Reviews

Your monthly critical round-up of performances, recordings and publications

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A Birthday celebration from the Bozzini Quartet PAGE 81

Mendelssohn in song from Michael Barenboim PAGE 82

A Lionel Tertis homage from young star Timothy Ridout PAGE 87

Berlin

ANTOINE TAMESTIT (VIOLA) BERLIN PHILHARMONIC/DANIEL HARDING

PHILHARMONIE 20 JANUARY 2024

Tailor-made for Antoine Tamestit, Jörg Widmann’s Viola Concerto takes into account not just his musical persona but also his considerable thespian gifts, the soloist being required to wander about the stage following a detailed mapping printed in the score. First sitting inconspicuously near the harps, the soloist starts by gently tapping on the viola’s body and eventually plucking its strings (shades of Berio’s Naturale), before ‘finding’ a bow that opens up a new world: swishing sounds redolent of Sciarrino lead to some flautando effects on the C string, first joined by the bass flute, then by the clarinets in Middle Eastern modus. An encounter with the double bass section turns into a scary experience, but the violist is now exploring the whole range of the fingerboard in virtuosic runs and passages of double stops, humming along and finally letting out a primeval scream of frustration. All ends well, however, with the viola soaring above the muted strings in a concluding section of aching lyricism.

Tamestit has performed Widmann’s concerto some 40 times since premiering it in 2015, roughly half of them with Daniel Harding conducting. Theirs is the art that conceals art: you could readily believe that the piece is being created in real time before your eyes and ears, and the aplomb with which Tamestit delivered Widmann’s unconventional writing defied criticism. It also inspired his confrères in the Berlin Phil, who rounded off the concert with an impressive traversal of Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony.

CARLOS MARÍA SOLARE

CONCERTS

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DOVER PHOTO ALEX BROWN. GOLDMUND PHOTO GREGOR HOHENBERG

New York

HILARY HAHN (VIOLIN)

NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC/JAKUB HRŮŠA DAVID GEFFEN HALL 12 JANUARY 2024

The passion of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Ballade for orchestra was expertly controlled and shaped by Jakub Hrůša with the New York Philharmonic, its mix of lyricism and rhythmic energy perfectly setting the stage for Hilary Hahn’s account of Prokofiev’s Concerto no.1. The opening Andantino was elegant and refined – Hahn unafraid to play as softly as she liked. Her passagework had vivacity and flair without sacrificing sound quality; double-stops were like a caged animal – wild but contained. The virtuosic Scherzo found Hahn playing even the most difficult, quiet or harsh passages with unparalleled delight. She brought a beautiful simplicity to the opening of the Moderato and the final run sequences appeared effortless as she made her way up and down the fingerboard and across all four strings with grace and poise, ending with tremendous sophistication.

Her solo Bach encore – the Andante from the A minor Sonata – was so captivating that I hardly dared move; the audience was spellbound until the ending of the very last note (which she held with complete control for what seemed like an eternity). Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra rounded out the programme and was fantastically well played by all sections of the orchestra.

LEAH HOLLINGSWORTH

Philadelphia

DOVER QUARTET PERELMAN THEATER 14 JANUARY 2024

I first heard this formidable group live at the Americas Society in New York in 2014, shortly after it had won the Grand Prize in the Banff International String Quartet Competition. Its unique Viennese suavity has stuck with me for the past decade and anticipation was high for a second outing. This appearance in the intimate Perelman Theater for a capacity crowd did not disappoint. The cheering began when cellist Camden Shaw mentioned the group’s Philadelphia roots: all four musicians – including violinists Joel Link and Bryan Lee, as well as violist Julianne Lee – are graduates of the Curtis Institute, and currently the school’s ensemble-in-residence.

The group opened with Haydn’s Quartet in G minor op.74, no.3, ‘Rider’, done with sparkle and refinement, along with intonation that would be the envy of any ensemble.

Then the cellist offered a brief background on Florence Price’s Quartet in G major (1929), of which two memorable movements survive. As an invaluable artefact of the early 20th century, it confirms Price’s status in the American firmament.

But it was Shostakovich’s String Quartet no.9 that was the climax of the afternoon. In a tense half hour, it shows the composer’s piercing mix of seriousness and manic intensity at its peak. The final movement was particularly memorable, the foursome escalating the pace in a breathtaking race to the finish.

BRUCE HODGES

GOLDMUND QUARTET PERELMAN THEATER 16 JANUARY 2024

Why aren’t works by Schulhoff programmed more often? That question lingered in the air, after the Goldmund Quartet offered a ferocious reading of his Five Pieces (from 1924).

Structured as a set of irreverent dance homages – a waltz, a serenade, a Czech folk tune, a tango and a tarantella – the whole made a strong impression in the lithe hands of this estimable ensemble, making its Philadelphia debut. The musicians use four instruments once owned by Nicolò Paganini, courtesy of the Nippon Music Foundation: any quartet would be ecstatic to have such a piece of history at their fingertips.

In an illuminating pre-concert talk,Zev Kane (programme director of WRTI inPhiladelphia) mentioned that Haydn likely influenced Schumann’s Third Quartet in A major, written amid a flurry of activity. So Haydn’s ‘Fifths’ Quartet (in D minor op.76 no.2) provided a textbook introduction to his talented successor. Its 20 minutes were filled with the prolific title interval ringing sweetly: when those 5ths are precisely executed, that consonant buzz is oh so satisfying.

Following this preface, the Schumann that ended the evening gained even greater resonance. The Goldmund players positioned the poetic third movement as the apex – the climax of a sensuous evolution buoyed by the group’s (again) pristine intonation and immaculately calculated bowing, among other virtues. The dotted rhythms in the finale were so well drilled that I was thinking about them for days afterwards.

BRUCE HODGES

London

RANDALL GOOSBY (VIOLIN) JAMEEL MARTIN (VIOLA/NARRATOR) EDDIE POGOSSIAN (CELLO) ZHU WANG (PIANO)

PURCELL ROOM 14 JANUARY 2024

At the end of this programme – titled ‘Intersections: Black Music & Words’ – Randall Goosby remarked to the audience with some pride and not a little relief that he hadn’t known how it would turn out. He needn’t have worried, thanks in no small part to his naturally poised playing, propelled by a sweet and rich tone.

The concert, around 80 minutes without an interval, interweaved words and music from Black writers and composers, with Randall informally addressing the audience. Viola player and writer Jameel Martin lent his rich bass voice in readings of his own texts before each of the five numbers selected from the Negro Melodies by Coleridge-Taylor(originally for solo piano and arranged for piano trio).

The Movement for string trio by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson brought a more modern idiom, its metrical tricks – described by Goosby as ‘rhythmic mischief ’ – smoothly negotiated, and the work’s spareness in places imbued with great intensity.

For André Previn’s Four Songs for soprano, cello and piano (the soprano line arranged for violin), it probably wasn’t necessary both to precede each song with a reading of Toni Morrison’s text and to have the soprano part projected on the back wall, but the expression ranged from bleak to wistful to sublime. A crowd-pleaser to end – Air on a G String – ensured the audience went away happy.

EDWARD BHESANIA

CASTALIAN QUARTET WIGMORE HALL 16 JANUARY 2024

The Castalian Quartet began with Janáček’s First Quartet, the ‘Kreutzer Sonata’, with an almost recitative-like quality from cellist Steffan Morris at the opening, vehement utterances from violist Edgar Francis and some rich G-string playing from leader Sini Simonen. There were vivid contrasts and violent clashes of colour in the second movement and in the third a discomfiting attack of sul ponticello tremolo interruptions that seemed to come from a later musical era. Simonen played with anguished muscularity and super-heated vibrato in the finale and Francis all but quarried out some of his phrases.

The two movements of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Awake, commissioned by the Castalian, has longbreathed lines, which were beautifully sustained and paced. There are sudden agitated outbursts in the first, and the second is laced with restless anxiety before its questioning, unresolved final chord.

The opening Allegro of Bartók’s Fifth Quartet was ferocious, full of dogged determination, leavened by some light, fluid playing. The Adagio was poised and delicate, and there was a feeling of fun in the Scherzo, thanks to the changeability of the initial quaver passages and the touches of rustic dance. Emotional intensity steadily increased through the Andante, and the finale combined superb ensemble playing with the personalities of individual voices.

TIM HOMFRAY

CHAOS QUARTET WIGMORE HALL 19 JANUARY 2024

The opening of Mozart’s B flat Quartet K589 was gentle and smooth in this account by the ChaosQuartet, with cellist Bas Jongen playing his solo with attractive nonchalance. The development was full-blooded, with nimble playing from leader Susanne Schäffer. The Larghetto flowed gracefully, with more nicely shaped melodies from Jongen (this was written for King Wilhelm II of Prussia, himself an enthusiastic cellist) and some neat little dialogues between the musicians. The inner parts provided the Menuetto with energy, and brought palpable enjoyment to the dancing opening of the Trio. After its clipped, skipping start, the finale became smooth and creamy, with some moments of mystery along the way.

KAUPO KIKKAS

WIGMORE HALL TRUST 2024

Berg’s Lyric Suite came as something of a musical wrench, but had similar beauty of tone, vitality and textural clarity. The first movement was full of incidental details, and the second had a tinge of melancholy, with delicate playing and time seemingly suspended. There was firm direction through the spectral busyness of the Allegro misterioso, and the fourth movement was appassionato indeed until the magical, quiet lines at its centre. The Presto delirando had violent, disjointed intensity, with some fierce bowing before the tragic, vibrato-laden soliloquies of the final Largo desolato.

TIM HOMFRAY

VILDE FRANG (VIOLIN) BBC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA/SAKARI ORAMO BARBICAN HALL 20 JANUARY 2024

Vilde Frang recorded Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto a few years ago, and her rebarbative way with the opening Toccata continues to throw down the gauntlet to her accompanists. She led Oramo and the BBCSO on a not-so-merry dance, pulling the pulse about and having no truck with the potentially Neoclassical elements of Stravinsky’s 1931 writing.

By springing into the first Aria with hardly less ferocity, Frang kept up a similar level of intensity.

On the one hand, her approach made individual sense as an adaptation of the conventional concerto form; on the other, it continued to look forward to the Stravinsky of Agon while finding unlikely common ground with Schoenberg’s concerto of five years later.

The finale offered not so much catharsis as Cubism, flattening out the usual thematic contrasts while using some unusual accents to turn up singular perspectives on the heterogenous nature of Stravinsky’s inspiration for the violin writing: a stamping Russian folk song here, a clackety Spanish rhythm there, a virtuoso flourish from the Corelli-Paganini handbook and a Chablis-dry aside. More harum-scarum coordination, more scampering to keep up; Frang kept everyone – audience and orchestra alike – on the edge of their seats. She is a force of nature.

PETER QUANTRILL

LINOS PIANO TRIO KINGS PLACE 21 JANUARY 2024

The Linos Piano Trio opened the London Chamber Music Society’s first concert of the new year à deux, with cellist and pianist playing three of Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words, including op.109 (originally for cello and piano, the other two being arrangements of the solo piano pieces).

Cellist Vladimir Waltham’s tone was not resplendent, perhaps due to his instrument, but his playing was by turns songful and impassioned. Pianist Prach Boondiskulchok came into prominence in Fanny Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio in D minor, driving the collective turbulence of the first movement with a vivid, gothic-like quality.

Boondiskulchok’s own Piano Trio no. 2 received its London premiere. Subtitled ‘Song without Words’, it takes cues from his Thai heritage. The first movement features the microtonal chants of Northern Thai monks heard at a retreat, the second a staccato recitative on the piano, the third the resonant sounds of gamelan and some violin/cello hocketing and cello percussion. This final movement seemed more sprawling, but the sounds overall were often ravishing.

The bold first movement of Beethoven’s ‘Ghost’ Trio prompted spontaneous applause and in the second movement the piano gently shone through the fragile, subdued strings.

The encore was another ‘song without words’ – Schubert’s ‘Ständchen’, with the novelty of all three players taking turns at the keyboard.

EDWARD BHESANIA

RECORDINGS

BACH Violin Concertos: A minor BWV1041, E major BWV1042, D minor BWV1052R, G minor BWV1056R;

Suite No.3 BWV1068: Air Leonidas Kavakos (violin)

Apollon Ensemble

SONY CLASSICAL 0196588689321

Aviolin superstar brings perhaps too much personality to the Baroque

Leonidas Kavakos’s accounts of these provoke a mixture of positive and negative reactions. His technical athleticism, lightly articulated bow-strokes, clinical precision, pliancy and rhetorical spontaneity acknowledge period-performance practices to good effect; and he adds drama a-plenty, especially in the darkly intense opening Allegro of the D minor and his numerous rhetorical flourishes in the Presto of the G minor. His communication and musical affinity with the one-per-part Apollon Ensemble also ensure tautly controlled performances, transparent textures and a rare unanimity of sound and purpose, cleanly captured by Sony’s engineers.

Regrettably, Kavakos allows his extrovert virtuosity to consume him. He adopts breakneck speeds for many of the fast movements, especially the finale of the A minor Concerto, in which demisemiquavers fly by without really registering. By contrast, his indulgently slow tempo in the E major’s Adagio and the excessively delayed resolution on the pause on the dominant chord towards its mid-point are almost yawn-inducing. His approach to extempore embellishment, too, often seems misguided, notably when he adds intrusive ornamentation into Bach’s already florid melodic lines, as in the central movements of

BWV1041 and 1042 and in some fast movements. The Apollon contributes to this ornamental revelry, too, especially in BWV1042; and Kavakos’s flamboyant cadential flourishes in the opening Allegro and central Adagio of the D minor and the G minor’s finale also seem somewhat idiosyncratic.

ROBIN STOWELL

BACH Sonatas for keyboard and violin BWV1014–19 Sirkka-Liisa Kaakinen-Pilch (violin) Tuija Hakkila (fortepiano)

ONDINE ODE1446-2D

Impeccable if emotionally restrained readings of masterly sonatas

Although Bach wrote these sonatas for violin and harpsichord, it is quite possible that they were played on a fortepiano in his lifetime. Bach was not initially keen when Gottfried Silbermann showed him his first attempts at the instrument, but by 1747 he reacted positively to the improvements that had been made.

This recording by two Finnish early-music specialists keeps an impeccable balance between the three contrapuntal lines. The sweet tones of Kaakinen-Pilch’s 1691 Rogeri violin sing out in the church acoustic and the use of a fortepiano (by Silbermann) means both instruments can temper their dynamics. I did sometimes yearn for the harpsichord’s crispness, but soon acclimatised to the more legato sound created by struck rather than plucked strings.

Some might find the playing rather reserved. In the slow movements with which Bach opened the first five sonatas, Kaakinen-Pilch uses the lightest of expressive brush strokes, uncompromisingly non-vibrato and with only the slightest right-hand pressure to add emotion. At its best the music speaks for itself, however, the long notes beautiful in their plainness.

Several of the fast movements feel rather flat and overly academic but happily those in the Sixth Sonata in G major bounce along infectiously, its opening Allegro taken at an energetic pace and its gigue-like final movement leaping and trilling with humour and style.

JANET BANKS

BEETHOVEN String Quartets: in C sharp minor op.131, in A minor op.132

Léner Quartet

BIDDULPH 85042-2

Fiery late Beethoven from this crack Hungarian ensemble

Most ensembles take around ten years to find what I call their fifth voice; but the Léner Quartet achieved it in half that time. Its musicians were Leó Weiner’s first successes as a chamber music coach and in 1924, when these recordings were made, their Beethoven still had freshness as well as six years’ experience.

The most homogeneous group on record, its players came from the Hubay–Popper stable in Budapest. Imre Hartmann was a terrific cellist, Sándor Róth a fine violist, the two violinists Jenő Léner and József Smilovits like peas in a pod. As for their portamento, bring it on, I say!

Op.131, set down over two days in February, with one side remade in August, holds together well: the fugue invites the listener in, the variations maintain the attention and the Adagio quasi un poco andante is very moving, leading to a lively but never brutal finale.

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MICHAEL SLOBODIAN

This recording of op.132, made on two November days, is crucial to Aldous Huxley’s novel Point Counter Point – Biddulph reproduces the relevant passage in the booklet.

After the Innigkeit of the opening, the Allegro has terrific impetus, unimpeded by a certain amount of Hungarian ebb and flow; the Scherzo has typical Léner flair and its droning Trio has a lovely quality; the chorales of the ‘Heiliger Dankgesang’ build great intensity and the interludes have a hopeful spring in their step; the march is just fine; and after the satirical cadenza, the finale brings wondrous rhythm and drive, with an exhilarating dash to the finish.

Yes, the Busch recordings have a sublimity and spirituality that are not quite attained here, but what flair and intensity can do, the Léners do. The acoustic sound breathes a unique atmosphere.

BRAHMS Cello Sonatas: no.1 in E minor; no.2 in F major SCHUMANN Fünf Stücke im Volkston Christian Poltéra (cello)

Ronald Brautigam (piano)

BIS BIS-2427 (SACD)

Searing performances from two consummate storytellers

Brahms’s two cello sonatas come from opposite ends of his career and represent a sea change in his approach to the genre. The First, in three movements, has no real slow movement, but opens in a state of lyrical unease. The Second bears a hymn-like slow movement of considerable poignance and replaces the intermezzo-like Allegretto of the First with a scherzo marked passionato. Christian Poltéra and

Ronald Brautigam are acutely responsive to Brahms’s invention throughout, locating unerringly the inner force that drives them along, never lingering to admire the beauty to be found within them.

Not that these performances are without beauty of their own. Poltéra fully exploits the woody resonance of his 1711 ‘Mara’ Stradivari, unafraid to sing as the solo line rises above the stave, but with a special emphasis on the baritonal gruffness to be found in the lower register. Brautigam plays a copy by Paul McNulty of an 1868 Streicher, with its softer attack and slightly attenuated dynamic range. The opening of the Second Sonata is impetuous to say the least, but in this reading there is a contrasting lightness of touch in the gnomic central movement of the First and an imaginative variety of phrasing that prevents its closing fugue from becoming clotted.

In between comes a performance of Schumann’s Five Pieces in Folk Style in which Poltéra and Brautigam both show themselves to be vivid storytellers, setting the seal on a deeply involving album.

DAVID THREASHER

FREY String Quartet no.4 Bozzini Quartet

COLLECTION QB CQB2432

A long-standing musical friendship is celebrated

Swiss composer Jürg Frey – who turned 70 last year – has had a long association with the Montreal-based new-music specialists, the Bozzini Quartet, writing three quartets for it across a span of 20 years. That closeness and mutual understanding is more than evident in the Bozzini’s sensitive, thoughtful account of his hour-long, five-movement Fourth Quartet from 2020.

It’s a remarkable piece: sparse, reflective, often just a step away from silence, and sounding as though classical gestures have been boiled down to their bare bones, ready for close inspection and contemplation. The Bozzini treads an expert path between almost mechanistic consistency across Frey’s sometimes barely changing musical ideas, while playing up subtle distinctions of light and shade, consonance and dissonance. Indeed, Frey makes more than a few nods to traditional quartet

writing in the piece – for example in the second movement’s folk-like drones and ornamentations, and its rich minor-mode triads, which sound shocking after so much dissonance and so many unconventional sounds. The Bozzini embraces the breadth of Frey’s language with such conviction – and, it has to be said, such stamina and sustained intensity across his lengthy paragraphs – that the results are never less than persuasive.

It’s a work that repays close listening and reflection, and Frey could hardly have hoped for a performance of greater insight.

DAVID KETTLE

KORNGOLD String Sextet in D major op.10 TCHAIKOVSKY Souvenir de Florence Nash Ensemble

HYPERION CDA68406

Korngold is the star on this characterful album

The Nash Ensemble launches into Tchaikovsky’s string sextet Souvenir de Florence with drive and energy, rich sound and opulent vibrato. In the second-movement Adagio cantabile violinist Stephanie Gonley and cellist Adrian Brendel play their beautiful duet with supple beauty, relaxed and warm yet firmly paced, and they all skitter splendidly through the saltando section of the following Allegretto moderato. There are moments of lightness in the finale, with its fugal counterpoint neatly done. This is playing that combines beauty and character, and if it’s a little heavy at times, that’s down to the composer.

Korngold was still a teenage wunderkind when he wrote his Sextet during the First World War; his deployment of forces is, frankly, more inventive and varied than Tchaikovsky’s. There’s a fair degreeof textural complexity here, but the Nash’s clarity of vision is first-rate, as is its instinct for drama, allowing Korngold’s passages of Expressionist ferocity their head. The weaving lines of the Adagio have an anguished tonal intensity, contrasting with the folk-music charm of the thirdmovement Intermezzo, which is delightfully flexible and lilting here. Korngold asks for fire and humour in the final Presto, which the Nash players deliver with helter-skelter alacrity. The recorded sound is clear and full.

TIM HOMFRAY

MENDELSSOHN Songs without Words (arr. David)

Michael Barenboim (violin) Natalia Pegarkova-Barenboim (piano)

LINN CKD696

Empathetic arrangements and warm musicianship make this a must-hear

These arrangements may be counted almost as authentic as the piano originals. Ferdinand David was not merely the intended soloist for Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto: he effectively wrote the firstmovement cadenza and gave the overall shape of the part its unimprovable polish. ‘His tone is most pure,’ remarked an English reviewer of David in 1839, ‘his cantabile expressive, his intonation perfect and his bowing such as all English players should endeavour to imitate.’

The same could justly be said of Michael Barenboim. His portamento is stylistically apt, not self-consciously antique but intrinsically vocal. His tempos take account of the intimately domestic context for which Mendelssohn was writing, neither pushing Presto movements to virtuosic extremes nor burdening Andantes with anachronistic pathos. The core of his tone is warmed with a youthfully light vibrato, and (crucially) his phrasing lifts the up-beat without an ugly accent in sight. The pianist is inevitably allotted an unrewardingly subsidiary role, weighted towards the left hand, but Natalia Pegarkova-Barenboim makes the best of it with a properly equal place in front of the microphone.

The booklet note does not elaborate on whether David arranged all of the Songs without Words – it seems unlikely – but this selection cherry-picks from all seven books, in a chronological arrangement that gives the lie to the old myth that Mendelssohn never developed. The open-hearted exuberance of op.19 no.2 belongs to the world of the Octet just as surely as the Andante sostenuto op.85 no.3 shares the distilled inner feeling of the slow movements in the Sixth Quartet and Second Symphony. Programming, performance, engineering: every facet of this album is a delight.

PETER QUANTRILL

FANTASY MESSIAEN Fantaisie SCHUBERT Fantasy in C major SCHUMANN Märchenbilder op.113 STRAVINSKY Le baiser de la fée – Divertimento Alena Baeva (violin)

Vadym Kholodenko (piano)

ALPHA ALPHA1021

Flights of fancy aplenty on this delightful disc

Messiaen’s early Fantaisie (1933) has yet to outgrow our familiarity with its ideas as they appear in the later Quartet for the End of Time, but Baeva and Kholodenko bring it to life as a fully fledged work. Unlike several previous recordings, they follow the expression marking rather than the metronome for the passionate second subject, imparting much stronger coherence and energy to the whole with a mastery of Messiaen’s method of episodic juxtaposition. The recording plays its part, too, in underlining the pianist’s articulated attack and the palette of the violinist’s tone.

Baeva is Kyrgyz-born, Kholodenko Ukrainian, and they bring the kind of valedictory sensibility to Schubert’s late Fantasy that emerges in the work of post-Soviet composers such as Sylvestrov and Korndorf. The Fantasy stands with the E flat Mass as one of the most underappreciated products of the composer’s last year; a prelapsarian, Classical elegance shot through with Romantic angst is the essence of late Schubert in performance: holding these elements in balance is again a compelling virtue of this husbandand-wife duo at work.

Both Schumann and Stravinsky evoke lost fairy-tale worlds, and Baeva bestows on each of them a freshness never tainted by anachronism, especially effective in the dewy-eyed awakening of the Märchenbilder. Highly rewarding.

PETER QUANTRILL

AMERICAN COUNTERPOINTS PERKINSON Louisiana Blues Strut: A Cakewalk; Sinfonietta no.1 PERRY Prelude for Strings; Symphony in One Movement for Violas and Basses; Ye, Who Seek the Truth; Violin Concerto STEWART We Who Seek Curtis Stewart (violin) Experiential Orchestra/James Blachly

BRIGHT SHINY THINGS BSTC-0200

Two unduly neglected figures are brought back into the spotlight

It’s not often you can claim a CD offers true revelations, but that’s the case with this fascinating release featuring US violinist and composer Curtis Stewart. The real discovery is the 1968 Violin Concerto by African-American composer Julia Perry, respected during her lifetime, but seldom encountered in concert programmes today. Stewart’s compelling and quietly authoritative account of the concerto should encourage a far wider interest: it’s a strange, deeply idiosyncratic piece, from its fierce, improvisatory solo opening to a finale that sounds like Magnus Lindberg, the violin often embedded deeply within Perry’s imaginative orchestral textures only to break free for a final, breathless cadenza. Stewart gets persuasive support from the Experiential Orchestra under James Blachly, alive to Perry’s restlessly flickering colours. Her 1961 Symphony in One Movement for Violas and Basses is just as burnished and brooding as its title suggests, in a richly imagined account from the Experiential players, and she subverts a lush, Romantic language with sly harmonic sidesteps in the sumptuous Prelude for Strings.

Stewart opens with a gutsy, freewheeling Louisiana Blues Strut by the marginally better-known Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, another shamefully overlooked 20th-century

African-American composer, though the Experiential players could have done with a slightly crisper attack in his intricate, driven Sinfonietta no.1, lively and vigorous though their performance is. Nonetheless, it’s a disc of musical discoveries, conveyed in compelling performances and warm, close sound.

DAVID KETTLE

THE PASSENGER SCHUBERT Piano Trio no.2 in E flat major WEINBERG Piano Trio in A minor Trio con Brio Copenhagen

ORCHID CLASSICS ORC100282

Music that speaks of trauma is eloquently brought to life

A hue of melancholy drifts across both Schubert’s E flat major Trio, written a year before his death, and the Weinberg, composed in 1945 immediately following World War II. Given the latter’s traumatic experience of having fled Nazioccupied Poland, the sense of loss and a certain numbness are paramount elements in this work. But in addition, a steely-grey anger infuses the first movement. The finely honed Trio con Brio evokes a brutal edge to its energised and inflamed playing, ferociously aggressive in the Toccata, with the unpredictable piano low notes savagely punctuating the invention – a sensation enhanced by a slightly metallic recorded sound. Weinberg’s style has a linear structure, and this element, in both the first movement and the thirdmovement Poem with its extended piano cadenza, could perhaps be more sculpted, (as found in Gidon Kremer’s fine recording on DG).

Schubert’s Trio no.2 encompasses both the elements of the searching wanderer and moments of hope and optimism. The Trio con Brio’s Scherzo is full of vitality and the finalAllegro has a lovely elegance; but the tempo adopted for the Andante is on the swift side and misses the trudging sense of despair achieved by some other performances.

JOANNE TALBOT

AROOM OF HER OWN SMYTH Trio in D minor BOULANGER D’un matin de printemps;

D’un soir triste CHAMINADE Trio no.1 TAILLEFERRE Trio Neave Trio

CHANDOS CHAN20238

More magnificent byways brought to life by an adventurous trio

All of these works deserve a place in the repertoire in their own right, the gender of their composers irrelevant, save for the fact that they all – in different ways – faced difficult receptions of their output. Smyth’s Trio, for example, was only aired in public for the first time in 1985, more than a century after it was written. Yet it’s a major discovery demonstrating incredible fluency and memorable melodic invention, albeit owing much to Brahms.

Naturally the case for all four composers is strengthened by these illustrious performances: the Neave Trio delivers perceptively characterised interpretations that are by turns individual and blended, supported by a pleasingly warm recording.

Germaine Tailleferre began her Trio when she was 24, but only completed the work 60 years later in 1978. Miraculously, she interweaves her later thoughts with the earlier ideas to create a thoroughly convincing work teeming with delicately coloured, piquant Fauréesque harmonies, qualities that are exquisitely projected in this performance. Chaminade’s Trio is full of subtle shades of timbral colour, elegant and nuanced phrasing adding to its beauty. There is more astringency to Lili Boulanger’s music and fervent readings brings alive its compellingly intense darker resonances, with D’un soir triste perhaps the highlight of the disc.

JOANNE TALBOT

DIAVOLO TARTINI Violin Sonatas: op.1 nos. 1, 6 and 7; 26 Sonatas: nos.6 and 9; in G minor ‘The Devil’s Trill’ La Serenissima/Adrian Chandler (violin)

SIGNUM CLASSICS SIGCD781

Plenty to impress in this devilishly difficult music

Adrian Chandler and La Serenissima offer a representative selection of Tartini’s violin sonatas from the collection variously published as op.1, along with two ‘sonate piccole’ from a collection of 26. Chandler’s sonorous tone, expressive embellishment and varied bowing styles allow him a rhythmic and lyrical freedom that highlights the primacy of cantabile melody in these works, as in his beautiful rendition of the Grave of the D major Sonata op.1 no.6. He also demonstrates commendable technical dexterity, adeptly overcoming Tartini’s challenging double and multiple stoppings with apparent ease. His demonic account of ‘The Devil’s Trill’ builds to heights of passion in its Larghetto affettuoso and he thoroughly masters the high-voltage Allegros’ groups of frenzied trills, sometimes resorting to more modern methods of attack. His continuo team provides imaginative support, but the resonant, strikingly up front recording severely limits the listener’s perception of dynamic differentiation.

Chandler varies the instrumentation for the two piccolo sonatas, using the optional cello accompaniment for no.9 butperforming no.6 unaccompanied, as Tartini originally intended. He plays no.9’s opening movement with commendable lyrical freedom, adding a modicum of additional ornamentation to its already florid style; and he revels in that sonata’s other three dance-influenced movements and no.6’s robust Giga, with its folksy drones, unisons and harmonic clashes, again resorting occasionally to non-historical bowing techniques.

ROBIN STOWELL

VOIX INTIMES VIEUXTEMPS Rarities for violin and piano Vilmos Csikos (violin) Olivier Lechardeur (piano) Manon Lamaison (soprano)

NAXOS 8.579149

An invitation to step inside this charmingly stylish salon

There is a lot of rare Vieuxtemps here, but then most Vieuxtemps is rare. This is all good fun, much of it, but not all, for showing off. The opening Souvenir d’amitié with its simple, natural flow, is a warm-up for the Duo brilliant en forme de fantasiesur des airs hongrois where the pyrotechnics really begin: Csikos and pianist Lechardeur tackle the virtuoso spectacle with élan.

The seven short works that make up Voix intimes are not for showing off, although they offer plenty of technical challenges, being salon pieces with a tendency to develop into high drama along the way. In one of the longest, ‘Douleurs’, the violinist shows an essential simplicity below its multiple embellishments and curlicues. ‘Deception’ seems an aptly unsettling tale, with ominous semiquavers nagging at its heart.

The Variations on a Theme from Beethoven’s Romance no.1 are pleasingly inventive caprices. The Elegie – originally for viola – possesses not only passionate melody, with lots of ornamental passagework, but also left-hand passagework in the keyboard part. If you’re listening to the album in a single sitting the Marche funèbre might seem a little samey. But the concluding Fantasie for voice, violin and orchestra (here for piano) has delightful duetting between Csikos and soprano Manon Lamaison. The recording is clear and close.

TIM HOMFRAY

ARCHE Routes Quartet

ROUTES RECORDS RQCD0002

A far-reaching new take on Scottish trad is an irresistible listen

Don’t be fooled. The Glasgow-based Routes Quartet might look like a conventional string quartet, but it’s anything but. For a start, it has two fiddlers instead of violinists, and its self-penned repertoire gleefully hurls together trad, jazz, improvisation and plenty more – plus a good dose of classical elegance and precision too. Most importantly, it does it all extremely well, with masses of passion and personality, and a gloriously natural, warm sense of ensemble.

Ignore the cod-profound Ancient Greek titling throughout this second album: taken just on musical terms, it’s a compelling journey through light and shade, the epic and the intimate, from the sophisticated switchback mood shifts of fiddler Madeleine Stewart’s Not Again to co-fiddler David Lombardi’s reedy, bagpipe-like solo in his own luminous The Letter. Cellist Rufus Huggan showcases his supple bass-line skills in his own bluesy Charlie’s, while violist Emma Tomlinson conjures a stomping tune like something out of a West End musical in Andrew Waite’s Unnecessary Noises.

The fingerprints of new trad luminary Greg Lawson as coproducer are all over Arche’s sometimes club-like waves of euphoria, but it’s a cleverly constructed creation, too, full of intricate textures that draw on the players’ technical prowess. Altogether, a joyful listen, captured in close, rich sound.

DAVID KETTLE

PATH TO THE MOON Cello sonatas by Britten, Debussy and Walker; transcriptions of Boulanger, Britten, Fauré, Korngold, Simone and Takemitsu Laura van der Heijden (cello) Jâms Coleman (piano)

CHANDOS CHAN20274

Fine musicianship can’t quite overcome a flawed programme concept

The spectrum of composers listed above speaks for itself. Over the course of 80 minutes, van der Heijden and Coleman draw together an eclectic list of 20th-century melodists in order to ‘invoke the exploratory nature of humankind’s voyage to the moon’.

The concept is held together by connections as tenuous as Britten’s sonata being composed within two years of the Soviets crashing a spaceship into the moon. The song transcriptions would likely stand out more distinctively from each other in a recital context, whereas here they become soft tissue around the sonata-bones of the album.

Where the juxtaposition works best is a Michelangelo setting of Britten serving as the introduction to his sonata. In each case, both van der Heijden and Coleman are considerably more expansive than the composer and his partners, but they capture something quintessentially Britten-esque in the halted and muted progress of the sonata’s opening Dialogue, the gossipy hints dropped by the pizzicato Scherzo and the listless rumination of the Elegy.

Debussy’s late Cello Sonata trades more subtly still in the language of things left unsaid, and van der Heijden teases out all manner of shadows and apparitions in the Scherzo with the closest co-operation of Coleman. That album’s main event, though, is a combative, big-boned sonata by George Walker. The piece recognisably inhabits the world of 1957 and van der Heijden rises to its considerable technical challenges, making the most persuasive case for its revival.

PETER QUANTRILL

FAIRY TALES Works by Bull, Frolov, Halvorsen, Kreisler, Madsen, Medtner, Viken and Zimbalist Elisabeth Turmo (violin, Hardanger fiddle) Elena Toponogova (piano)

QUARTZ QTZ2157

Plenty of musicality but perhaps a lack of virtuoso pizzazz

There’s a sense of otherworldly contemplation to this debut disc from Norwegian violinist Elisabeth Turmo and Russian-born pianist Elena Toponogova, something that feels particularly fitting for the release’s theme of magic and myth. Indeed, Turmo delivers especially sensitive, sometimes touchingly fragile accounts of the opening collection of music from her homeland: she’s alive to the idiosyncratic twists and turns of Ole Bull’s A Mountain Vision, for example, in a spirited but unshowy performance, and points up the folk inspirations behind Halvorsen’s First Norwegian Dance in a bright performance full of captivating detail – and one that looks ahead to her four supple, flowing, expressively ornamented solo pieces for Hardanger fiddle (Halvorsen’s devilish Fanitullen, in particular, works itself into quite a frenzy).

But if there’s a sense of care and restraint that breathes fresh life into these Norwegian works, it works less persuasively in the four pieces from pianist Toponogova’s birth country that close the disc. The musicians are never less than fluent in these virtuoso arrangements by Kreisler, Zimbalist and Frolov of tunes from Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade and Le coq d’or, and Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, but with their unhurried unfolding and rather cool restraint, the accounts end up rather better-behaved than their arrangers probably intended. Even if the disc concludes with charm rather than spectacle, however, it provides an enjoyable survey of some little-heard repertoire.

MILES PERRY

A LIONEL TERTIS CELEBRATION Works by Beethoven, Bridge, Bowen, Brahms, Clarke, Coates, Fauré, Forsyth, Ireland, Kreisler, Mendelssohn, Reed, Schumann, Tertis, Vaughan Williams and Wolstenholme

Timothy Ridout (viola) Frank Dupree, James Baillieu (piano)

HARMONIA MUNDI HMM905376/77 (2 CDS)

Aviola legend is celebrated by a star of a new generation

Every viola player in the world has good reason to celebrate the life and work of Lionel Tertis, that indefatigable pioneer of the instrument who enlarged its repertoire as few others have. Few, however, have such a direct connection with the great man as Timothy Ridout, a Royal Academy of Music alumnus whose lineage goes back to Tertis himself, who taught there twelve decades ago. More importantly, Ridout obviously has a feel for the music from the Edwardian era which forms the core of this album. Tully Potter’s erudite notes are an indispensable aid for charting Tertis’s relationships with the composers who wrote for him. Therein he takes the potentially perilous course of continually referring the listener to pioneering recordings of these pieces made by the likes of Tertis and William Primrose; but Ridout not only stands his ground in this illustriouscompany but belongs truly in the line of great viola virtuosos.

If space allowed, I could spend much time pointing out the countless felicities that distinguish Ridout’s playing: the ringing double-stops adorning Mendelssohn’s Sweet Remembrance and Schumann’s Romance, the pointed spiccato and sonorous chord playing of Kreisler’s Pugnani pastiche, the sustained pianissimos in Ireland’s The Holy Boy or Tertis’s own Sunset. Ridout has obviously taken note of Tertis’s style as preserved in the aforementioned recordings, but has made it his own: his generously applied portamento never draws attention to itself, while his beautiful vibrato is addictive. His pianistic collaborators come into their own in the two large-scale pieces that bookend the album: Frank Dupree tackles the virtuoso writing of Bowen’s First Sonata with aplomb and James Baillieu finds beautiful colours for Clarke’s impressionistic Sonata. I can’t recommend this warmly recorded set too highly, and hope that many sequels will be forthcoming.

CARLOS MARÍA SOLARE

BOOKS

520PP ISBN 9783795726126 SCHOTT MUSIC £34

Known for having commissioned, performed, and recorded some of the most challenging music for strings during the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Irvine Arditti has never done things by half measures.

This is also the case with his new book, Collaborations. At over five hundred pages long and densely packed with interpretative insights, analysis, reflections, quotes and anecdotes, Collaborations is part autobiography, part compendium of extended string techniques, part instructional textbook on contemporary performance practice methods and partly a historical overview of the post-1945 avantgarde movement.

However, as its title suggests, Collaborations is mainly about the nature of human relationships in the act of music making. This point is emphasised by Arditti throughout. Having performed over a thousand works as soloist and leader of his eponymous quartet, Arditti and the Ardittis have benefited from the direct contact with the composers themselves.

These have varied from occasionally tetchy and difficult affairs (Kagel, Berio) to positive relationships that developed into lifelong friendships (Harvey, Rihm, Dillon). Arditti describes how some composers could be ‘hands-off’ in rehearsal, noting that working with the enigmatic Giacinto Scelsi was ‘like being involved in a religious ceremony’. For composers like György Kurtag, the process was far more ‘hands on’, with rehearsals going on for hours on end.

Irvine Arditti (seated) with his eponymous quartet in 1982 with days or weeks to spare, while the final pages from others would hastily arrive on the morning of the premiere, the ink still wet on the page. Most importantly, all these experiences influenced the final outcome, both in terms of the composer’s own input into the collaborative process and Arditti’s ability to harness often supremely difficult physical, technical, aesthetic and philosophical challenges associated with performing these works into richly rewarding artistic results.

Given the nature of the music in question, it perhaps comes as no surprise to readers that passages detailing intricate mathematical time calculations are sometimes difficult to follow, such as when summarising Brian Ferneyhough’s Dum Transisset II: ‘we must think of the bar in four with a faster tempo, 93/3.5 x 4 = 106.285714’. (Most musicians’ metronomes do not extend to quite that number of decimal points.)

Nevertheless, Arditti presents this repertoire for the most part in a surprisingly direct, accessible and readable style. As light relief from the passages containing dense analytical prose, some amusing stories are also recounted, such as the violinist sharing a sauna with Xenakis, Henze answering his door in a dressing gown, Nono adding salt to his tea in a London café instead of sugar (and then continuing to drink it), Ferneyhough insisting that the quartet should rehearse the silences between the movements in his String Quartet no.3, Rihm’s ‘phobia’ for avoiding metronome markings, and Arditti’s violin almost being confiscated by the Communist authorities at Moscow airport in 1995.

For string players, the main takeout in the book may well be Arditti’s often exhaustive explanations of what may be called ‘extended string techniques.’ These include fingernail pizzicatos, battuto, frappe col legno (a fast battuto with the wood of the bow), ricochet, jeté, spiccatos, balzato-type gestures, tabla (hitting the body of the instrument with the palm or the fingers), particular types of bridge sounds, flautando molto tasto, gettatini (a continuous gettato bow), spazzolare (‘a fast windshield-wiper movement of the bow on the fingerboard between the tasto and sul ponticello areas’), in addition to various types of glissando, microtonality, irrational rhythmic patterns, poly-temporality and so on.

It’s all described in meticulous detail, alongside several scans from scores, with some of them usefully containing Arditti’s own pencil annotations. Any string player aspiring to explore this repertoire would do well to read the violinist’s own detailed and illuminating performance instructions before rehearsing a note of the music.

As with any memoir, there is a sense in which Arditti’s narrative reads like a snapshot of what now feels like a bygone era, where white male composers dominated the world of contemporary music, and artistic merit was judged according to criteria based on complexity, virtuosity, cleverness, sophistication and abstraction.

Some will no doubt note the glaring absence of gender and racial diversity within these pages. Of the 25 composers featured in each chapter, 21 of those are white male

Europeans/Americans (by my reckoning, at least), while the only female composer represented in the entire collection is the violinist’s wife, Hilda Paredes.

Arditti is careful not to wade too much into broader ideological issues concerning cultural, racial and gender-based ramifications associated with this repertoire, some of which have been addressed by other performers of the so-called ‘new complexity’ movement, but the absence of female composers such as Liza Lim, Alwynne Pritchard, Chaya Czernowin and Rebecca Saunders will be viewed as a disappointing omission by some, especially since the Arditti Quartet has performed and recorded music by three of these composers.

Nevertheless, Collaborations is without doubt a valuable book for anyone interested in the modern classical music of the past 50 years, providing essential reading for string players specialising in avant-garde repertoire, and offering an indispensable companion to Arditti and Robert H.P. Platz’s co-authored book on the techniques of contemporary violin playing, published by Bärenreiter in 2012.

PWYLL AP SIÔN

Violin Makers in Naples from the 17th Century Ernesto de Angelis

82PP ISBN 9788822268686 CASA EDITRICE LEO S. OLSCHKI €25

It is 15 years since Ernesto de Angelis’s book on the Neapolitan luthiers first appeared, and it is still the only volume available on the subject. Now it has been translated into English, and a wider audience can appreciate the scholarship of this devotee of the Neapolitan making traditions.

De Angelis (1943–2001) was a doctor, biologist and ‘amateur violin maker’, as he liked to call himself. He spent much of his life researching the lives and instruments of the Neapolitan makers, and after his death the notes he made and his collection of instrument photos were collected together and edited into a book. It is divided into three parts: an introduction to the history of violin making in Naples and notes on the distinguishing characteristics of the Neapolitan making school; biographical information on around 50 luthiers of the 19th and early 20th centuries; and finally, a photographic record of 38 representative instruments by the various makers. For each instrument (27 violins, 6 violas, 4 cellos and 1 double bass), the date is given as well as its principal dimensions and details of the label. All the photos were taken by the author, often while he was restoring the instrument at his workbench. Consequently, the whole book has a sense of authority, as De Angelis is clearly writing with a broad hands-on knowledge of the Neapolitan makers and their traditions.

The first section is probably the most useful to today’s makers, as it includes a summary of the main characteristics of the ‘Neapolitan school of lutherie’. De Angelis summarises the most important ones at the end of the chapter: ‘the heavy thickness of the tables, the protruding points, the rather flat back, the scroll with its protruding first volute and the lower placement

COURTESY MARIA LOMBARDI of the eye, the nearly vertical positioning of the f-holes, the thin purfling [and] the transparent oil varnish, yellow–brown or red– brown’. There are many more, and his descriptions are often colourful: ‘the lower bouts are rather flat at the bottom, giving the impression of a “sitting” instrument’, and ‘the first volute is more protruding so the scroll appears to have ears’. De Angelis’s biographies of the various makers are also filled with commentary that suggests he knew them personally: for instance, we learn that Giuseppe Cappiello (1922–92) was ‘known to offer lunch to anyone who went to see him for minor violin repairs or just to see his violins’. The lively prose style makes this volume one of the most enjoyable books on lutherie I have recently read.

It is odd, then, that among so much first-hand scholarship, De Angelis tells us on page 4 that Alessandro

Violin made by Ernesto de Angelis in 1999Gagliano ‘was a student of Antonio Stradivari’, even though 18 pages later he backtracks and says he was ‘a possible pupil of Stradivari’, but two pages after that, that he ‘worked about 30 years in the Stradivari workshop’. There are also some odd translations (‘People says that Pistucci is also know to letting play his just finished violins to poor people’) but these are minor quibbles about a book that will prove very valuable for luthiers, scholars and researchers into the making traditions of southern Italy’s largest city.

CHRISTIAN LLOYD

Wee Violin: World Music Preparatory to Twinkle Crystal Boyack

62PP ISBN 9798987401200 INDEPENDENT $19.99

Wee Violin presents a kaleidoscope of songs from around the world, and uses them thoughtfully and creatively to help the beginner violinist establish a solid technique. Suzuki teachers and learners are the target audience for this book, as playing skills are built in tiny increments, all heading towards the end goal of enabling the young player to master the Twinkle variations that are the bedrock of the Suzuki repertoire. While the songs themselves use a variety of keys and rhythm patterns, the student is only required to join in on the E and A strings, using the main bowing variations found in Suzuki Book 1. The teaching point for each song is clearly stated below its title and the notes for teachers are informative. Audio versions of every song can be downloaded via a QR code.

The book as a whole seems to exude positivity – everything from the friendly vibe of the illustrations to the helpful teaching notes contributes to an overarching sense of joy and encouragement. The songs are presented respectfully, mostly using original words in their original language, with occasional tweaking to fit the song’s specific teaching purpose within the context of the book. There are some instances where the use of the Suzuki rhythms feels a little forced, and there are a few small typos and missing time signatures, but these do not detract from the book’s overall effect or the clever way in which it guides the young player, almost by stealth, in a joyful journey towards successfully playing their first set of Twinkle variations.

It feels important to mention that two potentially problematic songs, Dancing Josie and Canoe Song are included in the book. These are familiar songs which have been used and loved by music educators over the years, particularly those from Kodályinspired teaching traditions, but both have been named in the list of ‘Songs with a Questionable Past’ issued by Lauren McDougle, director of the American Kodály Institute. There is of course no suggestion that the author had anything but positive pedagogical motives for including these songs in the book, but given the information now available about the background of those two particular songs, it could be that she might choose to substitute them in future editions.

In short, this is a delightful and very useful book. The author’s evident joy in her teaching shines through effortlessly.

CELIA COBB