RECORDINGS

SEI SOLO

BACH Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin BWV1001–6

Leonidas Kavakos (violin)

SONY CLASSICAL 19439903132

Not so much music as a contemplation of the divine

Kavakos rearranges the order of the Sonatas and Partitas, bookending them with the two best-known movements, the Preludio of the Third Partita and the Ciaccona of the second. The Preludio introduces us to the cavernous acoustic, and to Kavakos’s ability to produce compulsive vitality without recourse to great speed. This is thoughtful playing, neatly balanced by the contemplative Loure which follows. It gives a template for much of the CD. Those looking for fast-as-possible semiquaver movements and mighty power might be disappointed, but they really shouldn’t be. Kavakos’s empathy with Bach is apparent at every turn.

His technique, need it be said, is impeccable. The clarity of texture and shaping of contrapuntal lines in the fugues is delightful: the E major Fuga is a real conversation between parts; the A minor is airy with no muscularity but an infinite variety of weights and stresses; the C major is crisply played, with restrained energy.

The Adagio of the Third Sonata (which comes second) is gentle and light. The Grave opening of the following Second Sonata is like a meditation in free rhythm. The Andante, with its slowly trudging quavers, is strange and unworldly, and the final Allegro is steady, definitely Allegro and no more.

There are some faster movements: the Double of the Courante in the First Partita scurries along, the notes clipped and clean, though the other Double movements are unhurried; the central movements of the Second Partita do indeed dance. The Ciaccona is not a big finish; rather, it steadily draws one into what might be a contemplation of the divine. Surely only Biber had been here before.

TIM HOMFRAY

BOTTESINI String Quintets: in E minor, C minor and A major Leon Bosch (double bass) I Musicanti

SOMM SOMMCD 0645

Graceful, clear-textured quintets with a star turn for double bass

The line-up for each of these quintets is slightly different. The E minor, with its two cellos, opens with graceful playing from leader Tamás András, and his colleagues are soon bustling away underneath, playing Bottesini’s busy lines with excellent balance and textural clarity, testimony both to their playing and the quality of the recording. The Minuetto trips along neatly, with plenty of rhythmic bounce, and András soars in the Andante sostenuto, swooping excitedly in the mainly genteel movement.

For the C minor Gran Quintetto I Musicanti are joined by bassist Leon Bosch, their founder and eminence grise. The opening Allegro moderato is restless, and they bring some anxiety and severity to the Scherzo, with crisp rhythms and stabbing accents. In the unsettled central section of the Adagio there is some nifty playing from cellist Richard Harwood, before Bosch has his moment to the fore, returning the movement to gentler pastures. In the Finale, C minor is forgotten as they press onward to its sunny conclusion.

In the opening Allegro moderato of the A major Quartet (with two violas) András is again put through his paces. There is some fine cello playing in the Andante before they round off the finale with sophisticated high spirits.

TIM HOMFRAY

TRANSMISSION BLOCH From Jewish Life KORNGOLD Cello Concerto in C major op.37

BRUCH Kol nidrei BLOCH Schelomo RAVEL Deux mélodies hébraïques Edgar Moreau (cello) Lucerne Symphony Orchestra/Michael Sanderling

ERATO 9029510510

Cellist brings subtle and shimmering beauty to Jewish-inspired programme

Hats off to Edgar Moreau who has assembled a particularly compelling narrative in this beautifully recorded programme of Jewish-inspired music. In lesser hands, the ululating aspect of the solo writing in some of these works could so easily pall. But Moreau astutely negotiates the requisite levels of emotional intensity to ensure that Bloch’s From Jewish Life and Bruch’s Kol nidrei retain a freshness and simplicity of utterance. The numerous instructions in the music are scrupulously followed here without resorting to excessive use of rubato and mannered phrasing.

Moreau’s expressive range is impressive, with some exquisitely nuanced moments, such as the sul tastiera passage in Schelomo. Both soloist and conductor exploit the cinematic aspects of Bloch’s score to the full, from the thunderously powerful declamation in the climaxes to whispered reflective moments.

A similarly epic timbre graces the Korngold Concerto, a work derived from his film score to Deception. The cello part is vividly depicted with assured virtuosity, and the sumptuous melodies are lavished with tonal charm. Nonetheless, the music lacks the heart-stopping material that makes the Violin Concerto so memorable.

Thanks to the subtlety and colour of the composer’s orchestration, Ravel’s Deux mélodies hébraïques offer a wonderfully moving conclusion.

There are some shimmering moments in the ‘Kaddisch’ which form a contrast to the spartan textures in ‘L’énigma éternelle’. Needless to say, Moreau defines each song with mesmerising sensitivity.

JOANNE TALBOT

BRAHMS Violin Concerto in D major op.77 MAIER Violin Concerto in D minor RÖNTGEN Violin Concerto in F sharp minor Cecilia Zilliacus (violin)

Malmö Symphony Orchestra, Västerås Sinfonietta/Kristiina Poska

DB PRODUCTIONS DBCD202

Playing of rhetorical beauty where more persuasion and less force go a long way

Cecilia Zilliacus is more given to thoughtful playing than to forceful rhetoric. In Brahms’s Concerto she is not muscular, as many are, but often gentle and propulsive. She generates splendour as the music proceeds, building to thrilling climaxes. Her cadenza, which she commissioned from Mats Larsson Gothe, is variously light and questioning, powerful but oddly unsettling. It leads into harmonics and a fragile world that is more reflective than exhibitionist.

Zilliacus plays the central Adagio with fluid rhythmic freedom; it is intimate and has a sense of something shared. She meets the technical challenges of the Allegro giocoso finale with a light touch. Nowhere in this performance is there any virtuosic grandstanding. This is joyful, not driven.

Brahms is bracketed by concertos from Amanda Maier and Julius Röntgen, friends of Brahms (and who were married to each other).

Only the first movement of Maier’s concerto survives, full of Mendelssohnian figuration.

Röntgen’s work has rhetoric, beauty and harmonic invention. The recording is clean and clear.

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

TIM HOMFRAY

ORIGINS

ENESCU Ménétrier (Impressions d’enfance) for solo violin op.28

POULENC Sonata for violin and piano L. BOULANGER Two Pieces for violin and piano (Nocturne)

HUBAY Fantaisie brillante (Carmen) RAVEL Violin Sonata no.2 in G major DEBUSSY Beau soir (arr. Heifetz)

Coco Tomita (violin)

Simon Callaghan (piano)

ORCHID CLASSICS ORC100194

A head-turning debut from BBC Young Musician strings winner

Following Coco Tomita’s win in the strings category of BBC Young Musician 2020, Orchid Classics invited the UK/Germany-based Japanese violinist to record her debut album. While Tomita – also a gold medallist at the Vienna International and Berlin International competitions – is hardly the first violinist to record a French and folk-themed disc, this crisply captured programme, attentively partnered by Simon Callaghan, is outstanding.

Enescu’s Ménétrier (‘The Fiddler’) is quite the opening gambit. Tomita’s tone is so luminously direct, and her singing quality, almost jazzy inflections and crisp rhythmic impetus so captivating, that it’s a while before you’re even registering her airily dispatched technical brilliance. I love how the Enescu’s final, pizzicato D chord is followed by the Poulenc Sonata, because while Tomita and Callaghan’s opening D minor explosion is a shock for its sharp-edged punch, it also has the air of continuation.

Then there’s the sinuously curling, time-suspended beauty that Tomita weaves for Lili Boulanger’s Nocturne; her more softly cloaked tone for Debussy’s Beau soir; and the world of colour and emotion that she packs into just the first phrase of Hubay’s glittering Fantaisie brillante, moving from a piercingly poignant wail to sweet tenderness. More please.

CHARLOTTE GARDNER

POHÁDKA: TALES FROM PRAGUE TO BUDAPEST JANÁČEK Pohádka; Violin Sonata in A flat minor (arr. Heijden) KODÁLY Sonata op.4; Sonatina (1909); Why are you saying you don’t love me? op. posth. no.1 (arr. Heijden); Slender Is a Silk Thread op.1 no.9 (arr. Heijden) DVOŘÁK Als die alte Mutter op.55 no.4 (arr. Heijden) MIHÁLY Mouvement (1963)

KAPRÁLOVÁ Navždy op.12 no.1

Laura van der Heijden (cello)

Jâms Coleman (piano)

CHANDOS CHAN 20227

Vivid playing and a rapport between duo partners in a delightful programme

Following her award-winning debut disc of Russian cello music (reviewed March 2018), Laura van der Heijden, who won BBC Young Musician in 2012, has now signed with Chandos and paired up with a new recital partner, fellow Cambridge graduate Jâms Coleman. Their programme focuses on the folk roots of Czech and Hungarian composers of the last century and includes some works new to the cello adapted by van der Heijden – Janáček’s Violin Sonata and two songs by Kodály.

Janáček’s Pohádka feels carefree and innocent compared with his Violin Sonata, written a few years later during the First World War. The dialogue between piano and cello in the former work flows easily and van der Heijden’s extrovert playing and warm lyricism make for a delightful performance. The Violin Sonata transcription works well. The emotional intensity is there, and the ferocious glissandos in the third movement sound all the more savage on the cello. The duo demonstrates convincing mastery of the fluctuating moods and tempos of Kodály’s two-movement sonata, with van der Heijden’s well-centred, full-bodied tone sounding especially earthy on the lower strings of the late 17thcentury Rugeri cello she plays.

The interesting programming, engaging playing, an empathetic partnership and a convincingly real, immediate sound combine to make this a disc that’s worth seeking out.

JANET BANKS

KORNAUTH Sonata in C sharp minor op.3 FUCHS Six Fantasy Pieces op.117, Sonata in D minor op.86 TRAD Arirang (arr. Hough) Katharina Kang Litton (viola)

Andrew Litton (piano)

BIS BIS-2574 (SACD)

Luxuriant sound world in this recital is like a warm embrace

Whenever I listen to the music of Robert Fuchs, I have to think of the compliment paid to him by Brahms, who called him ‘a splendid musician; everything is so fine, so skilful, so charmingly created! One is always pleased!’ This dictum is triumphantly borne by both Fuchs’s Viola Sonata of 1899 and the Fantasy Pieces he wrote at the end of his life three decades later. By the same token, Fuchs’s reputation as a pedagogue – he taught Mahler, Sibelius, Wolf and Zemlinsky among countless others – is further confirmed by the Viola Sonata of his Moravian student, Egon Kornauth.

While Fuchs’s viola works have been variously recorded (I reviewed a lovely rendition by Emma Wernig and Albert Cano Smit in September 2021), I know of no other recording of Kornauth’s Sonata. An early work, it is somewhat redolent of the luxuriant harmonic world of the composer’s younger colleague, the wunderkind Korngold, while already exhibiting a firm formal command.

Best known as a conductor, Andrew Litton conjures from the keyboard some beautiful sonorities with which to cuddle the viola. That most impulses seem to come from him is not inappropriate, since the rather full piano parts carry the greater weight in the musical discourse. With slender, beautifully focused sound, Katharina Kang Litton makes all her points through calm, determined understatement; her breathtaking, sustained pianissimos command as much attention as the few well-paced climaxes. A traditional Korean song, lovingly arranged for this husband-and-wife duo by Stephen Hough, is the delightful encore.

CARLOS MARÍA SOLARE

KORNGOLD Piano Quintet in E major op.15; Viel Lärmen um Nichts op.11; String Quartet no.2 in E flat major op.26 Eusebius Quartet, Alasdair Beatson (piano)

SOMM SOMMCD 0642

Wit and charm abound in authentically Viennese-sounding performances

This disc brings together some of Korngold’s best-known music, and one hopes on the basis of these performances that this is only the start of a larger recording project of his chamber works. The Eusebius players and pianist Alasdair Beatson project the larger-than-life showiness of the Piano Quintet as well as its delicacy and intimacy, bringing a seemingly unstoppable momentum to its thrusting opening theme, as well as a crepuscular aural veil to the brooding central Adagio (variations on a theme from Korngold’s Songs of Farewell). The rhythmic complexity of the lush part-writing, which seems to defy bar-lines, holds no fears for these players, and here as elsewhere the recorded balance is ideal.

The four movements from the incidental music to Much Ado about Nothing combine a recently rediscovered arrangement by the composer of a three-movement suite for string quartet with a newly rendered violin-and-piano version of the touching ‘Garden Scene’ by Tom Poster: all are played with an infectious sense of the music’s charm and wit.

The hint of neoclassicism in Much Ado (was Strauss’s Bourgeois gentilhomme an influence?) spills over into the Second Quartet from 1933, which feels leaner than the extravagant Quintet, but which draws strongly personal yet authentically Viennese-sounding playing from the Eusebius foursome.

MATTHEW RYE

PURCELL Music for Viol Consort Chelys Consort of Viols

BIS BIS-2583 (SACD)

Purcell played with (gut) feeling, skill and sensitivity

This outstanding collection of 20 pieces by Henry Purcell (consisting mostly of fantasias and In nomines) is the Chelys Consort’s finest recording to date. The haunting sound of gut strings has rarely been captured with such beguiling fidelity, nor the unique tonal proclivities of a viol consort so exquisitely voiced. If in the past, recordings of viols tended to reinforce old pejoratives about the instrument lacking projection and sonority (as if in deference to the sonic amplitude of the violin family), the Chelys Consort relishes its tonal potentialities with an in-depth luxuriousness that cossets the listener in the viol’s unique sound world.

Although the autograph volume of 1680 containing these pieces still survives, incredibly little is known about it, including the instruments for which it was originally intended. As the ensemble’s treble violist Ibrahim Aziz reminds us in his highly informative booklet note, the range of each part exceeds in places not only the standard viols but also the fast-emerging violin family. So, it is most probable (especially given that by 1680 such music was fast going out of fashion) that Purcell intended it, like Bach’s Art of Fugue, as an idealised stylistic summit. Whatever the music’s provenance, it is played here with such devoted skill and sensitivity, it is difficult to imagine it being rendered more persuasively.

JULIAN HAYLOCK

SIBELIUS Four Pieces op.78; Andante cantabile in G major; Five Pieces op.81; Danses champêtres op.106; Four Pieces op.115; Three Pieces op.116

Fenella Humphreys (violin)

Joseph Tong (piano)

RESONUS RES10294

Rare outing for small-scale pieces that perhaps hint at Sibelius’s ‘lost’ Eighth

Sibelius wrote a surprising number of small-scale works for violin and piano, but they rarely seem to get a look in on disc or in the concert hall outside the Nordic countries. Fenella Humphreys and Joseph Tong’s selection and execution –a follow-up to Humphreys’s recording of the composer’s Violin Concerto on the same label – make a firm case for a wider airing of music that takes the sometimes maligned genre of the character piece into fresh and sometimes darker realms.

The pair begin arrestingly enough with the op.78 and 81 sets from 1915–18, highlights of which are a catchy Impromptu and an almost Elgarian Romance. Apart from a brief piece of juvenilia, aG major Andante cantabile, the remaining pieces (opp.106, 115 and 116) date from after the Seventh Symphony in the mid-to-late 1920s and perhaps give a hint at where the mysterious, never-to-be-seen Eighth Symphony might have ventured.

Technically, the pieces range from movements suitable for the amateur to some serious virtuosity involving double-stopping and quick-fire pizzicato–arco switches. Throughout, Humphreys captures their balance

between musical simplicity and emotional sophistication: her rhythms, especially in the more dance-oriented pieces, are taut, and her tone ranges from firm to tender without ever becoming sentimental. Joseph Tong’s piano playing is always clear-sighted and flexible and the pair are recorded in a close but supportive acoustic.

MATTHEW RYE

TELEMANN Viola Concerto in G major; Concerto in G major for two violas; Ouverture Burlesque; Ouverture-Suite ’La Changeante’; Canonic Sonata in D minor for 2 violas; Fantasias in E flat (B flat) major &C (G) major Antoine Tamestit (viola) Sabine Fehlandt (viola) Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin/Bernhard Forck (violin)

HARMONIA MUNDI HMM902342

Effortless eloquence and technical assurance make this a winner

Antoine Tamestit’s spirited, dextrous account of Telemann’s Viola Concerto showcases his intuitive musicality and the tonal merits of his 1672

Stradivari. He projects his sound effortlessly above the Akademie’s incisive period-instrument textures in the two relentlessly driven fast movements, and sustains the line eloquently in its opening Largo and harmonically adventurous Andante, adding extempore ornamentation that is mostly tasteful but occasionally obtrudes.

The Akademie’s lead violist, Sabine Fehlandt, joins him in neat, wellturned renditions of Telemann’s D minor Canonic Sonata (including a somewhat rustic approach to the final Presto) and Concerto for two violas, the contemplative Largo and exhilarating concluding Vivement of which are especially pleasing.

Tamestit’s other contributions comprise expressive, colourful readings of the first two violin Fantasias, in which his technical assurance, precise articulation, subtle phrasing and flexible declamatory style form a winning combination.

The recording is close and clear, but seems slightly over-resonant.

The Akademie’s string players give an intelligent, committed account of Telemann’s Ouverture Burlesque, its theatrical overture and deft portrayals of the Commedia dell’arte’s characters sparking some imaginative outcomes, including the use of percussion instruments in the comic final ‘Mezzetin en Turc’. They also dispatch the Ouverture-Suite ‘La Changeante’ with due reverence to Telemann’s ‘mixed taste’ objectives in composition.

ROBIN STOWELL

PYROTECHNIA: FIRE & FURY FROM 18th-CENTURY ITALY VIVALDI Violin Concertos: in D major RV205 (‘fatto per Maestro Pisendel’) & 213a (‘per Signora Anna Maria’)

TARTINI Violin Concerto in E major D48 (‘Rondinella vaga e bella’)

LOCATELLI Violin Concerto in D major, op.3 no.12 (‘Il labirinto armonico’)

Bojan Čičić (violin) Illyria Consort

DELPHIAN DCD34249

Deliciously flamboyant and fiery Baroque violin concertos

Bojan Čičić’s spectacular Baroque firework display opens with a sparkling account of Vivaldi’s D major concerto RV205, its outer movements bristling with breathtaking virtuosity (especially in the scintillating final Capriccio) and its central Largo expressively nuanced and imaginatively ornamented within the bounds of the pulse. The pyrotechnics continue with another Vivaldi Concerto in D major (RV213a), delivered in similar vein, with Čičić particularly excelling in its finale and concluding cadenza.

Somewhat less flamboyant in character, Tartini’s E major Concerto nevertheless presents various technical and musical challenges, of which Čičić proves largely to be the master, despite some uncomfortable moments in the final Capriccio. Its lyrical central Largo is expressively realised. He negotiates with brio the compendium of technical challenges presented by Locatelli’s notoriously difficult ‘labyrinth’ Concerto op.3 no.12 and, despite some occasional questionable intonation, emerges triumphant, particularly in the first movement’s Capriccio and the dance-inspired finale.

The one-per-part, periodinstrument Illyria Consort provides stylish, restrained and lightly transparent rather than full-bodied accompaniments. The group trades textural clarity and an intimacy particularly well suited to all the slow movements and the opening movement of Tartini’s Concerto for power in the other more dramatic outer movements, especially those by Vivaldi. The recording is well engineered and ideally balanced.

ROBIN STOWELL

YSAŸE Six Sonatas for solo violin, op.27 Julia Fischer (violin)

HÄNSSLER CLASSIC HC 20051 (2 LPS)

Magnificent playing plus the appeal of vinyl for those who partake

This vinyl limited edition, originally released exclusively for Julia Fischer’s fan club, takes us back to the early LP days of short side-lengths – the longest of the four sides comes in under 20 minutes. The sound is superb but the occasional thump, slight surface noise on Side 4 and run-in and run-out grooves which do not always retain even my light stylus are reminders that one is not listening on CD.

According to her own lights, Fischer plays magnificently, with a wide dynamic range and superb intonation. She brings an exploratory feeling to the Grave of the Bach-like G minor Sonata and carries this mood over into the Fugato. The Allegretto is pensive, the Finale slashingly virtuosic. The A minor, haunted by Bach and the Dies Irae, features lovely double-stopping and a wistful quality in ‘Malinconia’, good pizzicato and fine rhythm in Danse des Ombres and a Dance of the Furies that is certainly furious. These two Sonatas are best performed, to my ears.

The other four have many merits but the trenchant approach can seem a tad strenuous. The left-hand pizzicato in the G major is well done but the Habanera in the E major is not particularly sensitive. Sticking to German violinists, I find Antje Weithaas’s playing more likeable and I still recommend Frank Peter Zimmermann over all others.

TULLY POTTER

FROM BRIGHTON TO BROOKLYN Music by Beach, Bridge, Britten, Coleridge-Taylor, Copland, Price and Schoenfeld Elena Urioste (violin) Tom Poster (piano)

CHANDOS CHAN 20248

Glorious, wide-ranging recital of 20th-century violin miniatures

The prevailing tendency for stylistically wide-ranging recitals is to zone into an interpretative centre ground, with everything submitted to the same default expressive rhetoric.

Enter Elena Urioste and Tom Poster, who explore each composer’s expressive world as if in celebration of its creative uniqueness. Take Paul Schoenfeld’s Four Souvenirs, whose slightly left-field terms of reference –a samba, tango, tin pan alley and square dance – are relished with a natural feeling for the idiom. They are also notoriously tricky to play, yet Urioste sounds so spellbound by Schoenfeld’s playful immersion in popular dance genres that one barely notices her Heifetz-like precision, command and sound world.

Turn the expressive coin over for Bridge’s Cradle Song, Heart’s Ease and Romanze, and that same musical intensity becomes transmuted into a searchingly poetic introspection that captures the elusive mood of each piece. How delightful to hear Florence Price’s Elfentanz played with such gentle persuasiveness, and the haunting, veiled quality of Copland’s Nocturne imbued with an unmistakably twilight smokiness and sense of lonely isolation.

The recital’s emotional centrepiece is Coleridge-Taylor’s op.73 Ballade, which is relished with a keen sensitivity to the music’s various mood changes. Captivating performances of Amy Beach’s op.40 Compositions and three pieces from Britten’s op.6 Suite set the seal on one of the finest recital of violin miniatures since Itzhak Perlman’s 1970s heyday.

JULIAN HAYLOCK

CHANSON BOHÈME Music by Aznavour, Boulanger, Brahms, Bridge, Canteloube,

Coulais, Dvořák, Giraud, Glass, Massenet, Piazzolla, Poulenc, Satie, Sitt, Tchaikovsky and Tiersen Adrien La Marca (viola)

Danae Dörken (piano)

LA DOLCE VOLTA LDV 89

Thoroughly feelgood collection of viola morsels played with gorgeous sound

In the chatty interview that makes up this CD’s booklet, Adrien La Marca admits to having wished to make a ‘feel good’ recording. It is my pleasant duty to report that he and his congenial piano partner, Danae Dörken, have succeeded completely. The addictively gorgeous sound that La Marca coaxes from his 1780 Nicola Bergonzi viola soon put paid to my initial intention of listening in small doses to what could have been a monotonous selection of (mostly) slowish morsels. ‘Sous le ciel de Paris’ sets the scene for a recital that keeps coming back to a world of Parisian chic, with simply but effectively arranged songs by the likes of Satie (‘Je te veux’,) Poulenc (‘Les Chemins de l’amour’) or the maître himself, Charles Aznavour (the title track).

Just one original composition for viola and piano is included: Hans Sitt’s Album Leaves op.39, a charming collection strongly redolent of Schumann in fairytale mood. These ideally attuned players conceive the six different pieces as an uncommonly cohesive whole, the closing tarantella, taken at a tremendous lick, providing an exhilarating moment of high-wire virtuosity. La Marca’s lilting reading of Frank Bridge’s Serenade (originally written for violin or cello) reminded me of his appealing debut recording, an enterprising programme of English music published in 2016 on the same boutique label. A French pendant featuring the music of, say, Milhaud, Tournemire or de Bréville would make for a nice sequel to this lovingly produced, most recommendable recital.

CARLOS MARÍA SOLARE

ROCKING HORSE ROAD Music by Björk, Dankworth, Krall, Sting, Weill et al Jacqui Dankworth (vocalist) Brodsky Quartet

CHANDOS CHAN 20219

Warm and winning collection that will gently rock you

You could hardly accuse Britain’s Brodsky Quartet of being classical sticks-in-the-mud. These musicians collaborated widely outside the classical world across their halfcentury career, with the likes of Elvis Costello, Björk and Paul McCartney, and they also have a two-decade relationship with uncategorisable jazz/folk/classical singer and actor Jacqui Dankworth. Surprisingly, this is the Brodskys’ first CD collaboration with Dankworth, but for it they’ve gathered many of the pop and jazz reimaginings they’ve created across the years, together with a few new arrangements of songs by Dankworth herself.

And it makes for fascinating, deeply satisfying listening. It might be tempting to think of Rocking Horse Road as merely high-class background music, but there’s a sense of melancholy and introspection running through many of the songs that gives the album quite a hefty cumulative emotional power, and the instrumentalists’ adept, intricately detailed playing – together with Dankworth’s own gloriously rich, velvety voice and remarkable tonal variety – reward close, attentive listening. They also encourage the same sense of intimacy between listener and performers as there already clearly is between the musicians themselves.

Sometimes things can get a bit too clever for their own good: Brodsky violist Paul Cassidy’s complex, effects-laden arrangement of the title track ends up sounding rather overworked, for example. But there’s a beautiful simplicity to Cassidy’s quartet reworking of Britten’s arrangement of ‘The Sally Gardens’, and two big-boned arrangements – of Nelson Riddle’s ‘Close to You’, and ‘Sittin’ on Top of the World’ given a swaggering reimagining by Dankworth’s father John – contrast beautifully with the intimacy and introspection of the penultimate ‘Like Someone in Love’, where Jacqueline Thomas’s solo cello weaves Bach in and around Dankworth’s hushed vocal. Rocking Horse Road is a carefully structured, lovingly crafted offering, captured in appropriately close, warm sound.

DAVID KETTLE