RECORDINGS

FONDATION GAUTIER CAPUÇON PRESENTS…

CHAMINADE Piano Trio no.1

POULENC Cello Sonata

SCHUMANN Papillons; Violin Sonata no.1

Sarah Jégou-Sageman (violin) Jeein You (cello) Martina Consonni (piano)

ERATO 5419764269

Promising artists emerge from Gautier Capuçon’s foundation

Last year French cellist Gautier Capuçon established his foundation to support and champion young artists at the outset of their careers. This release is the organisation’s second, featuring three of the 2022 laureates.

If Poulenc was in fact ‘half monk, half rascal’, as a critic once claimed, then cellist Jeein You (the youngest of the disc’s three players, still in her early twenties) doesn’t quite capture the latter quality. There could be more mischief, bite and whimsy, and a greater sense of knockabout interplay between the instruments in the first and third movements, but Poulenc the monk is released in the second-movement Cavatine: serene and with a touch of nocturnal magic.

Martina Consonni gives a suitably imaginative performance of Schumann’s solo-piano character pieces Papillons and partners Sarah Jégou-Sageman in the composer’s Violin Sonata no.1. For me, the first movement could take more of the ‘passionate expression’ that the score requests: it’s as if a more stirring performance is just around the corner. Jégou-Sageman’s playing is boldly confident, though, and in the second movement she deftly contrasts playfulness with profundity.

Chaminade’s unjustly neglected First Piano Trio (written when she was 23) receives a committed performance, convincing in both momentum and its strong lyrical thread. The sparkling scherzo is balanced by a finale that is truly full-blooded.

EDWARD BHESANIA

COLERIDGE-TAYLOR

Five Fantasiestücke op.5 DVOŘÁK String Quartet no.13 in G major op.106; Andante appassionato Takács Quartet

HYPERION CDA68413

A striking coupling of familiar and unfamiliar reaps rewards

It’s gratifying to see the name of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor on a high-profile release such as this. The two main works here come from the same year – 1895 – when Dvořák had recently returned from his directorship of the National Conservatory in New York and Coleridge-Taylor was a student at London’s Royal College of Music.

The title of Coleridge-Taylor’s Five Fantasiestücke may evoke Schumann, but the language is perhaps closer to Brahms, as might be expected of a pupil of Stanford. Coleridge-Taylor’s idol Dvořák is in the mix too, whether in the mournful song of the Prelude or the tripping central Humoresque. There’s also a Serenade that alternates sections in 5/4 and 6/4, an elegant Minuet and an irresistible closing Dance. Coleridge-Taylor entered the RCM as a violinist and his handling of string textures is innate, his harmonic imagination strikingly original. This isn’t the work’s first recording – that was made by Catalyst Quartet on Azica – but the skill and affection of the Takács make this recommendable on any terms.

Not that the Dvořák comes as any disappointment, for the Takács is steeped in his music. This is an ensemble of individuals, with the silvery violin of Edward Dusinberre singing over the rich-voiced inner parts provided by Harumi Rhodes and the quartet’s newest member, Richard O’Neill, all underpinned by the self-effacing but insistent presence of András Fejér – the only remaining member of the original line-up. Its corporate sound glows in the generous acoustic of Monmouth’s Wyastone Concert Hall. To close, an Andante appassionato that was originally intended as the slow movement of the A minor Quartet op.12: it’s a characteristically Dvořákian outpouring of song that rounds off the programme rather beautifully.

DAVID THREASHER

BRIDGES

D. CONSTANTINIDES Violin Sonata

Y. CONSTANTINIDIS Suite sur des mélodies populaires grecques du Dodécanèse

PAPANDOPULO Meditation; Violin Sonata

TERZAKIS Sonate infernale; Sprüche im Wind Danae Papamattheou-Matschke (violin) Uwe Matschke (piano)

BIS BIS-2563

An enticing introduction to Greek violin works of the last century

The prospect of 20th-century Greek works for violin and piano might not immediately grab you, but Papamattheou-Matschke is a persuasive advocate, both in her performances with her father and in her booklet notes.

Any common Greek identity between the works is somewhat diluted by the other countries in which the composers settled. In Zagreb, Boris Papandopulo based his Violin Sonata around a Bosnian folk song, while Dinos Constantinides, who studied violin with DeLay and Galamian in New York in the 1960s, wrote his tautly composed sonata around a twelve-note row.

The beauty of Papamattheou-Matschke’s sound on her 1760 Landolfi violin enhances these varied works and she approaches them with a sense of freedom and fantasy.

Her very pure intonation is noticeable in the most rewarding work on the disc, Dimitri Terzakis’s Sonate infernale, based on Dante’s Divine Comedy. Terzakis uses microintervals in the violin line and writes in a linear style with many lengthy quasi-improvisatory solo passages, played with most eloquent expression by Papamattheou-Matschke.

The most obviously Greek work on the album, Yannis Constantinidis’s Suite, is a charming and very approachable piece, perhaps reflecting his career in light music – six movements based on melodies from different Greek islands, played with engaging simplicity. The recorded sound is well-balanced and translucent.

JANET BANKS

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

HAAS String Quartet no.2 ‘From the Monkey Mountains’ JANÁČEK String Quartets: no.1 ‘The Kreutzer Sonata’; no.2 ‘Intimate Letters’ Escher Quartet, Colin Currie (percussion)

BIS BIS-2670

High-voltage interpretations from a prize-winning quartet

Love would seem to be the leitmotif that binds together this programme.

Janáček’s First Quartet is based on a Tolstoy novella of the same name and depicts a story about a husband who murders his wife in jealousy over her ‘friendship’ with a violinist. The Second Quartet, ‘Intimate Letters’, is inspired by Janáček’s passion for Kamila Stösslová, 40 years his junior and – like the composer – married, while certain passages in Pavel Haas’s Second Quartet reflect on his affair with the writer Maria Podešvová.

Emotions are in turmoil and an almost Expressionistic display of extremes can be found in all three works. The Escher players are like four finely tuned actors on stage, lending the drama a compelling narrative. The textures in both Janáček quartets are exquisitely clear, and the details of the scores are meticulously delivered. I particularly enjoyed the adroit speed changes, handled so naturally while maximising the theatrical nature of the invention.

Haas has a wildly original voice and would surely have been a major creative force in 20th-century music had his career not been brutally curtailed by the Nazis. Once again, the Escher, aided by Colin Currie, proves its palette of sounds is sufficiently rich to capture the vivid impressions of the countryside explored in Haas’s work. The fine accompanying booklet by Michael Beckerman also provides the listener with a real insight into this music.

JOANNE TALBOT

✪ MYTHES

HANDEL Sonata in D major HWV371 SZYMANOWSKI Mythes op.30; works by Grainger, Howard, Paradis, Ponce, Rimsky-Korsakov, Suk and Tchaikovsky James Ehnes (violin) Andrew Armstrong (piano)

ONYX ONYX4234

Unusual programme is another winner from this distinguished partnership

This is an intriguing disc, with two highly contrasting main works and a collection of short pieces. In the first of Szymanowski’s Mythes, ‘La fontaine d’Arethuse’, Ehnes, with his ever-excellent partner Andrew Armstrong, covers a lot of narrative ground, from the ethereal opening pages to the thrilling double-stopped F major climax and away to shimmering tremolos. In ‘Narcisse’ he gives a masterly demonstration of sustained lyrical playing as he traverses Szymanowski’s erotic landscape, and in ‘Dryades et Pan’ he conjures up a lascivious and decidedly creepy Pan emerging from the purity of his flute-like harmonics.

Top-tier music making from James Ehnes

BEN EALOVEGA

After that, Handel’s D major Sonata comes as a harmonic palate cleanser. Ehnes is steady and gracious in the opening Affettuoso, and the subsequent Allegro sparkles with crisp rhythmic energy. In the Larghetto, as in ‘Narcisse’, his melodic line is seamless, its contours simply and beautifully shaped, and the final Allegro dances joyously along. The group of encores (as Ehnes calls them in the notes) includes the ‘Burleska’ from Suk’s Four Pieces op.17, a moto perpetuo of scampering semiquavers, brilliantly despatched, Tchaikovsky’s ‘Souvenir de Hapsal’ op.2 no.3, sophisticated and insouciant, and the stomping lusty reels of Grainger’s Molly on the Shore to finish. The recording is warm, clear and well balanced.

TIM HOMFRAY

✪

✪ HEISE

String Quartets: no.1 in B minor; no.2 in G major; no.3 in B flat major Nordic Quartet

DACAPO 8224734

A neglected Dane is compellingly revived

In his own land, and to a small band of collectors, Peter Heise (1830–79) is known as the composer of the first Danish opera of note, Drot og Marsk (‘King and Marshal’). His widow stashed away his six quartets unpublished: a poor decision, anyone would think, having heard the first three of them so elegantly revived by the Nordic Quartet in this well-aired studio recording.

The Nordic Quartet goes exploring

COURTESY NORDIC QUARTET

Blind listening to no.2 might place the composer in Vienna, somewhere between Schubert and Schumann; at least until the Largo absent-mindedly changes subject mid-flow. If you knew what you were looking for, you might find the peculiar kind of Danish extroversion familiar from Nielsen in the Minuet, and the finale takes up its cudgels with one of those innocent-sounding themes that Haydn (but not Heise) could probe so teasingly.

The First, in B minor, sounds as if it were written after hearing Mendelssohn’s F minor unquiet farewell; it appears all three quartets were composed in 1852–3 (a decade after Schumann’s ‘quartet year’), and their youthful exuberance does not signify immaturity, as Jens Cornelius points out in a useful booklet essay. Heise knew what to do with his material, most convincingly so in the broader dimensions and expressive scope of no.3. So, in turn, do the members of the Nordic Quartet, with a period-aware palette of vibrato and a sensibility for those individual touches (a rustic drone in the middle of no.3’s opening Allegro, for example) that make Heise distinctively Nordic. Bring on Volume Two.

PETER QUANTRILL

KURPIŃSKI Fantasy in C major

MONIUSZKO String Quartets: no.1 in D minor; no.2 in F major NOSKOWSKI Variations on a theme by Viotti Lutosławski Quartet

NAXOS 8573978

Fine playing but a variable offering of Polish Romantics

Composing his First Quartet while still a student, Stanisław Moniuszko (1819–72) seems to have opened the scores of Chopin’s piano concertos and virtually copied out the string parts. At the time, who better for him to emulate? The country fair-style finale is good fun, done with a light touch by the Lutosławski Quartet, and in the Second Quartet (apparently from the same time, 1837–40) Moniuszko learns from the mistakes of the First, pares back his ideas and develops them more thoughtfully towards a deliciously Mendelssohnian, throwaway finale. It’s still no neglected masterpiece, but both engineering and playing are more lively and more forwardly engaged than the Camerata Quartet on the label Dux.

The forgettable conventions of Noskowski’s ‘Viotti’ Variations (1873) will not detain you long, despite every effort on the part of the performers to invest them with dynamic contrast and strident drama. From a full half century earlier, it is the Fantasy by Karol Kurpiński that counts as a discovery of substance. The discursive form elicits bold harmonies, dramatic questions and unexpected answers much as it did for Mozart on the keyboard a generation earlier. The tonal refinement and fastidious vibrato control of the Lutosławski Quartet is worthy of its namesake.

PETER QUANTRILL

FABIO GIANARDI

MAYER String Quartets, vol.1: in G major, in A major, in E minor Constanze Quartet

CPO 555600-2

A forgotten 19th-century female composer is rehabilitated

As a female composer living in the 19th century, Emilie Mayer (1812– 83) was regarded with suspicion, and this attitude dogged the reception of her work throughout her career. Not surprisingly, perhaps, she turned to writing quartets as a more practical way of disseminating her music. Indeed, she shows herself to be a remarkably able composer in terms of mastering chamber music textures.

Her style owes much to Mendelssohn, Mayer’s own E minor Quartet’s Sturm und Drang invention very much recalling the older composer’s A minor Quartet. Her contrapuntal assurance comes to the fore in the Allegro vivace of the G major Quartet, and her rhythmic skill in the Scherzo of the A major. She is also exceptionally confident in her handling of Classically oriented movement structures. For all this skill, though, and despite some moments of harmonic interest with an occasional abrupt modulation, her outlook remains conservative, with some of her melodic ideas lacking immediate memorability.

Mozart piano quartets given a youthful energy

The Constanze Quartet, however, proves a persuasive advocate – if caught in a somewhat generous acoustic – and puts forward an excellent case for Mayer’s music. Its depiction of the musical dialogues is alert, the blending nicely homogenous, and the Adagio molto espressivo in the E minor Quartet is finely nuanced.

JOANNE TALBOT

MOZART Piano Quartets: G minor K478; E flat major K493 Francesca Dego (violin) Timothy Ridout (viola) Laura van der Heijden (cello) Federico Colli (piano)

CHANDOS CHAN20179

Powerfully characterful performances, full of panache

It is abundantly evident from the intense reading of K478’s fervent opening Allegro that these are accounts to be reckoned with. The principal protagonist, pianist Federico Colli, contributes some assured, characterful and cleanly articulated playing on a bright-toned Steinway; his illustrious stringplaying colleagues, using modern instruments and limited vibrato, assist him admirably in forging perceptive interpretations that are convincingly paced, stylish, eloquently shaped and tastefully embellished.

The players dispatch the first movement of K493 with an especially pleasing sense of freedom and perform both central slow movements, particularly K493’s harmonically arresting Larghetto, with remarkable sensitivity to phrasing and expressive detail. They take the most liberties in Mozart’s jovial final rondos, in which Colli essentially plays a concerto soloist’s role.

He dominates the texture in K493 and executes the movement’s challenging passagework with spontaneity and aplomb. In K478, following an appropriate additional piano lead-in before the first return of the rondo refrain, he and Dego indulge in some tongue-in-cheek ornamentation; he later introduces some audacious rubato. A lengthy unscripted pause on an interrupted cadence adds further drama near the movement’s end.

The instrumental balance fractionally favours the piano over the strings in K478 but seems spot-on in K493, allowing full appreciation of its thematic interplay.

ROBIN STOWELL

ANDREW STAPLES

SCHUMANN Piano Trios vol.2: no.3 in G minor op.110; Six Studies in Canonic Form op.56 (arr. Kirchner); Piano Quartet in C minor WoO32 Kungsbacka Piano Trio, Lawrence Power (viola)

BIS BIS-2477

Much to engage in this second volume of chamber music

The Kungsbacka players start Schumann’s G minor Trio with a sweeping turbulence, full of nervous energy that is ratcheted up still further in the development. Violinist Malin Broman plays the opening of the slow movement with a rich, woody sound. The accents of the torrid central section are punched out, and Broman leans on a heartfelt sfp in the final phrase.

The third movement presses forward, always urgent and always essentially legato. The finale has a rustic, dancing quality, shot through with a nervy unease; here, the trio pays particularly close attention to the composer’s dynamics.

Schumann wrote his C minor Piano Quartet when he was 18 and still at university. It has both weight and carefree innocence, reflected here in a performance that is variously muscular and full of youthful joy. Broman caresses the melodies of the opening Allegro, her tone sweet and pure. There is much scalic banter in the Menuetto, contrasting with an Andante that has a magical passage of repose at its centre; the closing Allegro, with its martial rhythms and alluring melody, builds in exuberance. The six fugal studies, originally for pedal piano, feature some melancholy playing, with an eloquent dialogue between violin and cello in the third study and quiet nobility in the final Adagio. The recording is warm and close.

TIM HOMFRAY

Passion aplenty from the Kungsbacka Trio

VIVALDI Sonatas for cello and continuo: B flat major RV47, 45 and 46; F major RV41; A minor RV43; E minor RV40; A minor RV44; E flat major RV39; G minor RV42 Antonio Mostacci (cello) Bologna Baroque

TACTUS TC672291 (2 CDS)

Persuasive readings of a Baroque master, with colour to the fore

In homage to their mentor, Cuban gambist José Vázquez, Antonio Mostacci and Bologna Baroque offer persuasive accounts of Vivaldi’s nine surviving cello sonatas, all but one of which (RV42) comprise four movements of alternating slow and fast tempos. Mostacci is equal to almost all the technical challenges of the fast movements, although clarity of articulation is wanting in, for example, the extrovert Allegros of RV39 and RV47. He revels in Vivaldi’s lively syncopations, agile cross-string leaps and other bravura effects, particularly in the buoyant finales of RV43 and RV46. He is also freely expansive in slow movements such as the second Largos of RV47 and RV41, in which he coaxes his cello into beautifully sustained cantilenas, adorned, when appropriate, with embellishment that largely complements the melodic line. Vivaldi’s yearning appoggiaturas are also passionately emphasised, notably in the third movement of RV44.

These players perform at a pitch (A=440Hz) that both aligns with the perceived high Venetian ‘standard’ of the period and displays Mostacci’s Montagnana-school cello to its best advantage. They employ a continuo instrumentarium of harpsichord, cello, theorbo and Baroque guitar in a variety of imaginative permutations from movement to movement as moods dictate. This results in a pleasing diversity of colour and texture, ranging from the full ensemble to Mostacci’s solo cello in the opening section of RV42’s Sarabanda, a cello duo in RV46’s remarkably chromatic third movement and a combination of solo cello and plucked strings in the lyrical third movements of RV40, RV41 and RV43. The recorded sound is lucid and ideally balanced.

ROBIN STOWELL

SOLA

Works by Bacewicz, Beamish, Feery, Fuchs, Holst, Lutyens, Maconchy and Musgrave Rosalind Ventris (viola)

DELPHIAN DCD34292

A lockdown project proves fruitful for female composers

As many musicians did during the Covid pandemic, violist Rosalind Ventris set about exploring the byways of her instrument’s unaccompanied repertoire. The present recital features some of her findings that – in Ventris’s words – ‘just happen to be by women composers’. Grażyna Bacewicz’s Polish Caprice – transcribed from the violin original – makes for a most effective opening flourish, showcasing the luscious sound of Ventris’s viola, as well as her crisp spiccato and sonorous chordal playing. Lillian Fuchs’s Sonata Pastorale, a potentially rambling piece, is convincingly held together, its rhythmic backbone always perceivable behind some sensitive rubato. Amanda Feery’s Boreal and Elisabeth Lutyens’s Echo of the Wind are fascinating studies in sonority, gratefully seized by Ventris, who takes their idiosyncratic writing and sophisticated use of harmonics in her stride.

Like Fuchs, Sally Beamish is a professionally trained violist, which shows in Penillion, chosen in 2000 as the set piece at the Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition: the influence of folk fiddling is much to the fore, with bare fifths, pedal notes and quick grace notes. Elizabeth Maconchy’s almost Bartókian Five Sketches are followed by Imogen Holst’s Suite, in which neo-Baroque gestures coexist with modernist traits such as whole-tone scales and a distorted dance in 5/8. The solemn Bachian chords of Thea Musgrave’s In the Still of the Night lead to a transfigured ending on a single harmonic. A similarly comforting ending self-explanatorily concludes her Light at the End of the Tunnel – written in August 2020 at the height of the pandemic – and this lovingly recorded and presented, unreservedly recommendable recital.

CARLOS MARÍA SOLARE

OSCAR SHUMSKY: LIVE AT BERKELEY BACH Violin Sonata in E minor BWV1023 (arr. Siloti) BEETHOVEN Violin Sonata no.9 in A major op.47 ‘Kreutzer’; Romance no.2 in F major op.50 MOZART Serenade no.7 in D major ‘Haffner’ – Rondo (arr. Kreisler) PROKOFIEV Solo Violin Sonata op.115 TARTINI Violin Sonata in G minor ‘Devil’s Trill’ (arr. Kreisler) Oscar Shumsky (violin) Robin Sutherland (piano)

BIDDULPH 85030-2

Rosalind Ventris: a solo voyage of discovery

A master violinist scintillates in a bold and brilliant programme

For aficionados, one look at the repertoire and the violinist’s name will be enough: this programme is most of a recital Oscar Shumsky gave at the Berkeley campus on 25 January 1980, just before his re-emergence onto the concert scene. He announces himself with a majestic account of the fanfare-like Prelude to Bach’s E minor Sonata for violin and continuo; the Adagio is beautifully ‘spoken’ as if by a great actor; and the Allemande and Gigue display lovely rhythm.

The ‘Kreutzer’ is a sterner test for Robin Sutherland (1951–2020), but he responds like the warhorse he is, while Shumsky gives a splendid rendition with innumerable masterly touches: even if it’s not the life-ordeath experience you get from Huberman and Friedman, Busch and Serkin or Kogan and Gilels, it fully deserves the storm of applause.

Spurned by Oistrakh but taken up by Ricci, Prokofiev’s Solo Sonata is delightful. Trenchant rhythm from Shumsky in the first movement gives way, in lighter passages, to a debonair cane-twirling stroll; the theme-andvariations second movement is superbly done; and the third, the most Prokofievian of all, dances gleefully.

I’m glad Shumsky plays Kreisler’s edition of the ‘Devil’s Trill’, better than the original. His performance is by turns beautiful, solidly rhythmical, declamatory and technically impeccable – the final cadenza is terrific.

Beethoven’s Romance with piano is ‘naked but nice’, and for the Mozart-Kreisler add ‘neat’ – again the cadenzas are marvellous. Shumsky plays a 1905 Enrico Rocca and the booklet essay is a reminiscence by his violist son Eric.

TULLY POTTER

MALENE KRISTOPINE ØKLAND/ECM RECORDS

SILVERSTROKE

Sarah-Jane Summers (violin) Juhani Silvola (guitar) Silverstroke

HEILO HCD7384

A new chamber orchestra makes an impressive debut

There’s passion and energy in spades in this new multinational collaboration between Inverness-born fiddler Sarah-Jane Summers and her Finnish-born guitarist/composer husband Juhani Silvola, plus the 12-piece Silverstroke ensemble of string players they’ve assembled in Oslo, where they’re both now based. Summers propels things along winningly with her athletic, muscular playing, ringingly clear on the opening track ‘Tune for Alistair’, though rich and dripping with expressive portamento in the seasonal Shetland tune ‘Christmas Day I Da Mornin’’. Silvola’s experience as a dance music producer is put to good use in the builds and drops of ‘Number 81’, though they’re convincingly rethought for a distinctively folk idiom.

Most impressive, however, are Summers and Silvola’s inventive and constantly changing ensemble arrangements, which brilliantly showcase the talents of their musicians – from the punchy, Mozart-inspired ‘Miss Mary MacDonald’ to the fluid melodic imitations of ‘Call & Response’, inspired by Gaelic psalm singing (and also the first opportunity to hear Silvola’s expressive, strongly articulated guitar playing).

There’s little sense of slavish adherence to tradition here: instead, Silverstroke is a joyful, thrillingly inventive amalgam of Scottish and Norwegian tunes plus original compositions whose interconnections run so deep that it would be impossible (and fruitless) to tease them apart. Far better to revel in Summers and Silvola’s abundant spirit and vitality, captured in a warm, rich recording.

DAVID KETTLE

Nils Økland and Sigbjørn Apeland: wonderfully conversational

✪ GLIMMER

Nils Økland (Hardanger fiddle, violin) Sigbjørn Apeland (harmonium)

ECM 4841962

Traditional and modern meet in an inspired musical conversation

With its unhurried, slowly unfolding melodies and its general air of restrained contemplation, there’s a danger that this quietly exquisite collection of folk tunes and original compositions from Norwegian violinist Nils Økland and harmonium player Sigbjørn Apeland might end up merely as atmospheric, mood-setting background music. Which would be a huge shame, since it’s a collection that greatly rewards attentive listening, and reveals enormous variety within its admittedly somewhat limited sonic palette.

There’s the remarkable purity and sincerity of Økland’s playing, for a start – with rich-toned violin improvisations around the achingly sad tune of opening track ‘Skynd deg, skynd deg’, for example, or the lithe ornamentation he brings to the subsequent ‘Gråt ikke søte pike’ or the later ‘O du min Immanuel’, complete with a halo of resonances from his Hardanger fiddle. Apeland summons an astonishing richness of sounds from his harmonium, most notably in the pulsing chords of his solo ‘Myr’, also spicing the austerity of some of the Norwegian tunes with some distinctively jazzy harmonies (such as in ‘Reven sete på setet’), in interpretations that manage to sound both ancient and bang up to date.

ECM’s close, warm recording feels like the ideal vehicle for this intimate, heartfelt conversation between friends – it’s playing that invites you to listen, unafraid to show its vulnerabilities and emotions, and is entirely captivating as a result.

DAVID KETTLE