RECORDINGS

OTTO VAN DEN TOOM

TRAUM UND TRAUMA

ANTHEIL Violin Sonata no.2 DEBUSSY Violin Sonata JANÁČEK Violin Sonata SCHULHOFF Violin Sonata no.1 op.7

Friederike Starkloff (violin)

Endri Nini (piano)

GENUIN GEN24870

An album celebrating a remarkable decade of musical invention

In this recording, violinist Friederike Starkloff and pianist Endri Nini present a mini-survey of shifting musical styles in the first quarter of the 20th century. They open with Erwin Schulhoff’s First Violin Sonata, written in 1913 when he was 19. In the first-movement Allegro risoluto quirky, jerky motifs give way to moments of lyricism, its language veering between Romantic and the verge of atonality. In the long lines of the following Tranquillo Starkloff is always lyrical, before bringing lightness and wit to the following Presto. She imbues the sprightly Allegro moderato finale with sparkling energy.

There is a good deal of sensitive, delicate playing in the first movement of the Debussy sonata, outlining its quixotic dramatic narrative. Starkloff includes some fruity portamentos, not all of them marked, and does so again in the following Intermède. In the finale she and Nini revel in Debussy’s extensive palette of colours.

She starts Janáček’s sonata with a super-heated flourish, presaging the fierce, emotionally wrenching outpourings to come. The Ballada has intimate delicacy, and the central Meno mosso of the Allegretto has a sense of gentle questing before the bleak dialogues of the final Adagio.

In George Antheil’s Second Sonata (1923), in which popular music meets the avant-garde, Starkloff is variously seductive, swinging and biting au talon, and makes the most of such instructions as ‘giggled’ and ‘a little “off”’. At the end Nini forsakes the piano for a couple of small drums. The recording is warm and clear.

TIM HOMFRAY

PÄRT ÜBER BACH

BACH Cantata ‘Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis’ BWV21: Sinfonia; ‘Double’ Concerto in C minor BWV1060R (version for two violins)

PÄRT Tabula Rasa; Collage über B-A-C-H; Silouan’s Song

Simone Lamsma (violin) Amsterdam Sinfonietta/Candida Thompson (violin)

CHANNEL CLASSICS CCS46624

A meeting of minds across the centuries in this imaginatively conceived album

This enterprising programme affirms Bach’s influence on Pärt’s stylistic development. The Amsterdam Sinfonietta offers a dramatic account of Pärt’s three-movement Collage, a significant turning-point after his self-confessed reverence for Bach and his discomfort with his own musical language. Based on the B-A-C-H motif, the work’s heart is its central Sarabande, in which Pärt’s ‘hateful’ music is juxtaposed with phrases from the Sarabande of Bach’s Sixth English Suite, lyrically rendered on the oboe. Pärt later drew invaluable sustenance from silence, something that features prominently in the text-based Silouan’s Song and the haunting ‘Silentium’ of his Tabula Rasa, in which his expressive ‘tintinnabuli’ idiom is used to striking effect. Simone Lamsma and Candida Thompson immerse themselves in a concentrated account of ‘Silentium’ and dispatch the technical pyrotechnics of the preceding (‘Ludus’) variations and cadenza with precision and aplomb.

Both works by Bach are arrangements, Lamsma and Thompson masquerading as interweaving oboist and violin in the cantata movement and performing the concerto in a thoroughly ‘modern’, largely unembellished manner. They play its Allegros with energy and buoyancy and, over a soothing organ backdrop, bring a seamless cantabile dialogue to the Adagio, even if their regular ritardandos at cadences of melodic handover become mannered. The resonant recording seems to transform the Sinfonietta into a much larger ensemble.

ROBIN STOWELL

Thoroughly modern Bach from Lamsma and Thompson

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

CHRIS O’DONOVAN

BARTÓK Portrait no.1 BEETHOVEN Romance no.1 BERG Violin Concerto BERLIOZ Rêverie et Caprice CORELLI Sonata in D minor ‘La folia’ (arr. Léonard); works by Brahms, Dvořák, Hubay, Schubert, Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky Joseph Szigeti (violin) unknown (piano) Philharmonia Orchestra/

Constant Lambert; NBC Symphony Orchestra/Dimitri Mitropoulos; WOR Symphony Orchestra/ Alfred Wallenstein; San Francisco Symphony Orchestra/Leonard Bernstein

BIDDULPH 85045-2

The Berg concerto is the standout in a wide-ranging album

This mixed bag revives Joseph Szigeti’s legendary 1945 live performance of Berg’s Vioin Concerto, in much better sound than a previous Music & Arts release. It is only the fourth recording of this work that we have, after those by its commissioner Louis Krasner with Anton Webern, Fritz Busch and Artur Rodzinski.

Newcomers to Szigeti’s art need to be forewarned about his vibrato. He started out employing virtually none, but during the years when he worked on this aspect of his playing, he adopted the rather wide vibrato of his teacher Hubay. After about 1940 his vibrations loosened a little, as can be heard on some of these 1941–6 recordings. I am not bothered by it in the Berg, indeed I find his playing very sympathetic – and he could not have a better collaborator than Mitropoulos. The likes of Krasner, Kogan, Grumiaux and Faust may bring a purer tone to Berg, but Szigeti represents an important stage in the work’s performance history. The 1946 studio records with Constant Lambert of Berlioz’s Rêverie et Caprice and Bartók’s First Portrait are classics, beautifully played.

The dream team: Benjamin Grosvenor, Nicola Benedetti and Sheku Kanneh-Mason

Beethoven’s First Romance from 1945 with Bernstein cannot compete with Adolf Busch’s commanding 1942 version with Wallenstein, while I found the Corelli-Léonard ‘La folia’ rather tedious.

Earlier Szigeti records of the short pieces can be found, with more ‘together’ vibrato. That said, Tchaikovsky’s Valse sentimentale comes off surprisingly well, and Szigeti can still toss off François Schubert’s annoying bee, Brahms’s Fifth Hungarian Dance, the Stravinsky-Dushkin ‘Danse russe’ and Hubay’s ‘Zephyr’, while the Schubert-Friedberg Rondo has nice bounce and the Dvořák–Kreisler G minor Slavonic Dance due style.

TULLY POTTER

★ BEETHOVEN ‘Triple’ Concerto; folk song settings

Nicola Benedetti (violin) Sheku Kanneh-Mason (cello) Benjamin Grosvenor (piano) Gerald Finley (bass-baritone) Philharmonia Orchestra/Santtu-Matias Rouvali

DECCA 4854624

A starry line-up of soloists more than lives up to expectation

A collection of celebrities doesn’t always add up to more than the sum of their parts, but this starry partnership combines brilliant individualism with cohesive ensemble playing.

The opening solo entries of Beethoven’s ‘Triple’ Concerto, led by cellist Kanneh-Mason, are all sweetness and light, the trio striking an immediate tone of bonhomie while maintaining (as do orchestra and conductor) rhythmic momentum. The nuanced playing, and the brilliant recording – expertly balancing the individual instrumentalists as well as their interaction with orchestra – are a delight throughout. The interplay between the soloists of upwards-rushing scales just before the exposition repeat is one of many ear-tickling moments.

The second movement is taken at a gratifying Largo, yet its pulse floats with quiet elegance. Kanneh-Mason’s opening theme – high up on the top string – is as self-effacing as it is shimmeringly beautiful; and the serenity continues as Benedetti takes it up. There’s no lack of swagger in the finale (and a vigorous moto perpetuo section), though not at the exclusion of poetic moments.

Irish, Scottish and Welsh folksong settings by Beethoven are a thoughtful complement (although Gerald Finley, who sings in fully a third of the disc, is unaccountably absent from the cover). It’s all rounded off with a wistfully rhapsodic reading of an arrangement by Fritz Kreisler, with his cellist brother Hugo, of the ‘Londonderry Air’.

EDWARD BHESANIA

BRAHMS AND CONTEMPORARIES VOL.1

BRAHMS Piano Quartet no.2 in A major LE BEAU Piano Quartet in F minor Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective

CHANDOS CHAN20297

Winning advocacy of a Clara Schumann pupil, though she’s no match for Brahms

Luise Adolpha Le Beau was born in 1850, moved in circles including Clara Schumann and Joseph Rheinberger, who both taught her, and Hans von Bülow, who supported her. She must also have known Mendelssohn’s chamber music, as there are a couple of themes in the outer movements of her F minor Piano Quartet that are dead ringers for passages from the finales of his two piano trios.

This is the first appearance on disc of the quartet: Le Beau’s style is confident and assured but with a tendency for development to become a little foursquare. Nevertheless, this is beautifully written for all four instruments. Apart from the chromatically inflected opening of the Adagio, the work doesn’t stray too much from its fundamental key centres, so you reach the end of a movement feeling as if you haven’t travelled very far, Le Beau’s trajectory basically being more melody-driven and linear than, say, Brahms.

Nevertheless, it’s eminently worth hearing, and the advocacy of the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective presents it in the best possible light. The Brahms coupling is marginally less successful, with the Kaleidoscope happier in the more reflective music than in more strenuous passages: the extra degree of precision and passion brought to the work by the Leopold Trio and Marc-André Hamelin (Hyperion) brings the work more vividly off the page. That said, the Le Beau is ample recommendation for this enticing project.

DAVID THREASHER

★ BRIDGE Oration FRANCES-HOAD Earth, Sea, Air WALTON Cello Concerto Laura van der Heijden (cello) BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra/Ryan Wigglesworth

CHANDOS CHSA5346

Superbly intense readings from a young British cellist forging her own path

A ruminative and glowering rhapsody in a continuous half-hour span, Oration takes some holding together. The Chandos engineering sensitively places the spotlight firmly on Laura van der Heijden, with Wigglesworth and his orchestra touching in background detail, as a wordless and baleful protest against war.

Laura van der Heijden: quiet eloquence

MONIKA S. JAKUBOWSKA

Other soloists have brought more extroversion to the solo part, but the 2012 BBC Young Musician winner captures a quintessentially English quality of sullen and repressed eloquence which will not express itself in long and soaring phrases. In this sense, the other two concertos present complementary facets of English cello writing. The soloist is a more positive and extrovert actor in Cheryl Frances-Hoad’s concerto in all but name. More memorable than the melodic material itself is the steady accumulation of tension through the ingeniously varied episodes of ‘Earth’, and the soft swell of ‘Sea’ takes over as though van der Heijden had walked down to the shore. The glinting orchestration of this nocturne brings us to a beach not so far from Britten’s Aldeburgh, before ‘Air’ lifts off on currents of entirely 21st-century harmony.

With the opening bars of Walton’s concerto, however, the earlier pieces are eclipsed – or perhaps that’s simply the effect of Wigglesworth’s deft hand on the tiller and van der Heijden’s ownership of the solo part. In conversational dialogue with the orchestra, she gives a more muted and vulnerable cast to the first movement’s slow dissolve than Steven Isserlis, and her scherzo is a perilously skittish affair, lacking the last degree of definition but throwing caution to the winds. The finale is again stretched to extremes of dynamic and rhetorical gesture which we associate more with Shostakovich than Walton, and to electrifying effect.

PETER QUANTRILL

IRÈNE ZANDEL

CASELLA Cello Sonata op.8; Notturno and Tarantella MULÈ Largo PIZZETTI Tre Canti RESPIGHI Adagio con Variazioni Roberto Trainini (cello)

Stella Ala Luce Pontoriero (piano)

TACTUS TC880003

Italian cello rarities prove a mixed affair, despite powerful characterisation

A passion for rediscovering Italian 20th-century music has proved the inspiration for this clearly recorded disc. Roberto Trainini’s uncle – a professional cellist – opened the gateway to cello studies, and his strong commitment to this repertoire is powerfully conveyed here, with a vivid use of vibrato and a strong sense of line. It’s unfortunate, however, that the material on offer is somewhat variable. Casella, for example, is a rather patchy composer. The opening of his early Cello Sonata offers a bold idea that immediately latches in the mind, and is developed very effectively in the first movement, but the meanderingly chromatic Adagio yields few rewards. A similar theme to the opening movement surfaces in the finale, but quickly gets buried in a cluttered myriad of notes. It’s equally difficult to get much out of the quicksand harmonic language that features in the later Nocturne, but the mood lightens in the fiery Tarantella which partners it, delivered by Trainini with great panache.

Respighi’s Adagio con Variazoni is another disappointment The main thematic material seems lacklustre, though Trainini projects the work’s lyrical qualities and string-crossing virtuosity with élan. Far more appealing is the melodic simplicity of the Largo by the operatic composer Mulè. But undoubtedly the highlights of the disc are Pizzetti’s Tre Canti. Here, the melodic and harmonic material is striking and the textures carefully handled by Trainini and Pontoriero.

JOANNE TALBOT

ERKIN String Quartet RAVEL String Quartet SCHULHOFF Five Pieces for String Quartet Klenke Quartet

ACCENTUS ACC30607

An enterprising programme in which a Turkish discovery stands out

The connecting factor in this imaginative programme is the way its composers exploit folk-inflected material in highly original ways.

In this respect, Turkish composer Ulvi Cemal Erkin’s Quartet is a gem of a discovery, offering a captivating mix of Anatolian folk-inspired rhythms and melodies, laced with a fine ear for European compositional techniques. The music is catchy and direct, the Klenke giving a highly defined reading that is neat and full of character.

Erwin Schulhoff’s Five Pieces are brilliant cameo works, each movement reinventing a familiar dance style within a distinctly advanced tonal milieu. The music is sophisticated and direct, but also has some pleasingly acerbic, gritty moments. The Klenke Quartet’s performances are highly charged, rhythmically vibrant and meticulously prepared, if not quite managing the range of colours invoked in the Bennewitz Quartet’s Supraphon recording, where the blending is more refined and the sound palette more varied.

On the whole, the Klenke’s Ravel is very good, with some imaginative interpretative insights. That said, it doesn’t reach the level of the benchmark recording by Quatuor Ebène (Erato), which musters a greater range of timbres and dynamic gradations, as well as a more subtly refined handling of rubato.

JOANNE TALBOT

Panache aplenty from the Klenke Quartet

ROUSSEL Violin Sonatas: no.1 in D minor, no.2 in A major; String Trio David Bowlin (violin) Kirsten Docter (viola) Dmitry Kouzov (cello) Tony Cho (piano)

NAXOS 8574577

No loss of character as a master of the stage turns inward

Albert Roussel’s First Violin Sonata, dating from 1907–8, reflects the French musical milieu of the time. After its soulful opening David Bowlin leaps into the jaunty, rhythmically vital second theme with energy and glistening tone. He produces a rich, woody sound in the darker-hued development and some passionate G-string outbursts in the coda, before giving a supple account of the twisting, restless lines of the second-movement Assez animé, with expressive playing on the lower strings in the slower central section. The dancing final Très animé is upbeat, full of syncopation, punchy accents and crisp staccatos.

Throughout the sonata, with its technical demands and touches of theatre, both Bowlin and Tony Cho rise splendidly to its challenges.

The A major Second Sonata of 1924 opens with an Allegro con moto full of changes of character, be they contemplative, aggressive or delicate. In the central Andante a simple melody over a rocking piano figure moves swiftly into double-stopped vehemence and a torrent of demisemiquavers played with flair and dynamism. The Presto finale is an impish romp of rhythmic wrong-footing and eccentric double-stopped dance, all performed with wit and energy.

Sebastian Bohren: power and beauty in Vasks

FLORIAN GANSLMEIER

Written in 1937, the String Trio is Roussel’s last completed work. Its central Adagio is a profound meditation, played with sustained intensity, with an exuberant gigue to follow. The recording is clear and well balanced.

TIM HOMFRAY

★ IN EVENING LIGHT

SCHUBERT Rondeau brillant in B minor D895 (arr. Suits) VASKS Violin Concerto no.2 ‘In Evening Light’; Lonely Angel Sebastian Bohren (violin)

Munich Chamber Orchestra/ Sergej Bolkhovets

AVIE AV2662

Masterly musicianship aplenty in a Vasks premiere

Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks experienced a musical epiphany in the 1970s. Inspired by nature and a need for emotional honesty he turned to a new style of simplicity that has led him to be grouped among the ‘holy Minimalists’ alongside Arvo Pärt, John Tavener and Henryk Górecki. And, in common with the rest of the group, he has no shortage of champions.

Vasks’s First Violin Concerto ‘Distant Light’ was premiered by Gidon Kremer in 1997 and the composer returned to the subject of light for his Second Violin Concerto, its name a reference to our twilight years; like the first, this is also scored for strings alone.

In this, its premiere recording, Swiss violinist Sebastian Bohren proves to be an ideal champion. The long soaring lines are lovingly sustained and his tone, although lucid, allows for melancholy and uncertainty too. Yet there’s no lack of power, not least in the three cadenzas, which are replete with double- and triple-stops. The Munich Chamber Orchestra offers warm and sensitive support, while also being alive to the dramatic tension of the second movement. Lonely Angel is adapted from the fifth movement of Vasks’s String Quartet no.4 (1999) and here Bohren shines in the extreme high-lying writing. Schubert’s Rondeau brillant is an unlikely pairing but its songlike and dancelike features are neatly contrasted in this arrangement for violin and strings.

EDWARD BHESANIA

SHOSTAKOVICH String Quartets vol.2: no.10 in A flat major, no.11 in F minor, no.12 in D flat major Quartetto Noûs

BRILLIANT CLASSICS 96420

An Italian group brings warmth to its ongoing Shostakovich cycle

There is still room, even in the well-filled Shostakovich discography, for a down-to-earth approach to the later quartets. The Tenth dates from 1964 and, like the ‘Babi Yar’ 13th Symphony from two years earlier, has not yet succumbed to the skeletal textures and deathly pallor of the composer’s long goodbye in music.

All of which is to commend the Noûs for projecting the Tenth with such rude health and good humour. The sul ponticello ghostliness of the opening Andante is charged with wistful rather than bitter nostalgia. The full measure of the bow lays into the string throughout the furious scherzo, and the finale is imbued with a warm cantabile.

The Eleventh is a tougher nut to crack. Here again, though, a sound-palette more usually applied to Tchaikovsky pays dividends in bringing rich and personable characterisation to what can look and sound like desiccated little motifs. The strutting soldier of the second movement, the procession of monks accompanied by a drunkard in the fourth, the graveside scene of the sixth: all leap from the page like episodes from The Brothers Karamazov.

Where this essentially Romantic approach falls short is in the Twelfth. Something more deadpan is surely needed for the cello’s opening tone-row. The approach of the Noûs is to join the dots even when the shape of the completed image is far from clear. The first movement rather loses its way, despite a taut basic pulse, and, after a ferociously committed opening, the tension leaches out of the second, despite the technical finish of both playing and engineering. But overall it’s a cycle well worth following.

PETER QUANTRILL

SWAIN Summer Rhapsody; English Reel; Song at Evening; Cello Sonata; Piano Quartet

Lorraine McAslan (violin) Sarah-Jane Bradley (viola) Tim Lowe (cello)

Warm lyricism from Quartetto Noûs

HANS LIVIABELLA

Timon Altwegg (piano)

DUTTON CDLX7412

A neglected voice emerges from the shadows thanks to powerful advocacy

Being familiar with two melodious viola morsels by Freda Swain (1902–84), I jumped at the chance of getting acquainted with more of her music. Those pieces were written in 1958 for educational purposes and are accordingly modest in scope; not that there is anything condescending about Sarah-Jane Bradley’s lovingly phrased Song at Evening or the witty, crisp spiccato she employs in English Reel.

Composed in 1936 and premiered by William Primrose, Summer Rhapsody is the prelude to a large vocal-instrumental work inspired by Shakespeare. Again strongly supported by Timon Altwegg, Bradley perfectly catches its wistful, improvisatory atmosphere. The beginning – shades of Vaughan Williams’s Lark – shows off the full-bodied sound of her 1896 G.A. Chanot viola across its full range.

Swain became unsatisfied with her 1923 Cello Sonata – one of her earliest pieces in a larger format – and removed it from the catalogue of her works, but Altwegg and Tim Lowe make a strong case for it, managing to minimise its undeniable prolixity by the sheer passion of their playing. The Piano Quartet is also conceived on a large scale. Composed in 1950, it finds Swain at the peak of her powers, employing modally tinged harmonies that have occasional brushes with atonality.

In this powerful performance, it makes for a rousing end to a beautifully recorded CD that is further enhanced by illuminating notes from Altwegg, who takes care of the Swain estate and is hopefully already busy selecting music for a sequel.

CARLOS MARÍA SOLARE

Layale Chaker: a powerful musical voice in troubled times

LITTLE OLIVE

RADIO AFLOAT Layale Chaker (violin, voice) Sarafand

IN A CIRCLE RECORDS ICR031

A musician of the world addresses contemporary politics

Releasing two CDs on the same day – one classical, the other jazz (both deeply contested terms, obviously, surely seldom more so than with this pair of albums) – seems like a statement of intent, even a challenge. And it’s to Lebanese-born, Brooklyn-based violinist, composer and vocalist Layale Chaker’s enormous credit that she achieves such a rich, distinctive musical language in both – one that cherry picks from cool contemporary classical, simmering jazz, ear-tweaking Arabic microtonality and gently probing improvisation – and also makes the two releases so utterly different from each other.

For the title of her second jazz album with the quintet Sarafand, Chaker uses the potent image of a radio lost at sea, transmitting the voices and hopes of people from many continents, while deeply connected with the natural world. Similarly, there are collisions between apparently disconnected voices here – Chaker’s own decidedly Arabic violin inflections in ‘Khab Nisan’ jar with soft-jazz harmonies from Phillip Golub’s piano and later an arresting interlude from his microtonal keyboard, though cellist Jake Charkey brings the track back to land with a heartfelt, earthy solo. Charkey is a richly expressive presence throughout, matching Chaker’s subtly expressive ornamentation in ‘Fall of Rome’, while contributing a portamento-thick melodic line to percussionist John Hadfield’s slinky, stuttering rhythms in ‘Sketch – Unraveled’.

Whether as a breathy vocalist or nimble violinist, Chaker makes her presence keenly felt amid the disc’s gloriously far-reaching range of styles, and its almost bewildering collection of moods, textures, ideas and perspectives. Her music is unfailingly fluent and elegant, even when it’s at its most complex.

DAVID KETTLE

VIGIL

Layale Chaker (violin) Ethel

IN A CIRCLE RECORDS ICR030

Passion aplenty in an album powered by conviction

If Radio Afloat (reviewed above) showcases her pioneering jazz credentials, Vigil presents violinist and composer Layale Chaker’s classical creativity – and she’s an ever more prominent artist in these fields, having played with ensembles including the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, not to mention the recent premiere of her opera Ruinous Gods in Spoleto. Vigil, however, is very much a collaboration with New York-based new music quartet Ethel. Not only does Chaker join the Ethel foursome to create a new quintet, but each member of the quartet also contributes a piece to the disc (while Chaker offers two).

The large-scale, five-movement work by Chaker that gives the disc its title also sums up the release’s overarching theme: of righteous anger in the face of climate chaos, forced movement of people, bigotry and violence. Chaker nonetheless manages to combine fury with lyricism, from the nightmare imagery and wailing sirens of the second movement to her almost sobbing solo in the fourth. Ethel manages a miraculous blend of vivid sonic storytelling with precision and passion, playing with a sense of deep conviction that makes Chaker’s music all the more powerful.

The Ethel players’ own pieces are very varied, from the pseudo-folk fiddling of violinist Kip Jones’s strongly projected Teen Mania to the unsettling, Crumb-like soundscapes of cellist Dorothy Lawson’s The Demon Within. After the slinky sophistication of Chaker’s arrangement of Sayyid Darwish’s Salla Fina Llahdu, the propulsive Balkan-style rhythms of Ethel violinist Corin Lee’s Sketka bring the disc to a raw and pungent close.

DAVID KETTLE