RECORDINGS

HIDDEN FLAME

BEACH Romance op.23 BOULANGER Three Pieces ESMAIL one word makes a sound PARADIS Sicilienne SCHUMANN Romances op.22 STROHL Grande Sonate Dramatique Yoshika Masuda (cello)

HyeJin Kim (piano)

AVIE AV2653

Fine playing is undermined by a problematic recording

It should be a cause for celebration that none of these composers any longer counts as ‘neglected’. On the other hand, Yoshika Masuda and HyeJin Kim thus come up against serious competition. The Romances of Beach and Clara Schumann were written with violin in mind, and the baritonal strain of Masuda’s phrasing does not persuade me that they sit well on the cello. At the other end of the album, Nadia Boulanger makes the point for me: her cello-conceived Three Pieces spin their exquisite melodies more idiomatically even in the instrument’s upper register.

The album’s centrepiece in every way is Rita Strohl’s tremendous sonata. She based it, in Lisztian fashion, on the story of the Roman general Titus, his love for Berenice and politically expedient rejection of her, as translated by Molière. The tale is told through both strong motivic association and heaving drama (mostly) contained within the bounds of symphonic sonata form. Masuda overcomes the work’s considerable demands on stamina and agility, though I find him a touch impersonal compared to Edgar Moreau (Erato) and Sandra Lied Haga (Simax – see her perceptive piece on the sonata in The Strad ’s April 2023 issue).

BENJAMIN EALOVEGA

For all Masuda’s undoubted artistry, however, and Kim’s restraint in handling a weighty piano part, they are undone by the studio acoustic, which contrives to be uncomfortably close, resonant and ill-defined all at once. The piano’s bass register obtrudes even though the cellist is nearer the microphone, least helpfully so in Reena Esmail’s six-minute, raga-like meditation. The sound is more satisfactory on headphones, but still congested when Strohl’s sonata (not infrequently) gathers intensity.

PETER QUANTRILL

BEETHOVEN Violin Sonatas: no.1 in D major op.12 no.1, no.6 in A major op.30 no.1, no.8 in G major op.30 no.3 Viktoria Mullova (violin)

Alasdair Beatson (fortepiano)

SIGNUM SIGCD794

Viktoria Mullova: endlessly inventive musicianship

This winning duo stands out for its recreative flair

As in their previous album (reviewed in June 2021), Viktoria Mullova and Alasdair Beatson perform with a gut-strung 1750 Giovanni Guadagnini violin and reproduction Classical bow and a copy of an 1805 Walter fortepiano by Paul McNulty. Reading from Clive Brown’s thorough 2020–21 Bärenreiter edition, they respond faithfully to Beethoven’s detailed performance indications and reveal refreshing new insights regarding matters of phrasing, articulation and expression.

Their tempos for the slow movements are suitably flowing and their fast movements are spry and buoyant, but never rushed. Their dynamic range is especially striking, particularly in the first movement of op.30 no.3 and the dramatic minore variation of op.12 no.1’s Andante; they are also well attuned to Beethoven’s humorous touches in op.30 no.1’s variations and op.30 no.3’s high-spirited finale. The clarity and dexterity of Beatson’s passagework in the outer movements of op.12 no.1 and in op.30 no.1’s variations are compelling and Mullova’s flexible bowing style elicits a wide spectrum of timbres, enhanced by subtle vibrato.

MORICETTE SCHLOSSER

Extempore ornamentation is added as appropriate, including a pleasing violin lead-in during the slow movement of op.30 no.1 and imaginative fortepiano embellishment in some of the repeats of op.12 no.1’s variation movement.

These persuasive, finely balanced performances are clearly captured in close, warm sound.

ROBIN STOWELL

BEETHOVEN Violin Sonata no. 10 in G major op.96; Romance in F major op.50; MOZART Violin Concerto no.5 in A major K219: Allegro aperto SPOHR Violin Concerto in D minor op.55: Adagio; works by Bach, Schumann and Tovey Marie Soldat, Adila Fachiri (violins) Donald Tovey, Otto Schulhof (pianos)

BIDDULPH 85044-2

An enticing snapshot of two towering violinists from the past

Three remarkable musicians influenced by Joseph Joachim are represented here. Violinist Marie Soldat (1863–1955), was close to both Brahms and Clara Schumann; Donald Francis Tovey (1875–1940), was a towering figure as pianist, conductor and musicologist; and violinist Adila Fachiri (1886–1962) was the eldest of the d’Arányi sisters.

The 1928 performance of Beethoven’s G major Sonata by Fachiri and Tovey is an exploratory, expressive reading unlike the power and certainty of Busch–Serkin or

Oistrakh–Oborin. The balance favours the piano, which accords with the composer’s priority; and Biddulph append Tovey’s spoken injunction to listeners to go back to the beginning to get the exposition repeat.

The set’s filler, the Andante from Bach’s BWV1015, features lovely trills from Fachiri, also heard in the Beethoven. On her own in 1925–6 she plays movements from the Partitas in B minor and E major with nice light and shade. Tovey’s cogent 1935 conjectural completion of Contrapunctus XIV from The Art of Fugue is a splendid bonus.

Soldat’s 1921 records find her in retirement, in full possession of her facility but, like Ysaÿe in 1912, no longer commanding the power once admired in Brahms’s concerto. The main treasure is the Adagio from Spohr’s D minor Concerto, niftily played – as a grandpupil of the composer, she knew his style as few have done.

Soldat also musters vigour and style for the opening movement of Mozart’s K219, featuring the cadenza by her last teacher Joachim, and Beethoven’s Second Romance. Schumann’s Abendlied is sensitive but Bach’s Air is a bit lugubrious. She is well accompanied by Otto Schulhof. Two solo Bach movements are missing their beginnings because the rare discs are chipped.

The CD is well presented, with Emma Irlam Briggs’s painting of her violinist sister Agnes on the cover.

TULLY POTTER

BOULANGER Nocturne (arr.Spindler) TCHAIKOVSKY The Seasons: October (arr.Spindler) TRAD El cant dels ocells (Song of the Birds) (arr.Spindler) VIVALDI The Four Seasons op.8 nos.1–4

Luka Faulisi (violin) Orkiestra Historyczna/Martyna Pasturzka

SONY CLASSICAL 19658843872

Vivaldi’s Seasons in a new setting proves a mixed bag

Luka Faulisi is undoubtedly a young virtuoso of high calibre, as evidenced by his debut disc Aria (reviewed in March 2023). This follow-up, in which he attempts to deromanticise his playing style in Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and align it more with historical performance practices, takes him out of his comfort zone and only partially succeeds. Some of the bow strokes employed and the breakneck speeds with which he takes most of the fast sections of Vivaldi’s concertos are more akin to his virtuoso leanings. Moreover, the gimmickry, percussive and other quasi-cinematic liberties that he and his colleagues utilise to reproduce some of the extra-musical content described in the sonnets accompanying Vivaldi’s concertos seem totally incompatible with those deromanticising aims; contrarily, his extempore ornamentation is somewhat restrained and unconvincing.

Luka Faulisi: a Four Seasons high on virtuosity

His inclusion, though, of additional repertoire with a focus largely on nature, does allow him to stand out among the plethora of Four Seasons. Faulisi’s accounts of Matthias Spindler’s skilful arrangements, sandwiched between each concerto, make for more agreeable listening. He gives a heartfelt reading of the lyrical Catalan melody El cant dels ocells, made famous by Casals, and exhibits lyrical sensibility in Tchaikovsky’s melancholic ‘October’, even if a more relaxed rendition of Lili Boulanger’s Nocturne might be desirable. Sony’s engineering is exemplary.

ROBIN STOWELL

DOHNÁNYI Serenade in C op.10 KODÁLY Intermezzo LÁSZLÓ WEINER Serenade LEÓ WEINER String Trio in G minor op.6

Trio Boccherini

BIS BIS2107

Trio Boccherini with producer Marion Schwebel: breathing life into Hungarian gems

An established ensemble gives new voice to Hungarian string trios

Trio Boccherini, celebrating a decade together, offers strongly characterised performances of these four rewarding works, achieving flawless ensemble and a beautiful blend of sound.

Leó Weiner, Kodály and Dohnányi all contributed to the forging of a new Hungarian national style. The clearly defined textures of Weiner’s youthful 1908 Trio are immediately arresting, aided by a surround sound of glowing clarity. The tightness of the Boccherini’s ensemble is evident in the vigorous syncopated rhythms of the Vivace movement.

Kodály’s 1905 Intermezzo is a chamber music gem. There is some beautifully delicate playing from violinist Suyeon Kang and violist Vicki Powell and a touching ending as the little procession goes off jauntily into the distance.

In Dohnányi’s five-movement Serenade, a masterpiece of string trio writing, the players relish the many contrasts in texture and take the skittering fugue in its central Scherzo at a virtuosic pace.

The as-yet unpublished Serenade (1938) by László Weiner, a pupil of Kodály who perished in the Holocaust, is a striking addition to the repertoire, the outer movements densely motivic, and the central Adagio full of restrained emotion.

JANET BANKS

HAYDN Six String Quartets op.1 Leipzig Quartet

MDG 307 231-2 (2CDS)

Plenty of revelations as this compelling survey reaches volume 17

There is a temptation not to take these pieces too seriously, led both by their conventional designation as ‘divertimenti’ and by the opus number that encourages us to think of them as apprentice pieces. Haydn was nonetheless in his early twenties when he wrote them, with 15 years of solid musical education behind him, including a schooling from the Neapolitan composer Porpora, which he regarded as fundamental to his development.

In any case, the Leipzig Quartet lays to rest any notion of immaturity or naïveté in these pieces. Radiance and pathos alike are potently distilled by Stefan Arzberger’s first violin in the Adagio of op.1 no.1. The following Minuet is no less immediately and uniquely Haydnesque than any mature examples of his mastery; the Leipzig brings a 21st-century, urban edge to its rustic portamento and clumping Trio.

Indeed, one of the particular glories of op.1 is its generosity with minuets – two per quartet – and the Leipzig reveals the individual personality of each one, showing that Haydn could use the form as a character sketch no less deftly than the French harpsichordists in their pièces de clavecin. MDG’s typically immaculate recording underpins their gentle gait with plenty of Peter Bruns’s cello; I especially like the contrast between the dewy innocence of no.6’s first minuet and the foxy stealth of the second. Between them, the Adagio is almost whispered into the listener’s ear; but the album is full of such treasures, as any Haydn collection deserves to be.

TINA AXELSSON

PETER QUANTRILL

HAYDN Complete Piano Trios vol. 3: nos.12, 19, 25 and 43 ARMSTRONG Revêtements Trio Gaspard

CHANDOS CHAN20279

Plenty to delight in this infectious Haydn trio survey

Trio Gaspard (see Piano Trios feature, page 46) continues its survey of the complete Haydn piano trios with a third volume that bears out the high standards of the first two. As before, the selection is designed simply to work as a satisfyingly contrasting programme, rather than being chronologically arranged. Also as before, the trio has commissioned a short complementary new work, this time from Los Angeles-born pianist and composer Kit Armstrong.

The Trio in F major (no.19) makes an ideal opener, with Trio Gaspard imprinting the first of the work’s two movements with impeccable balance, along with a precision that nevertheless doesn’t come across as self-consciously crisp. The slow movements are elegantly turned, while the Polonaise of no.12 in E flat major is neatly sprung.

The recording is not especially lively, which invites us to interrogate forensically the apparently flawless playing. Pianist Nicholas Rimmer uses practically no pedal and the string playing can be terrifically light and deft, though there are some eye-opening accents in the minore section of no.43’s middle movement.

Armstrong’s Revêtements borrows its title from topology. While giving all players a workout, it also neatly uses ideas from Haydn, most obviously the skipping theme of the Presto from no.43.

EDWARD BHESANIA

DE MANZIARLY Piano Trio; Nocturne; Dialogue; Violin Sonata; Trilogue Cecilia Zilliacus (violin) Kati Raitinen (cello) Bengt Forsberg, Peter Johansson (pianos)

BIS BIS2689

The music of a forgotten Boulanger pupil is resurrected, to striking effect

The French composer Marcelle de Manziarly (1899–1989), one-time pupil of Nadia Boulanger, was fêted in her day but then fell into obscurity. Of the five works on this CD, only one, the Piano Trio, has been published. It dates from 1921 and inhabits the French sound world of its time. In the first of its four movements violinist Cecilia Zilliacus and cellist Kati Raitinen sensuously weave their separate ways, and in the short second-movement ‘Rapide’ they are vigorous and rhythmically vital. Their playing of the slowmoving lines of the third movement is pliant, imbued with mystery and full of subtle colours, and the finale has fine lyrical sensitivity before its vigorous ending.

Subtlety and beauty from Cecilia Zilliacus

The other major work here is the Violin Sonata of 1918. Zilliacus brings subtlety and limpid beauty to its long melodies and shows similar sensitivity in the quietly contemplative second movement, ‘Lent et Grave’. The third is marked ‘Tumultueux’, an effect found mostly in the piano part, splendidly played by Bengt Forsberg, who is superb in every piece he plays, although often rather in the background.

The other works here are later: while the Nocturne for violin and piano (1977) is in Manziarly’s earlier style, Dialogue (1970) for cello and piano and Trilogue (1977) for piano trio are dissonant and fragmented. They are all played with passion and authority.

TIM HOMFRAY

SCHUMANN Piano Trios: no.1 in D minor, no.2 in F major Trio Ilona

DEUX-ELLES DXL1197

A notable debut from a period-aware trio

Schumann’s piano trios long remained hidden gems of his output. Over the past quarter of a century or so, though, they have belatedly moved to the heart of the trio repertoire. Periodinstrument players also approached them warily until the supergroup of Isabelle Faust, Jean-Guihen Queyras and Alexander Melnikov made benchmark recordings a decade ago.

Trio Ilona has chosen the first two trios for its recording debut. The piano played by Yi-Heng Yang is an appropriate 1830 Streicher but the booklet doesn’t reveal the identities of Ravenna Lipchik’s violin or Kate Bennett Wadsworth’s cello.

Techniques, though, are audibly well-researched and discussed in the booklet, and include a range of expressive string portamentos and the admission of those ‘ghost notes’ that emanate during the changing of hand position. While the Streicher is a vibrant, resonant presence, the effect is of the string instruments’ individual voices being coaxed rather than declaimed. It’s fascinating, and if Faust et al remain perhaps the more imaginative and responsive interpreters, there is much to be gained from the Ilona’s occasionally less polished traversal.

The ensemble takes its name from Ilona Eibenschütz, a pupil of Clara Schumann’s who lived until 1967, representing a real link from the age of recording to the height of the Romantic era. The studio is Robert King’s Alpheton New Maltings in the Suffolk countryside, which easily accommodates the Streicher but is kinder to the cello than to the violin, most noticeably in the First Trio. It will be fascinating to hear the ways in which the Ilona’s approach illuminates the elusive Third Trio.

DAVID THREASHER

SCHUMANN Piano Quintet in E flat major op.44 TANEYEV Piano Quintet in G minor op.30 Sacconi Quartet, Peter Donohoe (piano)

SIGNUM SIGCD775

A Russian rarity is a winner in this unusual pairing

The Sacconi Quartet and Peter Donohoe fulfilled a cherished desire to perform Taneyev’s Piano Quintet on a tour taking in Moscow and Siberia in 2019–20, and this recording was made later in 2020, as pandemic restrictions began to be loosened. It’s a truly thrilling work on the grandest scale, and if it’s heard less often than other similar works, that’s likely down to the sheer technical challenges it presents to the performers.

Masterly Shostakovich from Quatuor Danel

MARCO BORGGREVE

Donohoe is right at home in this repertoire, and the Sacconi is with him all the way, whether in its expressive playing in the introduction, the playfulness of the Scherzo or the intensity of the passacaglia-form Largo. The finale reaches its denouement in a hardwon G major, which feels truly earned after the intricacy of the arguments leading up to it. If the rich acoustic of the Menuhin Hall sometimes reveals some slightly harsh playing in extreme high registers, arguably that’s as much Taneyev’s fault as anybody’s. This is a reading that offers a complementary view to the benchmark-setting recording by Pletnev with an all-star quartet (DG).

The coupling is Schumann’s chamber masterpiece of 1842. Donohoe and the Sacconi seem to bring Taneyev’s furrowed-brow darkness to the Schumann, often blocking out the sunshine found in other performances. Passages such as the scalic play of the Scherzo seem to prize efficiency over sparkle: absent is a sensitivity to the range of colours that illuminate the composer’s quicksilver mood changes, and the magnificent contrapuntal writing that crowns the finale never quite reaches boiling point. Never mind: there are plenty of Schumann quintets to choose from on disc, but the Taneyev is a far rarer bird, and a joy to hear.

DAVID THREASHER

SHOSTAKOVICH String Quartets nos.1–15, Two Pieces for String Quartet; Quartet Movement Quatuor Danel

ACCENTUS ACC80585 (6 CDS)

A powerful new live cycle from these Shostakovich veterans

Artistic endeavour never lies still. Nearly 20 years ago the Quatuor Danel made what is widely regarded as a benchmark recorded cycle of the complete Shostakovich quartets. But ideas evolve, and this latest set sees two new members in the lower strings in a brilliantly vivid live recording given in the Mendelssohn Hall of the Leipzig Gewandhaus.

GREEN ROOM CREATIVES/YURI ANDRIES

Traversing these works is a demanding process, reflecting Shostakovich’s own trials and tribulations. Spanning 36 years, their stylistic and harmonic journey is perceptively interpreted here. The innocence of the lyrical C major First Quartet forms a savage contrast to the death knell of the Fifteenth Quartet, where the life blood drains away. In between, we have a vivid range of emotions, mainly hovering around darker hues. Small wonder, then, that Shostakovich’s compositions had been proscribed by Stalin. Having survived a brutal world war, endured Leningrad in the terrible siege; and worried through endless political intrigues, Shostakovich generates the full depiction of anxiety by leaning on the interval of semitones to camouflage a sense of key. Metre is flexible, which also reflects unsettled sensations.

Shostakovich frequently alludes to Jewish folk music, its sense of suffering and layered meaning mirroring his own struggles. In the Fourth Quartet the players give the almost grotesque klezmer effects full sway in the work’s finale before allowing the music to melt into a ghostly close. The Danel brings a vast range of instrumental colour to Shostakovich’s sound world, using deep sonorous tones one minute and non-vibrato the next, while some of the notes are barely audible. It observes the letter and spirit of the score with laudable accuracy, and handles swift-changing tempos with absolute mastery.

Schooled and nurtured by both the Borodin and Beethoven quartets, the Danel has inherited their performing legacy yet adds its own voice. Its players also understand Shostakovich’s structures which, although cast in traditional forms of sonata, fugatos, Beethovenian motivic development and passacaglias, are at the same time free and exploratory. The new shakes hands with tradition, and the Danel is alert to this, its surgically precise textures allowing the listener to hear these ideas clearly. There are parts of the writing, such as in the opening movements of Quartets nos.8 and 15, where the influence of Renaissance music is clearly evident. Here, the Danel sculpts the sense of tension and resolution very effectively.

As the cycle progresses, Shostakovich’s style becomes more probing. By the Twelfth Quartet, he is adopting 12-note melodies, though ones that still retain a semblance of tonality. Metre is now freer, and string techniques more textural, with frequent trills, glissandos, Bartókian pizzicatos and screaming dissonance with angular edgy chords: the Allegretto furioso second movement of the Tenth Quartet a good case in point. Here the Danel generates a visceral power with searingly strong bow strokes. Dynamics become extreme, nowhere more so than in the macabre

Serenade of the Fifteenth Quartet, depicted here with razor-sharp intensity. Shostakovich is uncompromising, no longer needing to curry favour. The C major section of the Elegy (the first of the Two Pieces), embedded within an overall landscape of E flat minor, hails back to the First Quartet’s innocent lines, while allowing the later movements to outline a sense of finality. The journey is complete.

JOANNE TALBOT

Muscular Tchaikovsky from the Dudok Quartet Amsterdam

TCHAIKOVSKY String Quartets vol.1: no.1 in D major op.11, no.2 in F major op.22; Eugene Onegin: Lensky’s Aria (arr.David Faber) Dudok Quartet Amsterdam

RUBICON CLASSICS RCD1103

No lack of character but occasional deviations from the score

The opening movement of Tchaikovsky’s First String Quartet flows along nicely, but a persistent feature of the recording soon appears: when cellist David Faber takes the melody in the exposition, the semiquavers of first violinist Judith van Driel all but disappear. Still, Driel makes up for it with her neatly executed semiquavers in the development. The famous Andante cantabile is simply and effectively played, with some judicious portamento in the central section. The Scherzo is sturdy, rustic stuff, with biting accents and crisp staccatos, but the Dudok dynamics are not the same as Tchaikovsky’s, and his diminuendo sin al fine just doesn’t happen. In the finale, the solos in the viola and cello again come firmly to the fore as their colleagues recede.

AYAKA SANO

The Dudok players make the most of the chromatic dissonances at the opening of the Second Quartet, and Driel plays her recitative with passion and flair, and there is tender playing to come after the energetic scrubbing, and a heroic, muscular climax. They are delicate in the quixotic scherzo, with its quirky time signature, and there is gentle good humour in the central L’istesso tempo. The Andante has an easy grace until Tchaikovsky ratchets up the power, and the finale is equally genial, with clear textures in the fugue. The recording is close and warm.

TIM HOMFRAY

Plenty to impress from Curtis student Alyssa Warcup

AVS PRESENTS: 2023 – UNDERREPRESENTED COMPOSERS Works by Behrend, de Biase Bidart, Clearfield, Esmail, Mansurian, Montgomery, Taaffe Zwilich and Toni Fábio Saggin, Jacob Adams, Sheila Browne, Alyssa Warcup, Mary Moran, Rafael Videira, Vijay Chalasani (violas) Mauren Frey, Paul Lee, Julie Nishimura (pianos) Tallā Rouge Duo

AVS PRESENTS AMERICANVIOLASOCIETY.ORG

This second volume shines a light on viola rarities

It’s been ten years since the American Viola Society published its first self-produced CD, compiling American viola music from as long ago as 1906. Relaunched as AVS Presents, the label aims to release an annual CD, of which this is the first. Just what makes a composer underrepresented might be open to discussion (there’s a Pulitzer Prize winner here), but certainly none of those included can be said to be overexposed. Although there’s only space to mention selected highlights, all this music deserves to become better known.

The Brazilian Lycia de Biase Bidart obviously possessed a rare melodic gift, and of course one’s heart goes out to a piece called Viola from Heaven! This beautiful morsel from 1969, charmingly etched by Fábio Saggin and Mauren Frey, makes for an uplifting start to proceedings. Perhaps inevitably, a certain amount of elegiac music is on the bill of fare, but Jeanne Behrend’s 1944

Lamentation, written in memory of her cousin, killed in action in the Second World War, packs a tremendous emotional punch as performed by Jacob Adams and Paul Lee. Andrea Clearfield’s Convergence (2008) is a tough nut to crack, but Sheila Browne and Julie Nishimura command one’s attention in a reading of compelling authority that makes light of some unconventional writing. Curtis Institute student Alyssa Warcup shows her considerable mettle in Jessie Montgomery’s Ysaÿe-inspired Rhapsody no.1.

Each track was recorded in a different venue, making for variable but always favourable acoustics, and concise notes help put each piece into context.

CARLOS MARÍA SOLARE

PINE TREE FLYERS Pine Tree Flyers

TRADCAFE RECORDS WWW.PINETREEFLYERS.COM

An infectious and inspirational showcase of traditional fiddle music 

  A quartet based in Maine, US, the Pine Tree Flyers is clearly on an important mission: to highlight and establish New England fiddle music alongside its more prominent stylistic counterparts as a rich, rewarding concert music. Indeed, its debut release unapologetically sets out its musical stall, and the result is a revealing, rewarding and deeply enjoyable experience in its mix of tunes and styles, and – most evidently – in the players’ inventive, ever-changing arrangements across their quartet of fiddle, accordion, piano and guitar.

Katie McNally’s fine, precise fiddling often takes the melodic lead, amid the bristling energy of the opening trio of tunes ‘Lady of the Lake’/‘Lady Walpole’/‘Lady Ann Montgomery’, for example. It’s a joy to listen to: smooth, fluid and with an unfussy agility to it, though never lacking in character.

McNally often shares melodic duties with accordionist Emily Troll – the two women almost vie for attention in the breezy ‘Smith’s Reel’/‘Pointe-au-pic’. Guitarist Owen Marshall and pianist Neil Pearlman are hardly relegated to chugging accompaniments, however: Marshall takes melodic lead in ‘Echoes of Scotty O’Neil’ against chiming interjections from Pearlman, and it’s almost as if McNally’s shadowy fiddle line is accompanying Pearlman’s bright piano in ‘Shadows on the Lawn’.

It’s clear that the Pine Tree Flyers has plenty to say about its myriad traditions, as well as the technical prowess and musical insights to say it boldly and inventively. That noted, however, despite a few unexpected harmonic twists and unusual tune reimaginings, an obvious respect for tradition runs deeply through the release.

DAVID KETTLE

GARETH BARTON

Fenella Humphreys: constantly exploring

PRISM Music by Frances-Hoad, Bach, Satie, Shaw, Morgan-Williams, Small, Robertson etc.

Fenella Humphreys (violin)

RUBICON RCD1127

An ambitiously wide-ranging album demands a charismatic player

Lockdown clearly still casts a long shadow. Though British violinist Fenella Humphreys doesn’t namecheck the pandemic directly in this eclectic collection of solo works, the disc’s inspiration, she explains, came from a desire to keep alive the music she’d arranged, discovered or had written for her in the spring of 2020. It’s a thoroughly laudable aim, especially when those unsettling circumstances gave rise (in one way or another) to exquisite musical miniatures such as Sarah Lianne Lewis’s achingly poignant Apart we are not alone and Together Apart, or the airborne acrobatics of Ailie Robertson’s lyrical, hen harrierinspired Skydance.

Among discoveries or rediscoveries are George Walker’s bluesy, angular Bleu, which Humphreys attacks with requisite character, and Cyril Scott’s deeply evocative Idyll, which blends slow-moving melodies and frenetic movement in music that at times seems to pay overt tribute to Vaughan Williams’s lark.

Add to those solo-violin arrangements – Humphreys’s own version of Debussy’s ‘La fille aux cheveux de lin’ is particularly effective in its quiet passion and rhapsodic freedom – and you have a disc that, with its 23 brief tracks across styles and genres, feels at times dangerously more akin to a shuffled solo-violin playlist than to a curated succession of musical works.

However, that is offset by Humphreys’s direct, deeply communicative playing, which has a focused, sometimes reedy tone and an easy sense of airy agility that frequently brings her repertoire vividly alive, however bewilderingly diverse.

DAVID KETTLE