RECORDINGS

★

★AUERBACH Piano Trio no.1

DVOŘÁK Piano Trio no.4 ‘Dumky’

WEINBERG Piano Trio Trio Zimbalist

CURTIS STUDIOS PLAT21970

Performances to sit alongside the finest in this enterprising programme

I applaud the wide range of sound, colour and dynamics that the Trio Zimbalist brings to its clearly recorded and highly charged performances. The programme is imaginative and illustrates a palpable connection with Bachian part-writing in the Prelude to Lera Auerbach’s impressive First Trio and the Prelude and Aria from the Weinberg Trio. Auerbach’s work dates from 1991, after she had left the Soviet Union, and the secondmovement Andante lamentoso has some dark moments which possibly reflect the toll of living under an oppressive regime. The musicians deliver an eloquent and sensitive performance here and in the Presto finale their sharply etched virtuosity comes to the fore.

The first-rate quality of Weinberg’s Trio of 1945 is finally being recognised: this performance ranks with the finest currently available. The Trio Zimbalist evokes the dark shadows of war with a tangible rawness manifested, for example, in the piano’s ferociously articulated low gunfire notes in the Toccata. But there is room for more reflective and lyrical emotion too, especially in the third movement.

The performance of the ‘Dumky’ Trio displays an instinctive feeling for Dvořák’s folk-inflected language. A sparing use of vibrato creates some leaner textures than in some other recordings, allowing the musicians to coax a wide spectrum of moods and colours from the music.

JOANNE TALBOT

Emotional intensity from Trio Zimbalist

VICTOR JELINEK

BACEWICZ Concerto for String Orchestra ENESCU Octet (arr.string orch) YSAŸE Harmonies du soir op.31 Sinfonia of London/John Wilson

CHANDOS CHSA5325

A typically classy offering from this crack ensemble

This latest release for Chandos is yet another routine one for the Sinfonia of London under John Wilson. For this we can only be grateful, since the routine is seemingly to present exciting repertoire in fervent performances, captured in brilliant sound.

Enescu’s astonishingly assured Octet, written (like Mendelssohn’s) while he was still a teenager, benefits here from being upscaled, maintaining a chamber-like ensemble but gaining in momentum and coherence, of which the composer would surely have approved. Its cyclic themes circle in shifting hues, and Wilson takes the Extrêmement vite marking at the close of the second movement at face value – to thrilling effect. The expansive slow (third) movement avoids sagging, thanks to a gently supportive pulse.

Bacewicz’s Concerto for String Orchestra is a blazing piece combining modernism and neo-Classicism and benefits from the dynamism and vitality of these players. Another rarity, Ysaÿe’s Harmonies du soir, receives a lush performance that revels in the work’s headily perfumed counterpoint. With material of such density and playing of such intensity, this is a release maybe best enjoyed in courses rather than consumed in one sitting, but it’s certainly one to be savoured.

EDWARD BHESANIA

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C.P.E. BACH Concerto in B flat major GRAUN Concertante in C minor;

Concerto in E flat major Mathis Rochat (viola) Stephen Waarts (violin) Camerata Schweiz/Howard Griffiths

CPO 555 613-2

Sympathetic reworkings for the viola prove most persuasive

Both Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Johann Gottlieb Graun were members of Frederick the Great’s court orchestra in mid 18th-century Berlin as, respectively, harpsichordist and leader. An unusually large number of viola compositions were written at the court of that ardently arts-loving monarch, a sure sign that an excellent player must have been at hand, perhaps Graun himself. Not unexpectedly, both composers cultivate the empfindsamer Stil (‘sensitive style’) favoured by Frederick: somewhat schematically built melodic material proceeding over a pounding bass line, enlivened by aching dissonances.

Bach’s concerto – in its original form a rather high-lying cello piece – lends itself very well to performance on the viola, Mathis Rochat’s arrangement making do with just an occasional octave transposition. Rochat’s infectiously enthusiastic playing follows historically informed practice. His varied use of vibrato is a constant joy, as are his crisp spiccato and endlessly inventive phrasing (listen out for some discreet left-hand pizzicato in the second movement’s cadenza). Stephen Waarts proves a like-minded partner in Graun’s Concertante, a large-format piece that also exists in a version for viola da gamba which I suspect to be the original one. Graun’s concerto is certainly an original viola work, its passagework tailored for the instrument, concentrating on effective passages of bariolage rather than excursions into the highest register.

These warmly recorded interpretations are lovingly supported by Camerata Schweiz under Howard Griffiths’s gentle guidance.

CARLOS MARÍA SOLARE

1923 – 100 YEARS OF RADIO BERG String Quartet op.3 COPLAND Movement HINDEMITH Minimax JANÁČEK String Quartet no.1 ‘The Kreutzer Sonata’ SCHULHOFF Five Pieces Schumann Quartet

BERLIN CLASSICS 0302968BC

A quartet celebrates a seminal date to rousing effect

Among the many fateful events marking the year 1923 on the political and economic levels was Germany’s first ever radio broadcast, hence the album’s title. That year’s summer also witnessed the first Chamber Music Festival of the recently founded – and still flourishing – International Society for Contemporary Music. All the composers included on this enterprising programme were in attendance at that momentous event, held in Salzburg, which was inaugurated with a performance of Alban Berg’s op.3.

The Schumann Quartet invests this seminal piece with an endlessly varied tonal palette, faithfully realising every one of Berg’s instructions from an almost toneless sul tasto all the way to a shrieking ponticello. The group’s beautifully blended tone makes for an uncommonly compact rendition, with violist Veit Hertenstein, who joined the three Schumann brothers in 2022, fitting like the proverbial glove into their powerhouse ensemble. The other large-scale piece on the programme is Janáček’s String Quartet no.1, given an exhilarating reading by the Schumann, who fearlessly enter the Moravian composer’s highly personal sound world. The six movements of Hindemith’s Minimax are played in a poker-faced manner that befits their none-too-subtle humour. The Schumann makes a convincing case for the young Copland’s standalone Movement, too, while Schulhoff’s scurrilous Five Pieces – a waltz in common time is followed by a Mediterranean-sounding serenade in 5/8 – are great fun and bring this vividly recorded, most enjoyable recital to a fitting end.

Wonderfully blended playing from the Schumann Quartet

HARALD HOFFMANN

CARLOS MARÍA SOLARE

BEETHOVEN Piano Trio no.7 ‘Archduke’; Symphony no.4 (arr.Shai Wosner)

Leonidas Kavakos (violin) Yo-Yo Ma (cello) Emanuel Ax (piano)

SONY CLASSICAL 19658881642

Music-making of great warmth from longstanding friends

The Kavakos–Ma–Ax supergroup continues its ‘Beethoven for Three’ series with an expansive, relaxed reading of the ‘Archduke’ and a truly exciting trio transmogrification of the Fourth Symphony. It’s all too easy to question the need for such slimmeddown arrangements nowadays, when the full-fat original can be heard at the click of a button, but what is revealed here is the musculature of the music – the way in which voices act and react against each other, intertwining lines lending the symphony a tensile strength that far transcends mere orchestral heft. Indeed, there are moments such as the opening movement’s second subject or much of the ensuing Adagio that sound uncannily as if they could have been intended all along for the combination of violin, cello and piano, and that’s down as much to Beethoven’s contrapuntal instinct as it is to the mastery of Shai Wosner’s ingenious transformation.

The sense of expectation in that breathtaking slow introduction feeds inexorably into the motoric exhilaration of the Allegro, which is itself reflected in the sinuous vitality of the Scherzo. The finale is a touch more light-hearted than the fierce dash it can sometimes become in its orchestral garb, but there are moments in the repartee that bring it close to the conversational soundworld of the ‘Archduke’.

Ah, the ‘Archduke’. In contrast to the symphony, this is a reading that is content simply to unfold without being at all pushed. After all, these musicians have been making music together for many years and their rapport is evident in the naturalness of the exchanges between them. There are more driven and driving ‘Archdukes’ to be had – the Wanderer for one – but this reading transmits in spades the sheer pleasure of three virtuosos with nothing left to prove simply playing together: surely the holy grail of chamber music making.

DAVID THREASHER

Congenial Beethoven from Manny Ax, Leonidas Kavakos and Yo-Yo Ma

BIBER Rosary Sonatas Alan Choo (violin) Apollo’s Fire/ Jeanette Sorrell (harpsichord)

AVIE AV2656 (2 CDS)

An attention to both detail and architecture impresses

In order to gain stability of string tensions and tuning for Biber’s scordature, Alan Choo employs six violins in these recordings, captured over eleven days in five periods between September 2022 and May 2023. He demonstrates commendable technical bravura in realising effectively Biber’s unique musical language and offers expressive, dramatic accounts of these sonatas, which, divided into three cycles each of five ‘mysteries’, vividly depict key events in the lives of Mary and Christ. He shapes phrases gracefully, as in no.3’s reflective Adagio, and gives a compelling sense of architecture to movements such as no.4’s Ciacona, no.11’s ‘Surrexit Christus hodie’ and the final unaccompanied Passacaglia (no.16).

His extempore ornamentation is tastefully done, and he varies repeated sections with imagination and dexterity, and uses dynamic contrast and subtleties of articulation, rubato and timing to enhance the theatricality of his interpretations. Sensitivity to programmatic elements is especially demonstrated in the opening Sonata movements of nos.3, 9 and 13, no.6’s Lamento, no.7’s Sarabanda and the Praeludium of nos.1 and 10.

LAWRENCE SUMULONG

★

Tim Posner: a cellist to watch

TING-RULAI

The drama is intensified by lavish accompanying forces, which, though rarely used en masse, are judiciously employed in various combinations to assist in relating each event. Some may consider a step too far the Hollywoodesque drums in no.12’s Aria Tubicinum; and such instrumental richesse also results in occasional textural heaviness, positive when driving exuberant dance-inspired movements but negative when highlighting Choo’s mildly wearisome marking of the beat, particularly in passages involving tied notes. But these are minor cavils about otherwise deeply moving musical meditations, closely, yet cleanly recorded with ample spatial resonance.

ROBIN STOWELL

BLOCH Schelomo BRUCH Kol nidrei DOHNÁNYI Konzertstück Tim Posner (cello) Bern Symphony Orchestra/Katharina Müllner

CLAVES CD3079

An impressive concerto debut from a characterful young Brit

British cellist Tim Posner’s first major recording with orchestra reveals him as a cellist of stature and integrity and boasts some inspired programming.

Bloch’s decision to do away with words and make a solo cello the voice of Solomon gave the world the unforgettable Schelomo. There is much refined playing in this work from Posner, a former student of Gorokhov and Isserlis. His cello is not sufficiently powerful in its high register when pitted against Bloch’s huge, glittering orchestra, but the work’s melancholy solo lines, from the poignant opening to the final C-string passage with its darkly throbbing vibrato, are hauntingly desolate in Posner’s hands.

A self-assured performance of the Hebrew plea for forgiveness, Kol nidrei, follows. Posner draws a pure, clear sound from his instrument and uses rubato and portamento tastefully, giving his interpretation emotional intensity without it ever being overblown.

The carefree opening melody of Dohnányi’s Konzertstück, a throughcomposed concerto with echoes of Saint-Saëns, comes as a breath of fresh air. This is a delightful work, full of youthful exuberance and grace. Posner moves naturally with the ebb and flow of the music, using a degree of Romantic portamento and a beautiful vibrato in the Adagio section. A warm and full recorded sound enhances this fine recording.

JANET BANKS

BRITTEN Violin Concerto; Double Concerto for violin and viola Baiba Skride (violin) Ivan Vukčević (viola) ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra/Marin Alsop

ORFEO C220021

Beauty and drama combine to create compelling performances

Baiba Skride opens Britten’s Violin Concerto with melting beauty, before opening out into passion and ferocity. Calm heralds the return of the opening, and the double-stops that end the movement are delicate and questioning. Skride plays the demonic second-movement Vivace with crispness and propulsive energy. The contrasting central section is seductive, its coiling phrases subtly unfolding. The cadenza is neatly structured – it is a tale well told. Marin Alsop and the orchestra pace the opening of the third-movement Passacaglia with steady majesty and there’s some fine trumpet playing. Skride offers some capricious touches, dancing delectably through the con moto, and produces muscular anguish high on the G string in the final pages. Throughout the concerto, Skride and Alsop give the music room to breathe.

Britten wrote his Double Concerto in 1932, when he was 18. He didn’t produce a full score, but the sketches are unusually detailed. After a heroic horn solo over tremolo strings the violist Ivan Vukčević appears in close-up, vehement, declamatory, with Skride in hot pursuit. There are spiky quaver passages to come. In the secondmovement Rhapsody the soloists play discursive, wide-ranging soliloquies and produce gleeful rhythmic energy and lyricism in the finale. The recording is close and clear.

TIM HOMFRAY

BRITTEN Violin Concerto; Reveille for violin and piano; Suite for violin and piano; Two Pieces for violin, viola and piano Isabelle Faust (violin) Boris Faust (viola) Alexander Melnikov (piano) Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra/Jakub Hruša

HARMONIA MUNDI HMM902668

A strikingly urgent reading sets this new Britten concerto apart

There is an immediate sense of momentum and purpose in Isabelle Faust’s performance of Britten’s Violin Concerto – making it sound martial in the way she bites into the strings, always pressing onwards. The subsequent espressivo e rubato passage is languid and sultry. Later, her adoption of the opening timpani motif is gritty against the dreamy playing of the orchestra. In the second-movement Vivace she uses a dry, picky spiccato and rasping down-bows digging into the strings, with rich vibrato allied to her vehement playing; the contrasting central section has a slinky exoticism, and she gives a powerhouse account of the cadenza. After some brass playing of Wagnerian power at the opening of the third-movement, Passacaglia, Faust is variously coquettish and flamboyant, and finally ecstatic. This is a big-boned account of Britten’s concerto, full of drama and colour. There is another new recording of this concerto, by Baiba Skride (reviewed above). Skride is more spacious, although there is little difference in the timings; both are worth hearing.

Faust is joined by pianist Alexander Melnikov for Britten’s Suite, played by both of them with character and finesse. She demonstrates unassuming technical command in Reveille, and she and her brother Boris play the Two Pieces with a sensitive regard for its melodic twists and turns. The recording is warm and well balanced.

TIM HOMFRAY

ECK Violin Concertos: no.1 in E flat major, no.2 in G major, no.5 in A major Tanja Becker-Bender (violin)

Kurpfälzisches Kammerorchester Mannheim/Johannes Schlaefli

CPO 777975-2

Workaday music is lifted by performances with flair

Isabelle Faust on magnificent form in Britten

MARCO BORGGREVE

Once upon a time, sets of Mozart’s violin concertos didn’t stop at the canonic five. As recently as 1995 (Christiane Edinger for Arte Nova) they included two concertos posthumously published under his name, and long known to be spurious. The first of them, optimistically catalogued by Köchel as K268, is now thought to be the work of Friedrich Eck (1767–1838). This admirable CPO album proves that (in the form it has come down to us, anyway) K268 is not only implausibly bad Mozart, it’s indifferent by Eck’s standards, too.

Let’s not get carried away – Eck is a routine melodist, writing foursquare tunes that nearly always do what you expect them to. However, in her brief introduction, Tanja Becker-Bender points out how the galant conventions of these concertos are transcended by solo writing of proto-Paganinian intricacy. As a child-prodigy violinist hawked around the courts of Europe hardly less exploitatively than Mozart himself, Eck knew his way around the instrument. He knew how to make it sing as well as dance and do tricks; so does Becker-Bender. Sympathetically recorded in a bright church acoustic, her tone is unfashionably but not excessively warmed by vibrato, her ornamentation discreet, her double-stopping game on point.

Johannes Schlaefli is attentive to all of his soloist’s tiny hesitations and urgings, together bringing the notes off the page. They capture the operatic as well as the rustic character of no.5, especially in the concluding Rondo espagnole, irresistibly evoking the Turkish-style finale of Mozart’s Fifth. Perhaps the confusion between the two composers is not so farfetched after all.

PETER QUANTRILL

YANG JING Singing Strings – Identity Yang Jing (pipa)

Festival Strings Lucerne Chamber Players

NEOS 12326

Eastern and Western styles meet, to heady effect

As both a term and a genre, crossover deserves much of the mud slung in its direction, but inventive minds may still make something fresh from a meeting of foreign cultures. Think of Ravel and Mahler, evoking Chinese gardens in Ma mère l’oye and Das Lied von der Erde. Yang Jing (b.1963) is their worthy successor in this flowing sequence of nine pieces written between 2001 and 2021, underscoring pentatonic melodies with assuaging tonal harmony, and waterfalls of fluid pipa figuration with swirling string-quartet pools.

Yang grew up during Mao’s Cultural Revolution and is now based in Switzerland; she studied the pipa as a child and joined a Chinese orchestra before founding and composing for an all-female Chinese quartet of pipa, erhu, yanqqing and yanzeheng. She has since toured with jazz musicians as well as Festival Strings Lucerne, and in Singing Strings and Sunset over Northern Heights she sets the scene for an improvisatory dialogue between pipa and strings. Yang allots herself some elaborate breaks and cadenzas, but gives individual string players a turn.

Yang Jing and friends: giving crossover a good name

FABRICE L. UMIGLIA

Several pieces spring surprises too good to spoil. One ends with a sneeze, another with a melting Brahmsian chorale. Both the playing and occasional vocal contributions (more surprises) are vividly captured in a close studio acoustic. If you’re looking for something different, this is it.

PETER QUANTRILL

MOZART Violin Concertos: no.3 in G major, no.4 in D major, no.5 in A major ‘Turkish’

Orchestra Musica Vitae/ Benjamin Schmid (violin)

GRAMOLA 99307

Playing of finesse but the competition is formidable

The Viennese violinist Benjamin Schmid launched his career as a Menuhin protégé and won the Carl Flesch Competition in London in 1992 but seems never to have achieved the recognition in the UK that he has on the continent. Here he fronts the Orchestra Musica Vitae, based in the Swedish city of Växjö, of which he was appointed artistic director in 2020. The church in nearby Hemmesjö, where they record, offers a spacious, airy acoustic, allowing plenty of bloom around Schmid’s 1718 ‘ex-Viotti’ Stradivari.

These are spirited performances, with reasonable balances and ideal tempos, and entirely enjoyable on their own terms. The world of Mozart recordings, though, is an impossibly competitive one and, up against the best recordings of these three concertos, Schmid comes in a close second. There are some entries that are perhaps a little undernourished and, while no gates are rushed, one or two might have been taken with a degree more finesse.

Schmid is at his best in episodes such as the minor-key Andante in the finale of the G major Concerto (K216) or the outdoor music that lends the ‘Turkish’ Concerto in A major (K219) its name. He seems to feel free to let his imagination soar at these points, which only throws a certain plainness at other times into perspective. Among recent recordings that have made strong impressions, Schmid falls just short of the individuality and inventiveness of Francesca Dego (Chandos) or the calm authority and laser focus of Isabelle Faust (Harmonia Mundi), to name just a couple.

DAVID THREASHER

PRICE String Quartet no.2; Five Folksongs in Counterpoint SOWERBY String Quartet in G minor Avalon Quartet

NAXOS 8.559941

Emotionally searing advocacy bring neglected quartets to life

This full-to-bursting new disc is very much a Chicago affair, with the Avalon Quartet, which is based in the city, paying homage to two composers who also spent most of their lives and careers there. More importantly, it also shines fresh light on repertoire that has been hitherto underappreciated – and there’s lots to appreciate in the three substantial works here. Florence Price melds together jazz, blues, African-American song tunes and Europeanstyle dissonance in her 1935 Second String Quartet, while her Five Folksongs in Counterpoint find sometimes surprising (and surprisingly cerebral) new settings for ‘Clementine’ and ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’, among other tunes. The Avalon players clearly believe deeply in the music, giving vividly characterised, strongly projected accounts, full of thick vibrato and a dense corporate sound that – panned widely left and right – nonetheless separates the four players’ lines. A little more air and variety in approaching the music might not have gone amiss, but you can’t fault their commitment.

A Chicago celebration from the Avalon Quartet

ELLIOT MANDEL

The disc’s real discovery, however, is the 1935 Quartet by Leo Sowerby, better known for his organ and choral music. It’s an often thorny, dissonant piece, densely argued and churning in its emotions, but the Avalon musicians play it with all the passion and conviction it needs, from its exquisitely yearning slow movement to the sometimes violent scherzo. It’s a compelling collection, captured in close but somewhat resonant sound.

★

DAVID KETTLE

RICHTER The Four Seasons Recomposed Daniel Rowland (violin) Stift Festival Orchestra

CHALLENGE RECORDS CC72978

A new approach to an iconic piece proves seductive

Created as recently as 2012, Max Richter’s reimagining of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons as Recomposed is already something of an iconic work, with countless performances and several recordings attesting to its uncanny emotional power, and its new ways with all-too-familiar tunes.

Offering a markedly different perspective on the piece to the sheen and serenity of original soloist Daniel Hope is British–Dutch violinist Daniel Rowland, with the orchestra of the Netherlands’ Stift Festival, of which he’s the founding artistic director. Here, grit replaces polish, and heat replaces coolness. Can Vivaldi/Richter take it?

Absolutely, and Rowland’s energetic, sometimes forcefully projected playing demands to be heard, and offers a profoundly sincere response to the music, not always immaculate, but conveying the piece’s own vulnerabilities and authenticity very compellingly, and very movingly. It’s not a live recording, but in his booklet notes Rowland writes that they aimed to capture a similar spirit shortly after a festival performance. The violinist and his orchestral players achieve that magnificently: there’s a rawness to some of Rowland’s frenetic solos (in ‘Spring’ and ‘Summer’, for example), and a wonderful sense of in-the-moment commitment from the ensemble too. Sound is rich and deep, especially in Richter’s slowmoving harmonies, but individual lines are cleanly teased apart, and Rowland adds a few nicely judged bits of spontaneous ornamentation too.

Deep humanity from Daniel Rowland and his festival players

ȘERBAN MESTECĂNEANU

Hope’s original DG recording might offer finesse and well-oiled precision, but Rowland and his orchestra transform the music into something deeply human and affecting.

DAVID KETTLE

SHOSTAKOVICH String Quartets: no.9, no.15 Carducci Quartet

SIGNUM RECORDS SIGCD786

Technical flair can’t make up for a limited emotional range

Brilliantly accurate and virtuosic presentation characterises the Carducci’s approach to both these works (see April’s Session Report). I followed the performances with scores and these players don’t put a foot wrong. Tempos are astutely judged and the faster invention has a driving energy and potency. They delineate the Lassus-style partwriting in the first movement of no.15 with clarity, and have a sense of when the impact should feel tense and when it should be more relaxed.

However, the dry recording becomes rather a disadvantage, particularly in the slower movements which require more continuity of line and warmer resonance. Another snag is the slightly compressed dynamic range which reduces the potential for exploring a wider spectrum of emotions, especially in the constantly changing moods in the exhilarating finale of no.9. Ultimately, other recordings of these works – for example, the Jerusalem Quartet in the Ninth and the Keller Quartet in the 15th – probe more deeply behind the notes, creating performances of greater immediacy.

JOANNE TALBOT

RÊVES YSAŸE Poème concertant for violin and orchestra (orch.Erika Vega);

Violin Concerto in E minor (orch. Xavier Falques); Two Mazurkas de salon; Rêve d’enfant Philippe Graffin (violin)

Marisa Gupta (piano) Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra/Jean-Jacques Kantorow

AVIE AV2650

World-premiere recordings of newly discovered works are given with panache

The selling point of this album is its two world-premiere recordings of Ysaÿe’s recently unearthed Poème concertant (see February issue) and his E minor Violin Concerto. Philippe Graffin plays the Poème with athletic facility, its drama ebbing and flowing over its 20-odd minutes, sometimes capricious, at other times powerfully rhetorical, with an eloquent, questing cadenza before its emphatic close. The violin writing is rhapsodic, agile and wide-ranging.

Ysaÿe’s Violin Concerto owes something to Mendelssohn. The violin comes straight in with a nimble theme building quickly to a tutti. The solo writing that follows twists and dances, restless and always inventive. There are passages of repose before outbreaks of scurrying energy and an extended cadenza of arabesques and gleeful octaves, all played with great character and panache. The central Andante is harmonically and emotionally unsettled. Graffin dispatches with aplomb and many an exuberant flourish the jubilant dancing quality of the finale. In the first of the two mazurkas Graffin is wistful and rhythmically free; in the second he gets stuck into the 3rds with muscular relish. The Rêve d’enfant provides an ending of gentle repose. The recording is clear and close.

TIM HOMFRAY