RECORDINGS

BACH Cello Suites

Bruno Philippe (cello)

HARMONIA MUNDI HMM 90268485 (2 CDS)

A fresh new approach makes its mark in a crowded field

Bach’s Cello Suites are like moving clouds, encouraging constantly changing thoughts, and Bruno Philippe has approached these works with his eye on period-style performing. The catalogue may be groaning with versions, but this is a must-have set. Philippe’s adoption of a Baroque bow has lightened articulation, while embellishment is innately stylish in the repeats.

Likewise, his characterisation of the different dances, achieved through fluid bowing, is brilliantly done and he’s captured in a very clear yet warmly resonant recording.

In the Prelude of the First Suite, Philippe’s unassuming depiction of harmonies and modulations to create the narrative is compelling. The Sarabande in the same suite evokes an intimacy, although always flowing and acknowledging the spirit of dance, with a constant adjusting of arm weight to bring subtlety to the phrasing. If the brisk tempos in the second Minuet that follows and second Bourrée of the Third Suite are initially surprising, they’re arguably effective in their rusticity. Philippe also explores the darker moments poetically, such as the Allemande of the Fifth, and creates due spontaneity in the closing chords of the Prelude to the Second and the ‘cadenza’ moment in the Fourth’s Prelude.

Philippe has studied Kellner’s copy of Bach’s score, which marks the Prelude of the Third Suite to be played presto; his brisk tempo here works well, as does his running Courante, which contrasts so well with the more reflective Allemande. Other highlights include the cogently voiced fuga in the Fifth’s Prelude, and, in the Sixth, his gloriously simple delivery of the Sarabande’s folk-like melody despite its taxing chords, and the colourful hurdy-gurdy drones in the ensuing gavottes.

JOANNE TALBOT

MARIA BACH Piano Quintet ‘Wolga’;String Quintet; Cello Sonata Christine Busch, Elene Ansaia Meipariani (violins) Klaus Christa (viola) Matthias Johansen, Conradin Brotbek (cellos) Yukie Takai (piano)

CPO 555341-2

Chamber works that unite the worlds of Brahms and Debussy

Maria Bach was born in 1896 into an arts-loving family, at whose Viennese home regular guests included Klimt, Brahms, Wolf and Korngold; the last of these nurtured Maria’s pianistic and creative talents and helped organise her studies with Joseph Marx. She not only became a celebrated composer, but also a notable poet and artist. She was still going strong aged 82, when a gas leak at home claimed her life in 1978.

Of particular interest here is the world-premiere recording of Bach’s three-movement String Quintet (1936), which is strikingly close in temperament, gesture and sound world to Debussy’s String Quartet.

Fascinatingly, the ‘Wolga’ Piano Quintet – arguably Bach’s most radiant masterpiece – uses Brahms as a creative launchpad, yet the music’s melodic and harmonic patternings are coloured by Debussy and Ravel, and also features a dozen subtle references to the Russian folk song ‘Song of the Volga Boatmen’. Earliest of the three works is the 1924 Cello Sonata, and here the Brahmsian influence is at its strongest, notwithstanding occasional Rachmaninoffian touches.

This fine team of soloists conveys an infectious sense of discovery allied to technical finesse, complemented by CPO’s naturally balanced, gently glowing engineering.

JULIAN HAYLOCK

BARGIEL Piano Trios: no.1 in F major op.6, no.2 in E flat major op.20

Leonore Piano Trio

HYPERION CDA 68342

Groundbreaking accounts of music by Clara Schumann’s half-brother

Woldemar Bargiel (1828–97) was the half-brother of Clara Schumann and a close friend of both the Schumanns and Brahms. His music is of the same sound world, with an extra shot of Romanticism. In his First Trio the Leonore players bring out the mystery of the Adagio introduction and move into the surging and restless Allegro energico with vibrant tone and close attention to Bargiel’s many accents, triumphantly punching out the dotted rhythms.

There is expressive legato playing in the Andante legato second movement, and the group faithfully observes the almost constant accentuation in the F minor section.

This is music that doesn’t ever really relax. Not until the Commodo centre of the Scherzo is there respite from the prevailing urgency of the work, performed with graceful, urbane playing and flowing lyricism. The final Allegro con fuoco opens with a bustling fugue, crisply played.

There is further turbulence in the opening of the E flat major Trio, to which the Leonore Trio responds with almost exaggerated phraseshaping, the whole first movement unfolding with a grand, urgent sweep. The Andante second movement contrasts creamy melodic playing with impassioned pesante writing and, following a clipped and dynamic Scherzo, the finale is good-humoured. The recorded sound is close and warm.

TIM HOMFRAY

LUKAS BECK

BRAHMS Piano Quintet op.34;

String Quintet no.2 op.111

Pavel Haas Quartet, Pavel Nikl (viola) Boris Giltburg (piano)

SUPRAPHON SU 4306-2

A game of two halves as the Pavel Haas joins forces in Brahms

These two quintets come from either end of Brahms’s career and display contrasting facets of his musical personality. For the late G major String Quintet (1890), Brahms adds a second viola to the mix, enhancing the group’s middle range. The Pavel Haas Quartet is joined by its former violist, Pavel Nikl, whose walnutty timbre acts as a piquant foil to the rich, chocolatey tone of Luosha Fang.

This is a group whose sound is built from the bottom up, however, and it is the cello of Peter Jarůšek that forms the solid basis of this interpretation, whether it be the joyously sprawling theme of the opening movement or the pregnant pizzicatos that drive the Adagio. The players revel in the work’s changing moods with full-toned freedom in the sonorous surroundings of Prague’s Domovina Studio.

Where the String Quintet is radiant and vivacious, the Piano Quintet of

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Inspired music-making from the Belcea with Tabea Zimmermann and Jean-Guihen Queyras almost 30 years earlier is stormy and impetuous. Here it’s the piano that provides the engine of the work, and this is where the major problem lies.

Boris Giltburg seems unwilling to meet this hyper-Romantic music on its own terms, opting instead for a verbatim re-creation of the piano part, leeched of its character and momentum. His striving for accuracy comes at the expense of impetus, a doggedness in his figuration particularly damagingly in the opening movement. The cantilena of the Andante is sung eloquently and, in the Scherzo and towards the end of the finale, the performance begins to ignite – but by then it’s too late. The Artemis Quartet and Leif Ove Andsnes (Virgin/Erato) are altogether more compelling. But buy this for the PHQ’s affectionate reading of G major Quintet.

DAVID THREASHER

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BRAHMS String sextets: in B flat major op.18, in G major op.36

Belcea Quartet, Tabea Zimmermann (viola) Jean-Guihen Queyras (cello)

ALPHA 792

A landmark recording of these superlative string sextets

The Belcea is not one of those quartets that habitually shares violin top-dog duties, but it’s nice to see its two distinguished guests here dividing the honours of first viola and cello with the resident players across the two sextets. Undoubtedly helped by Brahms’s supreme mastery in the medium – it is salutary to remember that forebears in the string sextet were minimal before the 1860s – the ensemble is seamless. The only minor misjudgement comes when violinist Corina Belcea brings a sudden gutsier tone to the secondary

phrase of op.18’s Scherzo, which leaps out of its sleek surroundings as a rather rustic interloper (the Second Sextet’s Presto giocoso feels more appropriate for this kind of colouring). But it’s a small point and not one that ultimately detracts from what are benchmark recordings and performances of the two sextets, full of the fresh Romantic spirit of their young composer.

Although the two works form a natural pair, they have contrasting characters and the players differentiate their moods and sound worlds judiciously, bringing plenty of warmth to the long melodic lines, rich texture to the harmonies and contrapuntal interplay, and a buoyant rhythmic verve in the swifter movements. The Vienna Konzerthaus provides just the right ambience for a recording with expertly balanced sound.

MATTHEW RYE

HAYDN Piano Trios vol.5: no.2 in C major Hob.XV:C1, no.14 in F minor Hob.XV:f1, no.5 in G minor Hob.

XV:1, no.17 in F major Hob.XV:2;

Divertimento in G major Hob.XIV:6

Aquinas Piano Trio

NAXOS 8.574361

A British ensemble makes the case for youthful Haydn

Haydn’s earliest keyboard trios were written at a time of transition, both in musical style and in the development of keyboard instruments, as the harpsichord gave way to the fortepiano and then the pianoforte.

The Aquinas Trio brings flawless ensemble and a lively intelligence to these relatively neglected pre-1770 works. While not as exciting as some of the more mature trios, they still make for an engaging disc. Virtuosity in this music falls to the pianist, and Martin Cousin does not disappoint, bringing delicacy and precision to Haydn’s writing. Violinist Ruth Rogers keeps vibrato to a minimum and accomplishes Haydn’s figurations with grace, while cellist Katherine Jenkinson’s restrained and elegant punctuations bring a sense of order.

Highlights include the two extensive theme-and-variation movements. The chirruping acciaccaturas of variation 3 in HobXV:2, originally a baryton trio, point the way to the sparkling humour in Haydn’s later music.

In the very earliest trios the strings do little more than double the piano part, so it’s surprising to find the violin recorded quite so forwardly, though the group’s subtle shading of dynamics and tone is well captured, even in the slightly resonant concerthall acoustic.

JANET BANKS

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HAYDN String Quartets: in G major op.77 no.1, in F major op.77 no.2, in D minor op.103.

The new-look Pražák Quartet brings a joyous energy to late Haydn

COURTESY PRAŽÁK QUARTET

Pražák Quartet

PRAGA DIGITALS PRD 250 420

Outstanding late Haydn from a re-energised quartet

This disc, in memory of Praga founder Pierre E. Barbier, marks the label’s return after a hiatus and is the first release from the Pražák Quartet after the group’s partial reconstitution two years ago: leader Jana Vonášková-Nováková and founding violist Josef Klusoň now being joined by Marie Fuxová (ex-Pavel Haas) as second violinist and Jonáš Krejčí (ex-Škampa and Petersen) as cellist.

The players erupt into the G major’s rumbustious Allegro moderato with a good tempo, excellent style and lovely rhythm. The phrasing of the Adagio has breadth and the playing is Elysian, with a wide dynamic range and real profundity. The Menuetto is robust, with its Trio keeping up the tension, and the Presto allows no relaxation in its headlong progress.

EMILE ASHLEY

The opening tempo is again ideal in the more philosophical F major, with its inviting, beckoning main theme. A characterful Menuetto, with a quiet contrasting Trio, takes us to Haydn’s last great set of variations, wonderfully played. Everyone is at full tilt in the bright, sparkling finale.

All we have of the putative op.103Quartet is an Andante grazioso, firmly etched here, and a granite-like Menuetto, among Haydn’s finest, with a more yielding Trio. The recordings, from Prague’s familiar Domovina Studio are superb.Enthusiastically recommended.

TULLY POTTER

LECLAIR Violin Sonatas, Book 3, op.5 no.1 in A major, no.2 in F major, no.3 in E minor, no.4 in B flat major, no.5 in B minor, no.6 in C minor, no.7 in A minor, no.8 in D major Adrian Butterfield (violin)

Sarah McMahon (cello)

Silas Wollston (harpsichord)

NAXOS 8.574341 & 8.574351 (2 CDS)

Stylish period-instrument advocacy of this founder of the French violin school

Adrian Butterfield and his various musical partners are gradually establishing themselves as the acknowledged champions of Leclair’s violin sonatas, successfully integrating Italian virtuosity and lyricism with French dance idioms.

Their historically informed recordings have been issued at well-spaced intervals since 2009, though the first eight sonatas of op.5 have recently appeared almost simultaneously.

Butterfield seems totally at ease with the more adventurous technical challenges of these sonatas, sometimes too much so, as his interpretations of, for example, the rustic moments in the outer movements of the concertoinfluenced no.8 and the Ciacconna of no.4 would benefit from greater extroversion. Nevertheless, his tempos are largely spot-on, allowing for clarity of articulation, and there’s a nice energy to the final movements of nos.3 and 5. His crystal-clear tone rings out sweetly in the lyrical, sensitively phrased slow movements, particularly in the adagios of nos.1 and 7 and the Largo of no.3. The differing moods within the variation finale of no.3 are deftly contrasted and the various dance idioms are skilfully characterised – no.2’s exuberant Giga, no.4’s Sarabanda and no.6’s Gavotta are particular delights.

Vibrato is used sensitively throughout and additional improvised ornamentation is both imaginatively and tastefully applied.

Cellist Sarah McMahon contributes significantly to the texture, whether in dialogue with, or imitation of the violin; she even gains her own independence in no.4’s Ciacconna and, together with harpsichordist Silas Wollston, no.6’s finale. The recording, with Butterfield slightly to the fore in the balance, is top drawer.

ROBIN STOWELL

OPERA IN MUSICA MONZA Six String Quartets

Fabio Biondi, Andrea Rognoni (violins) Stefano Marcocchi (viola)

Alessandro Andriani (cello)

NAÏVE V 7541

Premiere recordings of a prolific 18th-century Italian figure

The name of Carlo Monza (1735– 1801) is seldom encountered except as a passing mention in the biography of Mozart, who met him when visiting Milan as a child. As well as 20 operas and a huge number of sacred compositions, Monza also wrote several collections of orchestral and chamber music. The present set of six string quartets, preserved in manuscript form in the French National Library, is a real find. Each one carries a descriptive title and tweaks traditional musical structures to accommodate the programme depicted therein. The first, ‘The rival lovers’, describes an ‘argument’ (allegro in sonata form) followed by a ‘challenge’ (recitative), a ‘duel’ (a sequence of evocative chords), the ‘death of one opponent’ (a muted adagio of almost unbearable sadness)

Fabio Biondi unveils the highly colourful quartets of Carlo Monza

and ‘the lady’s desperation’ (a syncopated allegro, unexpectedly but effectively in the major mode).Other stories concern a luckless gambler, a hunting party and the love life of Venus and Vulcan.

While Monza gives the leader the lion’s share of the attractive thematic material, the second violin and viola also get to enjoy plenty of solo spots, with the cello mostly limited to drumming bass figurations.

Fabio Biondi and his colleagues from Europa Galante take up their roles with consistent inventiveness. They have been well recorded in a convivial acoustic, and their instruments have distinctly individual timbres, which adds to the impression of a conversation among equals.

CARLOS MARÍA SOLARE

VASKS Cello Concerto no.2

‘Presence’; Viola Concerto Lilli Maijala (viola) Marko Ylönen (cello)

Tallinn Chamber Orchestra/Juha Kangas

ALBA ABCD 463

Soulful new readings of concertos by a Latvian master

With its naive harmonies, endless, slowly unfolding melodies and, above all, profound sense of deep melancholy, it’s all too easy for the music of Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks to sound a bit mawkish and – well – trite. It takes performers with serious commitment and conviction to bring its elusive spirituality to the foreground, something that both soloists and orchestra achieve very movingly on this luminous new disc.

Vasks wrote his 2011 Cello Concerto no.2 for Sol Gabetta, who’s made her own a beautifully eloquent recording of the work. Finnish cellist Marko Ylönen offers a more chiselled, granitic account, pacing his immense power expertly across Vasks’s long, slow emotional build-ups, and tackling the composer’s Bartókmeets-Shostakovich dark scherzo of a second movement with muscular clarity and brilliantly crisp, clipped articulation. Like much of Vasks’s music, it’s an enigmatic piece, butting grotesque sarcasm up against brooding sorrow, but Ylönen clearly feels a connection with the concerto’s vulnerable emotions: his two lengthy cadenzas, for example, are delivered as introspective soliloquies, carefully considered and enunciated.

Ylönen’s compatriot Lilli Maijala provides a brighter, more buoyant account of Vasks’s 2015 Viola Concerto, playing the folk-inspired second movement with remarkable richness and steely precision, and fully conveying the aching sadness of its final movement. The Tallinn Chamber Orchestra under Juha Kangas plays with just as much commitment and focus in Vasks’s glacial harmonies as it does in his brief, whirling dances. A very rewarding package, recorded in close, clear sound.

DAVID KETTLE

WEINBERG Cello Concertino in D minor op.43bis; Fantasy op.52;

Chamber Symphony no.4 op.153

Pieter Wispelwey (cello)

Jean-Michel Charlier (clarinet)

Les Métamorphoses/Raphaël Feye

EVIL PENGUIN EPRC0045

Another key addition to the discography of this Polish-born Soviet master

For over half a century the dating of Weinberg’s dark and bitter Cello Concerto of 1956 went unquestioned.

That was until in 2016 when the score of a once-unlisted Cello Concertino, composed in just four days in 1948 (the year in which many distinguished Soviet composers were hauled over the coals for not toeing the official party line), was discovered among the papers of a Russian musicologist.Close inspection revealed that the concertino was a thematic and structural prototype for the concerto.

Marina Tarasova’s impassioned premiere recording (2018, Northern Flowers) set the bar high, yet if anything Pieter Wispelwey captures the music’s claustrophobic intensity with even greater acuity. At times it feels as though he is merely breathing on his instrument, whispering emotional confidences. The Fantasy (completed in November 1953, following Weinberg’s arrest earlier that year) is a more approachable work, melodically beguiling with a hint of folk song, elements that Wispelwey relishes to the full.

Les Métamorphoses under Raphaël Feye provides eloquently attentive support throughout, but really comes into its own in Weinberg’s Fourth Chamber Symphony (his final completed work) with clarinettist Jean-Michel Charlier, a piece that runs the gamut from spiky malevolence to heartfelt reminiscence. The fine recording captures the remarkably full and open sound created by these 21 gifted players.

JULIAN HAYLOCK

METAMORPHOSEN STRAUSS Metamorphosen

SCHREKER Intermezzo op.8

KORNGOLD Symphonic Serenade in B flat major op.39

Sinfonia of London/John Wilson

CHANDOS CHSA 5292

Sublimely seductive stringplaying from London’s finest

The string section was always one of the chief glories of John Wilson’s eponymous orchestra, drawn from the country’s top players to explore Hollywood and Broadway repertoire, and it sounds as if it has been taken over wholesale into his newer ‘recording orchestra’, the relaunched Sinfonia of London. This latest collection, a follow-up to the team’s disc of English string music (reviewed April 2021), quite simply contains some of the most sublime orchestral string playing on disc.

John Wilson conducting the Sinfonia of London at last year’s BBC Proms, the group’s concert debut

CHRIS CHRISTODOULOU

It would be easy just to wallow in the sumptuousness of it all, but these are more than mere sonic marvels.Strauss’s Metamorphosen – written as an elegy to the senseless destruction of life and culture in the Second World War and gaining renewed significance in the face of daily news reports from Ukraine – emerges with gut-wrenching power and searing emotion, and an emphasis on honesty rather than histrionics. Wilson and the Chandos recording team achieve the ultimate in balance between the composer’s competing contrapuntal lines and in coping with the music’s constant state of flux between solo and more orchestral textures.

How to follow this? The gentle lilt of an early Intermezzo for strings by Franz Schreker provides an apt palate-cleanser before we get to the more multifaceted string writing of Korngold’s Symphonic Serenade of 1948–9. Here we can appreciate the Sinfonia’s collective virtuosity in full, from the unanimity of the second movement’s ferocious pizzicato to the depth of sound in the hymn-like Lento religioso.

MATTHEW RYE

CAPRICES

Works by Aitken, Bacewicz, Beamish, Coult, Haigh, Harwood, Hellawell, Howard, Joslin, Kreisler, Leith, MacRae, O’Connor, Osborn, Panufnik, Paganini, Patterson, Reid, Sutton, Waley-Cohen, Wallen and Werner Fenella Humphreys (violin)

RUBICON RCD1074

Classic and new collide in a refreshingly unorthodox programme

This is a seriously entertaining disc, a set of mostly contemporary, sometimes specially commissioned, short works, set around a framework of three of Paganini’s Caprices and Kreisler’s Recitativo and Scherzo- Caprice. The first Paganini to appear is the ninth, ‘La chasse’, played with fine imitations of horn calls and neat ricochet bowing. The 13th Caprice is indeed capricious, with Fenella Humphreys despatching the opening descending thirds in a rhythmically free, coquettish manner, while the 24th is briskly and deftly given, with real musical personality.

The theme of the 24th appears again at the head of a set of newly commissioned variations by twelve composers. Here, Sally Beamish provides a nervy variation full of picky, separated notes; Stuart MacRae produces floated arpeggiated chords and whispered tremolos, and Alexandra Harwood’s variation is a haunting elegy, gently and affectingly played.Kreisler’s Recitativo is beautifully shaped, and the Scherzo-Caprice fizzes with high spirits and technical bravura.

Elsewhere, Tom Coult’s Etudes I–IV have echoes of Jimi Hendrix and end with a mysterious series of three-note chords; Roxanna Panufnik’s gypsyflavoured Hora Bessarabia moves from slow beginnings to sparkling complexity; and the third of Oliver Leith’s Goat Head boasts the best title: ‘Like whistling squiggles into the air, loose’, a naïve melody played in portamentos. There are lots of good things here, and Humphreys is technically and musically superb, and captured in a clear and focused sound.

TIM HOMFRAY

PUPILS OF TARTINI VOL.2

PAGIN Violin Sonata in A major op.1 no.5 NAUMANN Violin Sonata in G major HELLENDAAL Violin Sonata in C minor FERRARI Violin Sonata in G major op.1 no.5 MORIGI Violin Sonata in C major op.4 no.3

Črtomir Šiškovič (violin)

Luca Ferrini (harpsichord)

DYNAMIC CDS7939

A long-awaited second volume exploring the legacy of Tartini

Coming nine years after vol.1, this disc juxtaposes violin sonatas by a selection of Tartini’s pupils who disseminated his cultural legacy. Črtomir Šiškovič, playing a modern violin, is technically on top of his game, realising the quasi-Locatellian figuration and the harmonic effects in the opening Allegro of Ferrari’s G major Sonata with impressive accuracy. He nods occasionally to historical style, notably in his addition of extempore ornamentation in repeated passages; however, his idiosyncratic approach to matters of articulation and accentuation, highlighted by the close recording, tends to fragment the line and leads to some laboured interpretations, especially of Pagin’s A major Sonata, the two Allegros of which also seem well under tempo, and the Andante of Hellendaal’s C minor Sonata.

Best suited to Šiškovič’s approach are the two Allegro movements of Hellendaal’s sonata (which bear a certain resemblance to Tartini’s ‘Devil’s Trill’), the animated finale of Morigi’s C major Sonata and the variation-form finale of Ferrari’s, which is based on a folksy minuetto theme, all of which he negotiates with aplomb. Naumann’s conservative, two-movement G major Sonata puts harpsichordist Luca Ferrini centre stage, while also including some pleasing repartee, and Šiškovič comes closest to approximating Tartini’s concept of cantabile in the Adagio of the Morigi sonata.

ROBIN STOWELL

TEMPORALITY OF THE IMPOSSIBLE Solo violin works by Buccino,

Cassidy, Iannotta, Johnson, Lim, Milliken and Saunders Dejana Sekulić (violin)

NMC HCR26

Plenty to absorb in this daringly exploratory album

The pretentious title may serve to reinforce rather than challenge prejudices in some quarters over the ‘experimental’ nature of the violin writing mastered with such delicacy of feeling by Dejana Sekulić. That would be a shame, when the album is full of vivid imagery in sound: the dry rattling and absorbing stillness of Clara Iannotta’s dead wasps in the jam-jar, for example, or the spindly lines and ethereal cross-string connections drawn by Liza Lim in The Su Song Star Map, and the midnight breath of Rebecca Saunders’s Hauch.

Such non-traditional writing resists classification. The fragile drones accompanying Sekulić’s own voice in Cathy Milliken’s Crie are as alien to the sul pont skittering of Evan Johnson’s Wolke über Bäumen as the broken escape strategies of Dario Buccino (Finalmente il tempo è intero no.16, another zinger of a title) are to the incomplete recovery of familiar tonal and virtuosic gestures in Aaron Cassidy’s The Crutch of Memory.

Inveterate explorer: the Serbianborn violinist Dejana Sekulić

COURTESY DEJANA SEKULIĆ,

Dating from 2004, Cassidy’s piece is the oldest here by some way, and Sekulić’s success is to show that the map of violin writing is still being redrawn with unexpected curves (Saunders) as well as jagged edges (Johnson) and sudden drops (barely audible tremolo is the closest thing here to a technical cliché), beyond the circular tunes and arpeggiated noodles which have become almost a default mode of many ‘new’ pieces for the instrument.

Excerpted in the booklet, the scores look like works of art in themselves, and Sekulić contributes usefully demystifying notes: I keep returning to Lim’s piece and agreeing with her that ‘anyone who wonders how shimmering starlight travelling through vast darkness sounds’ will find an answer here.

PETER QUANTRILL