim and Koenig deliver a sensitive and persuasive lyrical interpretation of Mark Abel’s Approaching Autumn, I found the overtly ‘easy listening’ aspect of the music a little disappointing when compared to the other works on this enterprising release.

JOANNE TALBOT

FANNY MENDELSSOHN String Quartet in E flat major MENDELSSOHN String Quartets: no.6 in F minor op.80, no.2 in A minor op.13

Takács Quartet

HYPERION CDA68330

Illuminating the context of love and grief within the Mendelssohns’ lives

The first-movement Adagio of Fanny Mendelssohn’s only string quartet has a depth of feeling marked by big vibrato, audible shifts and portamentos, with pronounced shaping of phrases and a feeling of expressive freedom. After the light, skipping Allegretto, the Romanze has a beguiling mix of gentle melodic subtlety and emotional heft, and the final Allegro molto vivace has gleeful energy and passages of real dramatic weight.

One can hardly go on to the second work here, Felix’s F minor Quartet, without recalling that it was his grief at Fanny’s death which prompted him to write it. The Takács players bring grim ferocity to the first movement, hammering out the dotted rhythms and driving forward; the calmer moments, with their vividly moulded lines, bring scant respite. The remorseless punched rhythms of the second movement are equally intense: this is raw, almost savage playing. In the Adagio the unease continues, invoked as much by the shaping of inner lines as by the expression in the melodies. The restlessness of the finale, with its heavy accents and exaggerated dynamics, completes and encapsulates this harrowing performance.

There is anxiety to be found in the first movement of the A minor as well, with its punched dotted rhythms and keening phrases, not to mention the passionate recitative of the finale Presto, but it is offset by the gentle meditation of the Adagio and the exquisite Intermezzo. The recorded sound on this excellent CD is clear and well balanced.

TIM HOMFRAY

RACHMANINOFF Cello Sonata and song arrangements BARBER Cello Sonata and song arrangements

Sheku Kanneh-Mason (cello)

Isata Kanneh-Mason (piano)

DECCA 4851630

Exquisite playing on the Kanneh-Mason siblings’ first recording together

Arguably Sheku Kanneh-Mason’s finest recording to date and his first duo release with his gifted pianist sister Isata, this is playing that is truly inspired. Not since the classic Lynn Harrell/Vladimir Ashkenazy account of the Rachmaninoff Sonata (also for Decca) has this glorious work sounded so thrillingly spontaneous on disc. Whereas the older team went for a concert-hall, concerto-style projection, the Kanneh-Masons, while lacking nothing in overt passion, are more suggestive of the intimacy of the chamber room.

Rachmaninoff’s fulsome piano writing has the potential to overwhelm the cello’s natural sonority, yet (as readers may recall from their captivating performance at the BBC Proms) Isata somehow manages to retain a discreet balance at all times, despite the fistfuls of notes involved. Throughout, Sheku and Isata capture the yearning quality of Rachmaninoff’s inspiration with a magical phrasal suppleness that is unforgettable.

Fine playing from Sheku and Isata Kanneh-Mason

JAMES HOLE

Barber’s early Cello Sonata is less expansive in its dramatic pacing, and in the wrong hands can run like a series of edited musical highlights, yet the Kanneh-Masons, imbuing every phrase with a captivating sense of emotional imperativeness, turn inwards to create the impression of a blazing masterwork. The seven song arrangements, which act as a central interlude between the two sonatas, are no mere makeweights, but run like a series of exquisite musical gems that one wishes would go on gently unspiralling forever.

JULIAN HAYLOCK

SCHUBERT String Quartets: nos.15 in G major D887, no.12 in C minor D703 ‘Quartettsatz’ Fitzwilliam Quartet

LINN CKD673

Historically informed approach highlights these works’ complexity

Having recently celebrated its 50th anniversary, the Fitzwilliam Quartet is hardly resting on its laurels. For the quartet’s first recording of arguably Schubert’s finest quartet, the players have moved closer than ever towards a more ‘authentic’ style of playing. Modern, metal-wound strings have been replaced by thick, Viennesestyle gut, and obsessively flowing cantabile by innumerable subtleties of bowing technique and sparing use of vibrato as a ‘colouration’, rather than an all-pervasive expressive fundamental. The customary modern pitch level of A=440 has been slightly reduced to A=433, in line with Viennese practice in the 1820s, dynamics expanded (especially at quieter levels) and tempos and articulation rethought in accordance with the latest musicological research.

As an added inducement, the Fitzwilliam also includes Brian Newbould’s inspired completion– realisation of an A flat major Andante, which Schubert originally intended should follow the famous Quartettsatz. It provides a tantalising glimpse of what might have been, and is shaped with the greatest sensitivity by the Fitzwilliam players, enhanced by the recording’s gently cushioned ambient glow. As violist Alan George points out in his excellent annotations, ‘the listener is seriously challenged as to what is Schubert and what is Newbould.’

In Schubert’s mighty G major Quartet, the Fitzwilliam’s trademark probing inquisitiveness, enhanced by period-instrument sensitivities, reveals a work of profound emotional complexity. Even the comparatively straightforward Scherzo, shorn of all generic norms, is revealed as a deeply unsettling utterance, about as far from the light-hearted implications of its title as can be imagined. Most startlingly of all, they imbue the finale’s moto perpetuo-isms with a palpable sense of threat, making the coda’s gentle major-key resolution feel more than ever like laughter through tears.

JULIAN HAYLOCK

PAGANINIANA PAGANINI Caprice no.24 in A minor SLAVÍK Caprice in D major ERNST The Last Rose of Summer (Etude no.6) SCHNITTKE À Paganini KREISLER Recitativo and Scherzo-Caprice op.6 ŠPORCL Where Is My Home MILSTEIN Paganiniana KUBELÍK Cadenza to Paganini’s Violin Concerto no.1

Pavel Šporcl (violin)

HÄNSSLER HC20069

This attractive Paganini tribute doesn’t quite hit the mark

No prizes for guessing which violin virtuoso is being celebrated via this crisply recorded solo programme from Pavel Šporcl. So it was an eminently natural move to kick off with the famous 24th Caprice. The reading itself, though, is more unexpected. Not so much because at 5’43” it’s at the slower end of the scale – indeed I’m rather a fan of the additional Slavic melancholy this has lent to the initial theme – but because, as the variations progress, there’s a laboured feel to some of the technique that inevitably detracts from its success.

Going forward, there’s some nice programming: for starters, the snapshot Šporcl has given of the violinists immediately following in Paganini’s (1782–1840) wake. Namely, Czech prodigy and composition pupil of Schubert, Josef Slavík (1806–33), whose carrying of the Paganini torch was curtailed by his premature death aged 27, and the violinist who was able to leave more of a legacy, Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst (1814–65). Schnittke’s À Paganini then makes a welcome 20th-century palate cleanser.

Perhaps the programme’s most successful moment, though, is Šporcl’s own clearly Paganiniinspired and often enjoyably lyrical set of variations on the Czech national anthem ‘Where Is My Homeland?’

CHARLOTTE GARDNER

SPECCHIO VENEZIANO VIVALDI Sonata op.1 no.1 in G minor (RV73); Follia op.1 RV63; Largo from Cello Sonata in E minor RV40; Andante from Sonata no.3 in F major RV68 BACH Larghetto from Concerto in D major BWV972 REALI Sinfonia: no.1 (Sonata) in D minor; no.2 (Capricio) in D minor; no.4 (Capricio) in D major; no.9 (Sonata) in D minor; no.10 (Capricio) in A major; no.12 (Folia)

Le Consort, Victor Julien-Laferrière (cello)

ALPHA771

Vivaldi is reflected back through his contemporaries’ music in a stylish album

‘Venetian mirror’ presents works by Vivaldi alongside examples by his lesser-known Venetian contemporary Giovanni Battista Reali. The performers’ spotlight falls principally on these composers’ op.1 trio sonatas, in which Baroque violinists Théotime Langlois de Swarte and Sophie de Bardonnèche predominate in convivial conversation, but they also extract movements from other opera to showcase the solo artistry of their continuo players. They characterise the ‘Folia’ variations of both composers with technical assurance, sensitivity and style, contrasting the occasional contemplative or melancholic variation with others of exuberant extroversion and ramping up the momentum towards the end. Reali’s ‘Folia’ includes an additional concertante cello part, dispatched with aplomb by Hanna Salzenstein.

Particularly striking in these players’ accounts of Reali’s op.1 are no.2’s spiky introductory Grave e staccato, the liberated role of the basso continuo in no.10’s third movement and the clarity of textural detail in the energetic contrapuntal final Allegros of nos.1, 4 and 9.

Outstanding in their rendition of Vivaldi’s five-movement op.1 no.1 are the staccato Adagio, with its occasional ear-tingling ornamentation, the breezy, imitative Allemanda and the characterful Gavotta, with its amusing, tongue-in-cheek conclusion. Salzenstein’s sombre, expressive Largo from Vivaldi’s Cello Sonata (RV40) is the pick of the excerpts, despite some distracting extraneous noises infiltrating the close, resonant recording.

ROBIN STOWELL

UN VIOLON À PARIS Music by Bach, Chopin, Handel, Kreisler, Korngold, Puccini, Rachmaninoff, Schubert, Schumann and Wagner

Renaud Capuçon (violin)

Guillaume Bellom (piano)

ERATO 9029652001

A tasteful and gorgeously performed collection of smooth violin sweetmeats

Many artists were inspired, or driven, to conceive projects during the lockdowns of the past 18 months. This one comes from Renaud Capuçon, ‘impelled by a combination of worry and isolation anxiety’, who with pianist Guillaume Bellom broadcast a piece a day for 56 days during the spring 2020 lockdown in France. This recording is a selection of 22 of the works they played. He hopes it will bring its listeners ‘calm and comfort’, and the repertoire is appropriately gentle and lyrical. There are no virtuoso fireworks here, and Joachim’s transcription of Brahms’s Hungarian Dance no.5 is about as animated as it gets.

This is an 80-minute masterclass in the art of lyrical playing, of expression, shape and beauty, and as such is an unassuming wonder. Most of the pieces are well known, and most of them are arrangements. There is Milstein’s version of Chopin’s C sharp minor Nocturne, simple and exquisite; a wistful account of ‘Mariettas Lied’ from Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt; Debussy’s Clair de lune, quiet and supple; Elgar’s Chanson de matin, quite jaunty. Capuçon ends with some film music, including a wonderfully schmaltzy version of Chaplin’s Smile. Don’t look here for infinite variety, or indeed anything much above mezzo piano. This is just beautiful violin playing, well recorded.

TIM HOMFRAY

WHITE NIGHTS – VIOLA MUSIC FROM SAINT PETERSBURG

Music by Banshchikov, Glazunov, Glinka, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rubinstein, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky

Tatjana Masurenko (viola)

Roglit Ishay (piano)

PROFIL EDITION GÜNTER HÄNSSLER PH20045 (3 CDS)

Final instalment of Russian viola music collection has been well worth the wait

It’s been almost twelve years since Tatjana Masurenko began her journey through the musical history of her home town (I reviewed its second instalment in the January 2014 issue). Now the series has been repackaged as a set and includes a third CD recorded in August 2020.

The three arguably most important viola sonatas written in Russia are present: those by Glinka, Rubinstein and Shostakovich. Additionally, we are treated to a generous selection of those uniquely idiomatic arrangements penned by Vadim Borisovsky and his disciples. For his selection of Shostakovich Preludes, Evgeny Strakhov chose keys that allow open strings to resonate and double-stops to lie conveniently under the fingers. Konstantin Oznobishev’s setting of Stravinsky’s Russian Song compares favourably with Samuel Dushkin’s version, a favourite encore of Yuri Bashmet’s. Borisovsky’s selection from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet is well known, but Masurenko also includes, among others, a seldom-heard setting of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Song of the Indian Guest and an even rarer one of Glinka’s Variations on Alabiev’s song ‘The Nightingale’.

In the first two CDs, Masurenko plays a Paolo Antonio Testore viola from 1756, switching for the third one to a new instrument made in 2020 by Leipzig luthier Jürgen Manthey which, moreover, she has strung with gut. While her trademark darkly soulful sound remains consistent throughout the album, the latter set-up results in a heartwarming tonal quality which proves addictive. Both players rejoice in the predominantly Romantic sound world, Masurenko employing an abundance of loving portamento and a wide spectrum of vibrato. Roglit Ishay is a congenial partner with a similarly keen ear for tonal variety, who comes into her own in the full-fledged piano parts, particularly of the Rubinstein Sonata. The recording, courtesy of Deutschlandfunk in Cologne, places both players in a friendly acoustic that lets one hear their every nuance.

CARLOS MARÍA SOLARE