RECORDINGS

BACH TRANSCRIPTIONS BACH Concertos for violoncello piccolo, strings and continuo: F major BWV971, D major BWV972, D major BWV1054, G minor BWV1056R, A major BWV1055R; Concerto in D minor for violoncello piccolo and continuo BWV974 Mario Brunello (violoncello piccolo) Accademia dell’Annunciata/Riccardo Doni (harpsichord/chest organ)

ARCANA A535

Bach concertos reimagined to thrilling effect

This disc concludes Mario Brunello’s trilogy of recordings of compositions by Bach in transcriptions for the four-string piccolo cello (see Sentimental Work, January 2023). It includes arrangements of three works that survive as harpsichord concertos (BWV1054–1056), concertos by Vivaldi (op.3 no.9, RV230) and Marcello (S D935) that Bach arranged for harpsichord (BWV972 and 974 respectively) and Riccardo Doni’s enterprising transcription of the Italian Concerto (BWV971), in which Bach’s contrapuntal lines emerge with unusual clarity, animating every textural detail.

Brunello gives lithe, polished and highly committed performances that admirably showcase his technical prowess and expressive powers. Most of the outer movements are breezy and energetic and feature athletic, clearly articulated and neatly ornamented solo playing; however, the first movements of BWV974 and 1056 sound laboured, the articulation of the opening movement of BWV971 is less detached than the norm and the dramatic finale of BWV972 seems unnecessarily roughly attacked by the principal protagonists.

The central slow movements are flexibly shaped and tastefully ornamented, most, particularly BWV1056R and BWV971, benefiting also from Elisa La Marca’s judicious theorbo continuo contribution. The Adagio of BWV1054, though, sounds somewhat disconnected and its piano sempre indication appears to have been ignored. Like Arcana’s recording engineers, the members of Accademia dell’Annunciata provide excellent support.

ROBIN STOWELL

BEETHOVEN Complete String Quartets vol.3: no.12 in E flat major op.127, no.13 in B flat major op.130, no.14 in C sharp minor op.131, no.15 in A minor op.132, no.16 in F major op.135, Grosse Fuge in B flat major op.133 Dover Quartet

CEDILLE CDR90000 215 (3CDS)

A stylish American quartet concludes its Beethoven cycle

In this final volume of its Beethoven quartet cycle the Dover Quartet maintains the qualities admired by Julian Haylock in the op.18 set (The Strad, December 2020): technical polish, thorough understanding of the music’s internal structural logic and ingenuity, and rigorous exploration of its hidden expressive continuities. Add to these aspects unanimity of ensemble, tonal sonority, meticulous internal blend and balance, carefully determined and flexible tempos and fidelity to Beethoven’s performance indications (though within a somewhat limited dynamic spectrum) and this is undoubtedly a Beethoven cycle to savour.

A comprehensive list of performance highlights would require far more than my allotted space. Suffice it, therefore, to praise these players’ sublime Adagio and robust finale in op.127, their mercurial opening movement, graceful Alla danza tedesca and deeply expressive Cavatina in op.130, topped off by an animated and strikingly rhythmic account of that work’s substitute finale. The Dover also offers a powerfully dramatic rendition of the Grosse Fuge to searching and perceptive effect, as is its contrapuntal interweaving in op.131’s tranquil opening fugue and finale. The first movement of op.132 is arguably the least convincing reading here, but the players’ seamless Heiliger Dankgesang is outstanding, with leader Joel Link’s 1845 Vuillaume sounding radiant throughout. Impressive too is the Dover’s faithful reproduction of the countless mood changes in the Vivace of op.135 and its sustained cantabile playing in the subsequent movement.

Captured in a natural concert hall acoustic, Cedille’s recorded sound offers a fine balance of individual detail and ensemble resonance.

ROBIN STOWELL

BEETHOVEN Violin Sonata no.9 in A major op.47 ‘Kreutzer’ FRANCK Violin Sonata in A major SCHUMANN Violin Sonata no.1 in A minor op.105 Renaud Capuçon (violin) Martha Argerich (piano)

DG 4863533

Stunning on-the-wing performances from a superb duo

Recorded live at the Aix-en-Provence Easter Festival last year, this release has ‘crowd pleaser’ written all over it.

Fiery individuality from Capuçon and Argerich

In many ways Capuçon and Argerich are the dream team we would expect, their bold individual musical personalities compounding to make formidable musical statements. There are some interpretative surprises all the same. Capuçon’s overly rich, suave playing in the Schumann – however seductive – pushes it more into the realm of Richard Strauss. By contrast, in the first movement of Franck’s sonata, there’s a relaxed, fluid approach to rhythm that arrests the momentum but results in a suspended, quasi twilit atmosphere that arguably creates a sharper contrast to the more fiery second movement.

The stormy urgency in the Presto of the ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata’s first movement offers particular excitement, with both players on blistering form. The theme of the variations movement is especially warm, and the third variation (minore) inspires a searching quality, while the complementary majore variation shines with the kind of sweetness, delicacy and enchantment that can perhaps only arise in a live performance.

The instruments are well captured and balanced, and applause is edited out. The occasional stylistic questions apart, this disc features some very distinguished playing, the Beethoven and Franck pieces especially benefiting from Argerich’s uniquely commanding pianism.

EDWARD BHESANIA

BUSCH Nine Pieces for string quartet op.45; String Quartet in A minor op.57; Flute Quintet in C major op.68 Sarastro Quartet, Dimitri Vecchi (flute)

CPO 555 279-2

Persuasive premiere recordings of a 20th-century luminary

CPO’s second disc of music by Adolf Busch (1891–1952) includes two premiere recordings and the first studio recording of his chamber music masterpiece, the Flute Quintet. Busch’s exemplar from his teens was Max Reger but he had a more concise compositional style.

The Nine Pieces (1931, revised 1936) have commedia dell’arte elements, by turns: lyrical; gentle and lilting; more forceful and characterful; singing and romantic; very dramatic; song-like; wistful; Puckish and Harlequin-like; concluding with an operatic denouement, everyone chattering away in a compelling display of Busch’s contrapuntal mastery.

The A minor Quartet (1942, dedicated to Rosalie Leventritt) is edited by the Sarastro Quartet’s Lehel Donath: its first movement pits fast and vigorous music against more lyrical writing; the second alternates a beautiful, barcarolle-like theme with a Vivace assai; and the third is very vigorous, with delightful polyphony.

The mellow Flute Quintet (1950) uses two violas and finds Busch finally free of the influence of Brahms and Reger: in the opening movement he reverses the usual scheme, with a gentle first theme and faster second; this is followed by a lovely Adagio; a Scherzo with a flowing twicerepeated Trio; while the finale weaves a diverting web of polyphony.

The performances by these Winterthur-based musicians are molto simpatico and well engineered, showing the creative side of a great violinist in the best possible light.

TULLY POTTER

Alluring accounts of Adolf Busch from the Sarastro Quartet

DELIUS Late Swallows (arr. Fenby) ELGAR Introduction and Allegro op.47 HOWELLS Concerto for String Orchestra VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis Sinfonia of London/John Wilson

CHANDOS CHSA5291

A stellar ensemble impresses in English string repertoire

With this release, more than any so far, John Wilson’s Sinfonia of London comes up against its earlier namesake. John Barbirolli’s early 1960s disc of Vaughan Williams and Elgar with the orchestra has long been the go-to recording of these iconic English string works. Wilson, proving himself very much Barbirolli’s equal, varies the fare somewhat, replacing his forebear’s Greensleeves Fantasia and Elgar Serenade and Elegy with a Delius miniature (arranged from his String Quartet) and a rarely heard Concerto for String Orchestra by Herbert Howells. Composed in deference to both RVW and Elgar and almost contemporaneously with Tippett’s Double Concerto in 1939, this is a virtuoso work that brings out the best in the Sinfonia’s rich and rhythmically alert string playing.

John Wilson and his Sinfonia of London delight in English classics

But orchestra and conductor are arguably best in the Vaughan Williams Tallis Fantasia, where balancing, unanimity of attack and tonal richness reach almost superhuman perfection without deflecting from the music’s ultimate humanity. There’s also wistfulness in the Delius and a joyful sense of momentum to the Elgar Introduction and Allegro.

Chandos’s luminous recording allows you to hear every strand and the dynamic range is remarkable (and not a trick of the microphones, as anyone who has heard the orchestra live can confirm).

MATTHEW RYE

BENJAMIN EALOVEGA

HAYDN Piano Trios vol.2: no.7 in G major HobXV:41 no.21 in B flat major HobXV:8, no.33 in G minor HobXV:19, no.35 in C major HobXV:21, no.45 in E flat major HobXV:29 GOROKHOV For Gaspard Trio Gaspard

CHANDOS CHAN20270

Fine playing in this underappreciated genre of Haydn’s output

Last August I greeted the first instalment in Trio Gaspard’s survey of Haydn’s piano trios as a reason to be cheerful. And if the way of the world has wiped the smile off your face in the intervening months, here’s Volume 2 to put it back. Not only is the music itself impossible to resist, but once again the delight these players so evidently take in it positively pours out of the speakers.

Like the piano sonatas, the trios have two sets of modern catalogue numbers and many bear 18thcentury opus numbers, making matters hopelessly confusing. The Gaspard again mixes early, middle and late, with the four-movement Trio no.7 of around 1760 little more than a keyboard sonata with string cladding, the violin and cello beginning to come into their own in the two-movement no.21 from the mid-1780s. Those of the following decade spring from Haydn’s encounter with British pianos while in London and his sincere appreciation of the gifted women who played them. Nevertheless, while the keyboard retains its primacy, Haydn was far less guilty of simply letting the strings double right and left hands than he is often accused of being.

Once again, in the hands of Trio Gaspard the three instruments are equal partners in the conversation, the flow of repartee facilitated not only by the subtly observed detail of their playing but also by the ideal balance of Jonathan Cooper’s sound at Potton Hall in Suffolk. Repeats are freely ornamented – cheekily so in the best-known work here, the Trio no.45 from 1795. The bonus (if such it be) is the premiere of Leonid Gorokhov’s For Gaspard, a five-minute jeu d’esprit that juggles Haydnesque out-takes without ever feeling like an in-joke too far. Great fun!

DAVID THREASHER

MARCO BORGGREVE

LEGACY HAYDN Cello Concertos: no.1 in C major, no.2 in D major PORPORA Largo from Cello Concerto in G major; Giusto amor tu che m’accendi from ‘Gli orti esperidi’ MOZART Sinfonia concertante for violin, viola and cello in A major (reconstructed Robert Levin) GLUCK Dance of the Blessed Spirits from ‘Orphée et Eurydice’ (arr. La Marca) Christian-Pierre La Marca (cello) Adrien La Marca (viola) Philippe Jaroussky (countertenor) Le Concert de la Loge/Julien Chauvin (violin)

NAÏVE V7259

Haydn’s cello concertos set in historical context

On this recording, cellist Christian-Pierre La Marca sets out to demonstrate the links connecting the cello repertoire during the era of Viennese Classicism. So we have music by Porpora, who wrote one cello concerto and taught Haydn, an unfinished Sinfonia concertante for violin, viola and cello by Mozart and Gluck’s ‘Dance of the Blessed Spirits’ from his opera Orphée et Euridice, which, according to La Marca, introduced Viennese Classicism to French music. These links may be somewhat tenuous, but they provide the filling for the main two works here: Haydn’s cello concertos.

The opening of the C major introduces us to the spacious acoustics of the Temple du Saint Esprit in Paris where the recording was made. La Marca’s playing is gentle and restrained, and the passagework of the development is clean and understated. He lovingly caresses the elegant lines of the Adagio and brings neat, articulated bowing to the finale, which fizzes with energy. The first movement of the D major Concerto is on the steady side, La Marca imbuing it with a telling combination of warm, focused tone and lightness of touch. The Adagio is an intimate meditation, while the final Allegro has a dancing exuberance to it. Throughout, La Marca takes Haydn’s technical demands in his stride.

TIM HOMFRAY

Technical finesse from Christian-Pierre La Marca

SALGADO Viola Sonata; Selene; Cello Sonata; Woodwind Quintet Kansas Virtuosi

NAXOS 8 579128

Committed readings make the case for an Ecuadorian musical polymath

Luis Humberto Salgado (1903–77) was an influential figure in his native Ecuador as a composer, pianist, teacher and writer on music. Although he never left his homeland, he kept abreast of the main musical currents throughout his life, essaying them in his own compositions alongside influences from traditional Ecuadorian music. Calling himself a ‘polytechnic’ composer, Salgado brought together the pentatonic scales and forceful rhythms of Andean folklore and the free-tonal or atonal harmonies and elements of serialism.

Salgado’s Viola Sonata makes for a rousing starter to this well recorded CD. Folk idioms are very much to the fore but fascinatingly clad in refined harmonies. The haunting slow movement includes some intricate unaccompanied doublestopping, and throughout there is passagework that exploits the viola’s complete register. Violist Boris Vayner delivers an excitingly assured reading, with Ellen Sommer nicely empathetic at the piano.

Unlike the Viola Sonata, Salgado’s Cello Sonata doesn’t show folk influences (although a tango-like rhythm does insinuate itself into the first movement); instead, it’s written in a Neoclassical style. The work’s heart is an impressionistically tinged Andante sostenuto that includes a prolonged cello cadenza, grippingly paced by Hannah Collins. The concluding Allegro giusto features some sophisticated harmonic touches to support a strangely angular melody; its passagework is dispatched by both players with aplomb.

The two pieces for woodwind ensemble present Salgado in a more modernistic mood (Selene’s eerie harmonic world was inspired by the first Moon landing) and both receive eloquent readings from the Kansas Virtuosi.

CARLOS MARÍA SOLARE

MENDELSSOHN Complete String Quartets vol.1: no.1 in E flat major op.12, no.2 in A minor op.13, no.3 in D major op.44 no.1 Van Kuijk Quartet

ALPHA ALPHA873

A young quartet on characterful, energetic form

Time was, not so very long ago, when string quartets tended to pass over the masters of the mid- 19th century – Mendelssohn and Schumann especially – in favour of the First Viennese School and the late-Romantic and early modern French and Russian/East European repertoire. Schumann’s music was too often dismissed as the product of a sick mind, while Mendelssohn’s early quartets were too derivative, the later ones evidence of creative decline.

That has all changed, and happily there are many younger ensembles intent on exploring these midcentury masters. Fresh from its much-admired Mozart, the Van Kuijk Quartet has become the most recent in a slew of youthful groups to dive into this repertoire, in the footsteps of the Doric, Danish, Schumann, Consone, Calidore, Minguet and Tippett to mention just a few, all of which have released Mendelssohn recordings over the past few years. The Van Kuijk offers its characteristic accuracy of articulation and intonation, along with an observance of the composer’s expressive markings that really makes the music leap off the page. For all that he pays tribute to his influences, Mendelssohn is always his own man and the Van Kuijk responds vividly to the quicksilver swings of mood in the early quartets, ranging from sonorous and hymnlike to agitated and passionate, from chaste and folk-like to scamperingly playful. The players are just as telling in the drama of the D major op.44 no.1.

Conductor, soloist and composer at the recording sessions for Augusta Read Thomas’s Third Violin Concerto

NIMBUS RECORDS

Three quartets on a single disc is generous; the companion volume is out imminently and may well place this set among the most desirable of recent cycles.

DAVID THREASHER

READ THOMAS Rush; Rhea Enchanted; Caprice; Capricious Toccata: ‘Dandelion Sky’; Dream Catcher; Incantation; Pulsar; Venus Enchanted; Rainbow Bridge to Paradise; Violin Concerto no.3 ‘Juggler in Paradise’ Clarissa Bevilacqua (violin) BBC National Orchestra of Wales/Vimbayi Kaziboni

NIMBUS NI8109

Variety aplenty in this snapshot of a distinguished American composer

Augusta Read Thomas likes performances of her music which convey the sense of a ‘captured improvisation’, and that’s as neat a way as any of summing up Clarissa Bevilacqua’s playing in this sequence of short solo pieces. Though essentially tonal, they do not so much explore or journey through harmonic landscapes as define and describe them. The keening clamour of Rush is followed by and contrasted with the introspection of Rhea Enchanted, where the double-stopping and multiple lines present the quixotic workings of a single mind – in this case, the mother of the ancient Greek gods.

Read Thomas draws her sources of inspiration from far and wide: a coffee shot for Rush, faint imprints of Native Americana in Dream Catcher. Such eclectically informed curiosity lends a variety often missing from solo-violin albums. So, one infers, does a thorough understanding of the violin, because while each piece captures a single mood, the writing itself stimulates Bevilacqua to dig deep into her reserves of expression for the searing confidence of Pulsar, the statuesque beauties of Venus Enchanted and finally the luminously elevated play between violinist and large, percussion-heavy orchestra in the six brief movements of the ‘Juggler in Paradise’ Concerto.

MORICETE SCHLOSSER

There are excellent booklet introductions by both Bevilacqua and Paul Pellay, regrettably ‘designed’ into illegibility on the apparent misapprehension that the words will not stand up to scrutiny for themselves. Like Read Thomas’s notes, however, they do.

PETER QUANTRILL

WEINBERG Complete Works for Violin and Piano vol.4: Concertino in A minor op.42, Sonata for Two Violins op.69, Two Songs without Words, Sonata Movement, Three Pieces Yuri Kalnits, Igor Yuzefovich (violins) Michael Csányi-Wills (piano)

TOCCATA CLASSICS TOCC 188

Sympathetic performances of a composer overshadowed by Shostakovich

This fourth volume of Mieczysław Weinberg’s complete violin music ranges widely, from miniatures written as a teenager at the Warsaw Conservatoire to a work composed in the Soviet Union in the relative artistic easing following Stalin’s death. The most substantial work, though, is the Concertino for violin written in the ‘Zhdanov’ year of 1948, the time of the greatest Stalinist strictures on what a composer could write. Recorded here for the first time in the version with piano accompaniment, it is perhaps not one of Weinberg’s most penetrating works, but attractive none the less, and Yuri Kalnits and Michael Csányi-Wills make a good case for its largely lyrical language. Of particular interest, though recorded earlier in a more congested acoustic than the rest of the disc, are the Three Pieces Weinberg wrote in his mid-teens – aremarkably assured Nocturne, Scherzo and ‘Dream of a Doll’. Weinberg never quite managed to shake off the influence of the composers to whom he was drawn, and where Szymanowski casts a shadow over these miniatures, Prokofiev and particularly Shostakovich never seem far from the surface of the other works here. The searchingly played Songs without Words and rejected Largo from his Second Violin Sonata are typical of this, but provide a good link to the more personal Sonata for Two Violins of 1958, in which Kalnits and Igor Yuzefovich are well-matched executants, their playing sympathetic and focused.

MATTHEW RYE

ARIA WAXMAN Carmen Fantasy TCHAIKOVSKY Lensky’s Aria from ‘Eugene Onegin’ (arr. Auer) WIENIAWSKI Fantasia on Themes from Gounod’s ‘Faust’ SZYMANOWSKI Roxana’s Song from ‘King Roger’ (arr. Kochanski)

Luka Faulisi: at home in the opera house

VERDI Themes from ‘La traviata’ (arr. Faulisi) ZIMBALIST Concert Phantasy on ‘The Golden Cockerel’ Luka Faulisi (violin) Itamar Golan (piano)

SONY CLASSICAL 196589613196

An impressive debut from a young violin hotshot

For his debut recording, Aria, violinist Luka Faulisi has eschewed standard repertoire in favour of a collection of works linked to opera. He shows a fine lyrical sensibility throughout, and a healthy gift for showmanship. In Waxman’s Carmen Fantasy, after a somewhat mannered Habanera he plays in the best bravura style, never missing an opportunity for portamento or dynamic flourishes and dashing off the increasing technical demands with style. In Leopold Auer’s arrangement of Lensky’s Aria from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin he produces nervy, neurotic expression. He is splendid in the opening cadenza of Wieniawski’s Fantasia on Themes from Gounod’s ‘Faust’, which is supple and dashing, even if his technique slips a little later on, with shaky intonation in octaves and a descending saltando scale amid Mephisto’s fiendish outpouring which loses its bounce halfway down.

Faulisi plays Kochanski’s arrangement of ‘Roxana’s Song’ from Szymanowski’s King Roger with slow-burning sensitivity which flowers into passion; and he showcases his own arrangements of four numbers from Verdi’s La traviata, beginning with a coquettish Brindisi and later despatches the technical high jinks with flair. In Zimbalist’s Rimsky-Korsakov Concert Phantasy suave lyricism balances virtuoso pizzazz. Itamar Golan provides sensitive support throughout, and the recording is close and clear.

TIM HOMFRAY

MULTIPLE VIEWS FROM A WINDOW Works by Adams, Athanassakis, Carastathis, Dagalaki, Fetzek, Giannotti, Panayiotakis, Passilongo, Paterniti, Sauter, Souza and Yamaki Oleg Yatsyna (violin) Aliaksandra Patsiomina (viola) Ivan Renansky, Krzysztof Pawlowski (cellos) Marina Romeyko (piano)

PHASMA MUSIC 055

A musical journey underpinned by compelling performances

The big question behind this admittedly very rewarding, amply filled disc – which boasts 13 new short works by 12 living composers from across the world – is: why? With repertoire written for combinations of violin, viola, cello and piano, you can’t help wondering what brings it all together. Yet no underlying theme or rationale is mentioned in the booklet.

That aside, it offers an eye-opening journey through an eclectic array of composers’ concerns and interests, from Aris Carastathis’s somewhat Schoenbergian Bitter Land, a powerful, pithy response to his birth country of Greece’s years of post-crash austerity, to the slinky bossa novameets-Brahms of Claudio Passilongo’s elegant Elegia. The performances are powerful and deeply committed: violist Aliaksandra Patsiomina and cellist Ivan Renansky are enjoyably hard-edged in Daniel Adams’s dark Interior Junctions, while violinist Oleg Yatsyna is a wonderfully chameleonlike presence, with a hushed, softedged, almost vocal tone in Nikos Athanassakis’s imploring Invocation, which transforms into piercing, brittle purity in Bitter Land. The disc’s closing track by Eriko Yamaki, which gives the CD its title, brings Yatsyna, Renansky and pianist Marina Romeyko together in a dense, lockdown-inspired creation that draws from them exemplary focus and intensity. Rather disconcertingly, recorded sound varies considerably from track to track, though no specific venues are credited in the CD booklet.

DAVID KETTLE

Passionate commitment from the Lincoln Trio

MIKE GRITTANI

TRIOS FROM CONTEMPORARY CHICAGO Works by Garrop, Okpebholo, Ran, Thomas and Zupko Lincoln Trio

CEDILLE CDR 90000

New music from Chicago proves something of a mixed bag

A whole disc devoted to recent piano trios by contemporary Chicago-based composers might sound like something very niche. And indeed, there are a couple of pieces here that aren’t quite what they seem. Shulamit Ran’s dark and passionate 1997 Soliloquy is a reworking of an aria from her opera Between Two Worlds, and its rumbling left-hand piano tremolo unavoidably makes it sound a bit like a keyboard reduction. Mischa Zupko’s Fanfare 80 was written to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Music Institute of Chicago and exists in versions for several instrumental combinations; but I wonder whether violin and cello are the best vehicles for its nervy, hard-edged fanfare figurations.

Elsewhere, though, there’s music that’s far more convincing, delivered with the same insight and passion that the Lincoln Trio players apply to the works right across the disc. Augusta Read Thomas’s …a circle around the sun… draws angular, hard-edged playing from violinist Desirée Ruhstrat and cellist David Cunliffe, though pianist Marta Aznavoorian feels like the main protagonist. They come together exquisitely, however, in Shawn E.Okpebholo’s Chicago architecture-inspired City Beautiful, from the fluid ripplings of its opening ‘aqua’ (which has more than a hint of Lou Harrison) to the bracing athleticism of its closing ‘burnham’. At 23 minutes, Stacy Garrop’s Sanctuary is the disc’s most substantial work, and it’s a moving, highly personal exploration of family connections, conveyed with just the right degree of heart-on-sleeve emotion and an almost theatrical sense of pacing and gesture from the Lincoln players. It’s not an easy ride, but it makes for a cathartic ending to a disc that may be a mixed bag, but whose performances are unerringly persuasive, captured in close, warm sound.

DAVID KETTLE