Chamber
The Thymos Quartet and Christoph Eschenbach give a detailed and joyous reading, says Natasha Loges
Dejours • Schubert
Schubert: Piano Quintet in A, D667 (The Trout)*; Ländler** – D366 Nos 12 & 15; D790 Nos 5, 7, 8, 10 & 12; Olivier Dejours: Schubertiade
*Christoph Eschenbach, **Jean-frédéric Neuberger (piano); Thymos Quartet, Yann Dubost (double bass) Avie AV 2416 54:31 mins
The 22-year-old Schubert’s pen was blessed when he wrote this insouciant, elegant Quintet, the double bass making an unusual appearance in the string quartet (there being no second violin). In this delightful recording, the limelight is shared between Christoph Eschenbach’s crystalline piano playing and the creamy string sound, underpinned by the rumbling, bouncing bass. The tempo is elastic, yielding. And there’s no rigid ensemble, either; the mood is convivial, like conversing friends who occasionally interrupt each other. Eschenbach’s solo moments have memorable rhetorical swagger.
Detail is such that every semiquaver is accorded a characteristic edge, the audible action of bow on hair or hammer on string. Schubert’s miraculous harmonic corners are turned with subtlety, new keys almost teasingly introduced with stealthy, vibrato-free sound. The string ensemble chords sound organ-like, a lovely contrast to their tremulously lyrical solo lines. The second movement Andante is sexily silken, so intimately recorded we can hear the performers’ breaths. The Scherzo sandwiches an irresistibly smooth filling between its exuberant outer sections. The famous ‘Trout’ Variations are so jaunty and sunny, I couldn’t stop smiling. The closing mock-pompous march reveals a slyly teasing humour.
There are charming arrangements of Schubert’s waltzes and a selection of Ländler (the latter somewhat heavily rendered by Jeanfrédéric Neuburger). This is music for unselfconscious pleasure, born of the world of domestic music-making in which the subtle details, which would be lost on a larger canvas, can be enjoyed up close. PERFORMANCE ★★★★★
RECORDING ★★★★★
Hear extracts from this recording and the rest of this month’s choices on the BBC Music Magazine website at www.classical-music.com
Beethoven
Cello Sonatas Nos 1-5; Variations – on ‘See the conquering hero comes’, WOO 45; on ‘Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen; on ‘Bei Mannern, weiche Liebe fühlen’, WOO 46 Nicolas Altstaedt (cello),
Alexander Lonquich (piano)
Alpha Classics ALPHA 577 143:05 mins Beethoven’s five cello sonatas make up a satisfying complete set, taking in every main period of his creative life. Op. 5 consists of a powerful pair of early works, commissioned by the celloplaying King of Prussia; Op. 69 is a vintage example of the composer’s expansive middle-period style; and the Op. 102 twosome features, in No. 2 in D major, an Adagio slow movement exploring wondrous late-beethoven depths, followed by a finale – first a single fugue, then a double one – of nearimpossible mastery.
Nicolas Altstaedt and his exceptional accompanist,
Alexander Lonquich, respond to this range of demands with wide and deep resources of musicianship, convincingly enhanced by a period approach. Altstaedt’s instrument is gut-stringed; and the 1820s Conrad Graf fortepiano, remarkably fulltoned and gremlin-free for the period, balances with the cello in a way that a modern concert grand wouldn’t quite, allowing Lonquich’s wonderfully alert playing to operate on the kind of equal terms Beethoven intended (although the recorded balance perhaps places the cello a shade closer than needed).
Highlights in the early sonatas include Altstaedt’s whirring highspeed passagework in Op. 5 No. 2’s finale, and the seemingly endless musical riches of the middle-period and late sonatas are memorably conveyed at every point. The three sets of Variations offer a surprise, in that the earliest – WOO45, based on ‘See, the conquering hero comes’ – turns out to be the most remarkable, with Handel’s workaday tune triggering a smile-inducing cascade of Beethovenian hyper-invention, responded to by both players in roistering style. Malcolm Hayes PERFORMANCE ★★★★★ RECORDING ★★★★
Schubert’s harmonic corners are turned with subtlety
Handel
Sonata in G minor, HWV 364b; Sonata in A, HWV 372, Op. 1 No. 14; Viola da gamba Sonata in D; Keyboard Suite in E minor, HWV 429; Keyboard Suite in D minor, HWV 437; Suite in D minor, HWV 448; Sonata in C Ibrahim Aziz (viola da gamba), Masumi Yamamoto (harpsichord) First Hand Records FHR 91 77:26 mins This selection of pieces reflects the trend for 18th-century viol players to borrow and adapt music written for the newer, flashier violin. Indeed, Handel himself indicated that his G minor Violin Sonata HWV 364 could also be played on the viola da gamba, as it is here. The transcription may lack the brilliance of the more familiar version, but it gains in sonorousness, and Ibrahim Aziz and Masumi Yamamoto give the music a majestic sweep.
The disc also includes several sonatas tentatively attributed to Handel: the A major Violin Sonata HWV 372, transposed down a tone to suit the tuning of the viol, as well as an ingenuous pair of sonatas, in C and D major, thought to be youthful works. If they are by Handel, they’re not his finest inspirations, and these ponderous accounts tend to plod rather than soar.
Far more successful are the performances of the two suites on the disc: Aziz and Yamamoto capture the fusion of vigour and melancholy of the D minor work (adapted from the Keyboard Suite HWV 448), while Yamamoto’s reading of the E minor work for solo harpsichord, in a version ‘improved’ by Gottlieb Muffat (revealing much about contemporary performance practice) brings together rigorous fugal playing, graceful embellishments and wistful lyricism. Lovely, too, are the ruminative preludes – one transcribed from Handel’s Keyboard Suite HWV 437, the other by his older French contemporary, Sainte Colombe le Fils, who settled in Britain around the same time as Handel himself.
The recorded sound is open and detailed, if lacking a little in warmth. Kate Bolton-porciatti PERFORMANCE ★★★ RECORDING ★★★★
Haydn
String Quartets, Op. 7 Nos 2, 4& 6
Leipzig String Quartet
MDG MDG3072142 63:46 mins
Haydn was nearing 40 when, in 1771, he wrote the six quartets we know as his Op. 17. He called them divertimentos, and it wasn’t until the following year that he really mastered the string quartet medium with his first great series, Op. 20. All the same, the earlier pieces aren’t without their striking moments.
The C minor Quartet Op. 17 No. 4, for instance, ends with a composed fade-out in the major – an effect Haydn used again in one of the
Op. 20 quartets, and one that pleased Beethoven enough for him to imitate it in several of his early C minor works. Just as original is the way Haydn’s quartet begins, with two long unaccompanied violin notes which make us think we’re about to hear a piece in a completely different key. Haydn exploits the deliberate deception in subtle ways later on in the opening movement, and he took up the same idea again in two of his later, and greater, quartets. There’s another startling inspiration in Op. 17 No. 2 where the minuet’s trio breaks off in midstream, and the reprise of the minuet abruptly begins – again, a feature that anticipates future developments.
The Leipzig Quartet offers affectionate performances of these apprentice pieces, and they play such moments as the exotic gypsystyle passages in the finale of No. 6 with real gusto. It’s a pity the leader is so reluctant to provide mini cadenzas where they’re patently called for in some of the slow movements, but these are otherwise stylish accounts. The recording is admirably lifelike. Misha Donat PERFORMANCE ★★★★ RECORDING ★★★★
Leclair
Trio Sonatas, Op. 4 Nos 1-6 Ensemble Diderot/
Johannes Pramsohler (violin)
Audax ADX13724 75:15 mins
The music of the violinistcomposer, dancer and lace-maker Jean-marie Leclair is as colourful as his eclectic life and as dramatic as his death at the hands of an unknown murderer. Fêted for his violin sonatas and concertos, Leclair also penned one of the great collections of trio sonatas. His Op. 4 is a captivating fusion of the exquisite French Baroque idiom, with its languorous and lacy melodies, the exuberant Italian style and the rich textures of German counterpoint.
Ensemble Diderot brings out the nobility and grandeur of the music, highlighting what violinist-director
Johannes Pramsohler describes as Leclair’s ‘classic elegance’. The ensemble’s sober reading of the D minor Sonata No. 1 underscores the work’s gravitas and the
‘brooding humours’ of the key. Quite different is the felicitous account of the F major Sonata – the shadow of Corelli infusing its gracious Largo; no wonder Leclair was nicknamed ‘Corelly de la France’.
The ensemble’s balance is finely judged in the numerous fugal movements – abstract and subtle pieces that are, in turn, offset by more pictorial evocations: the Third Sonata’s ‘Aria’, for instance, paints a pastoral landscape, complete with rustic dancing and chirruping birds. But if you think French Baroque music is all about frills, trills and pastel colours, the Diderots’ sinewy, full-toned sound, muscular rhythms and incisive articulation will make you think again. By contrast, London Baroque’s
1999 accounts of these works (on Harmonia Mundi) are invariably faster, lighter and more gallant in spirit. If forced to choose between them, I’d plump for the newer disc. Kate Bolton-porciatti PERFORMANCE ★★★★★
RECORDING ★★★★
Piatti
The Operatic Fantasies, Vol. 2: Introduction et Variations sur un thème de Lucia de Lammermoor; Rondò sulla Favorita; Rimembranze del Trovatore; Capriccio sur des
Airs de Balfe, etc
Adrian Bradbury (cello),
Oliver Davies (piano)
Meridian CDE 84659 71:18 mins
The operatic fantasy was one of the principal ways that melodies from operas of the 19th century reached a wider public: Liszt was the prime exponent of the form for piano, but many instrumentalists also created fantasies of their own. Piatti’s name is one that looms large for cellists, both in Italy, where he played in opera orchestras from a young age, and in England, where he lived for many years.
The Introduction and Variations on a Theme from Lucia di Lammermoor takes Edgardo’s final aria from the opera and puts it through its paces, starting with a lyrical presentation of the melody, gradually becoming
more virtuosic, with double stops, harmonics and instrumental acrobatics. Adrian Bradbury deals with these with aplomb, although the piano accompaniment is rarely more than harmonic filling-in and, as far as the sound is concerned, I’d prefer the cello to have greater presence, especially in the bass register.
The three other fantasies on Donizetti use multiple arias: in Rondò sulla Favorita and Souvenir de Linda di Chamounix, as well as the less well-known Marino Faliero, the more high-wire passages are not always as secure, although the tonal and rhythmic flexibility that the players bring to both the lyrical and playful aspects of the music is characterful and engaging.
Ultimately though, Piatti’s gestures are limited in scope and, even in the more harmonically sophisticated Verdi of Rimembranze del Trovatore, much is predictable. There’s charm throughout, but this is a disc best taken a track at a time. Martin Cotton
PERFORMANCE ★★★
RECORDING ★★★★
Prokofiev • Rachmaninov
Rachmaninov: Cello Sonata; Vocalise; Prokofiev: Cello Sonata Hee-young Lim (cello),
Nathalia Milstein (piano)
Sony Classical 80358118497 67:34 mins With at least four available alternative albums pairing these cello sonatas, there’s a sense of déjà vu. Yet the ‘odd’ coupling works. Though Prokofiev bridled if anyone pointed out similarities between his and Rachmaninov’s music, he admitted being influenced by the older composer early in his career; and Prokofiev’s Cello Sonata, though a late work, was written in a deliberately conservative idiom.
Hee-young Lim offers attractive singing tone on a beautiful Guarneri instrument, which she plays with immaculate technique and intonation. Her delivery, though, is rather relentlessly cantabile, suitable for the closing Vocalise but less so for the more dynamic sonatas. More variety of colour from her bow would have helped characterise the first and final movements of the Rachmaninov, while Nathalia Milstein’s rather loose-limbed piano playing makes the music seem rather rambling. In livelier movements though, as in Rachmaninov’s galloping scherzo, their performance becomes compelling with very fine ensemble. The Prokofiev Sonata, where they are more strict in matters of tempo, benefits from being less of a vehicle for gorgeous cello tone, though that does not preclude a wonderfully resonant bottom C at its opening, highlighting the excellent recorded sound.
These are decent performances, but other recordings show there’s more to these works. In the Prokofiev, Raphael Wallfisch and Peter Donohoe (on Somm) eloquently reveal the first movement’s more reflective and poetic qualities. And anyone wanting this particular pairing will find compelling accounts from Torleif Thedéen and Roland Pöntinen on BIS, particularly vigorous and characterful in the Rachmaninov. Daniel Jaffé PERFORMANCE ★★★★
RECORDING ★★★★★
British Violin Sonatas, Vol. 3
Alwyn: Violin Sonatina;
Bowen: Violin Sonata in E minor; JF Brown: The Hart’s Grace;
E Coates: First Meeting; Ireland: Violin Sonata No. 2 Tasmin Little (violin),
Piers Lane (piano)
Chandos CHAN 20133 70:07 mins
From the tempestuous piano introduction to Bowen’s Op. 112 Sonata, it’s easy to see why he was dubbed ‘the English Rachmaninov’. But there’s also a more native turn of phrase in the lyrical passages, and the performers respond to both aspects of the music with muscular virtuosity and affection. Especially in the high tessitura of the slow movement, Tasmin Little’s tonal variety and rhythmic freedom capture the romantic outpouring, although I wish that she were sometimes more forward in the balance.
Ireland’s Second Sonata is a more troubled work, written during the First World War. Harmonically sparer than the Bowen and more jagged in its melodic contours, it receives a performance which mirrors the conviction of the composer. Even the sustained passages have an undercurrent of sorrow and regret, and the playfulness which surfaces in the finale achieves only a limited victory. As its title suggests, Alwyn’s Sonatina is on a more modest scale, but still creates contrast in its three movements, with long-limbed melody in the initial Allegro,a more desolate central Adagio and a dancing finale. The performers always find time for the music, and that’s equally true in the short works by Brown and Coates which leaven the recording. Martin Cotton PERFORMANCE ★★★★★ RECORDING ★★★★
British Works for Horn
Robin Holloway: Partitas Nos 1 & 2; Lament*; Peter Seabourne: Mille Fiori*; The Black Pegasus**; Encounters†; Julie Dances
Ondřej Vrabec, *†Hana Sápková, *Daniela Roubíčková,
*Michaela Vincencová (horn),
**Mio Sakamoto (piano)
Sheva Contemporary SH241 61:21 mins ‘British Works for Horn’ sounds as if it ought to be a general survey (including, say, pieces by Michael Tippett, Peter Maxwell Davies and Richard Rodney Bennett). But instead it brings together music by two composers: Robin Holloway, who has now retired from teaching composition at Cambridge and has been responsible for a vast and rich output; and a former pupil of his, Peter Seabourne (b1960).
Holloway is represented by two Partitas for solo horn, stylised dance suites in the manner of Bach’s cello suites – the first, written for the late, great Barry Tuckwell, is a real virtuoso piece; while the second, dedicated to an Irish friend, includes a characterful ‘Irlandaise’. They are followed by a short but intense Lament for horn quartet.
By Seabourne there’s a resonant fanfare for horn quartet, Mille Fiori; an inventive suite, Encounters for two horns; a rhapsody for horn and piano, named after Odilon Redon’s dramatic painting ‘The Black Pegasus’, which begins and ends with driving nervous energy, and in between attains an uneasy repose.
Seabourne’s Julie Dances is a set of diverting solo miniatures inspired by nursery rhyme and named after the young daughter of the leading player on the disc, Ond ej Vrabec – principal horn of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. He is a commanding presence throughout, full and varied in tone and at ease with the music’s ambitious technical demands. He is well supported by a trio of horn-playing compatriots and Mio Sakamoto, a purposefully rhythmic pianist. The recording provides a reverberant but clear ambience. Anthony Burton PERFORMANCE ★★★★
RECORDING ★★★★
JS Bach
The Well-tempered Clavier, Book I
Trevor Pinnock (harpsichord)
DG 483 8436 117:32 mins (2 discs)
In the booklet notes accompanying this recording, Trevor Pinnock rightly observes that the preludes and fugues of The Well-tempered Clavier were not intended for the concert hall, but for sharing and teaching. Given the domestic milieu in which these works were performed, it might have been nice to have included a greater variety of instruments, perhaps the clavichord much beloved of German organists of the day for home practice. But the copy of an 18th-century Hemsch harpsichord on which Pinnock plays is handsome sounding and provides a welcome variety of registration.
The quality of these performances is immediately apparent in the opening prelude and fugue, the former unaffectedly simple and the latter beautifully pointed with a clear sense of structure and an attractive hint of inequality. There are also moments of exhilarating virtuosity as in the superbly limpid Presto in the second prelude and the lifeenhancing lightness of the B flat major Prelude. The virtuosity, however, is matched by a strong feeling for rhetoric, as in the
C sharp major Fugue and, where appropriate, humour.
Occasionally some of the tempos can seem a little precipitate, which leads to a slightly routine reading of the G major Prelude; and a more moderate tempo in the C sharp minor Fugue would have allowed its magisterial final stretto to emerge fully. But as a whole these are fine, well recorded performances if perhaps not to be enjoyed in one sitting: as Pinnock observes, a recording ‘affords the modern listener f lexibility to listen as they wish’. Jan Smaczny PERFORMANCE ★★★★
RECORDING ★★★★★
F Couperin
Les années de jeunesse – Pièces de clavecin, Ordre I; Messe propre pour les couvents de religieux et religieuses; Messe a l’usage ordinaire des Paroisses
Les Melanges; Bertrand Cuiller (harpsichord), Jean-luc Ho (organ) Harmonia Mundi HMM 902377.79
195:13 mins (3 discs)
Bertrand Cuiller’s journey traversing the complete harpsichord works of Couperin ‘Le Grand’ opened with a release fancifully entitled ‘a little theatre of the world’ – a conceit that raised questions without
always answering them. This sequel occupies less whimsical territory. It drills down into the music of Couperin’s youth, and includes the two organ masses published in 1690. Harpsichordists would have to wait nearly a quarter of a century for the first book of Pièces de clavecin, and if its composer was by now 45 years old, Cuiller’s inclusion of Ordres I and II acknowledges music that had long been in circulation.
Couperin believed the chief advantages of the harpsichord to be ‘precision, clarity, brilliance
(and compass)’, attributions Cuiller possesses in spades. He breathes the air of the stylised dances with a poise that probes beyond surface blandishments; and the bejewelled embellishments spring from the soul of the music rather than merely adding titillating ‘garnish’. The G major Ordre’s Sarabande fully lives up to its name ‘La Majestueuse’, while ‘La Milordine’ cuts a dapper, aristocratic dash. From the D major companion set, the bracing crispness of ‘La Diane’ proves the perfect foil to the commanding sweep of ‘La Laborieuse’, though Couperin’s request for nonchalance in ‘La Babet’ is largely downplayed.
Jean-luc Ho delivers stylish accounts of the organ masses on two historic instruments, reminding us that the French love affair with pungent, fiery reeds was no mere 19th century predilection. Their movements are illuminatingly interspersed with the relevant plainchant interpolations, despatched, with scrupulous attention to detail, by Les Melanges – shadowed by a serpent of the wind variety. Paul Riley
PERFORMANCE ★★★★
RECORDING ★★★★★
The Austrian Connection
Gál: Three Preludes, Op. 65; Haydn: Variations on ‘Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser’; Piano Sonata in C, Hob. XVI/50; Mozart: Piano Sonata No. 8 in A minor, K310;
Schubert: Piano Sonata in A, D664 Sarah Beth Briggs (piano)
Avie AV2418 74:21 mins
Though by most definitions not a member of the Second Viennese School, the composer Hans Gál (only five years younger than Alban Berg) certainly inhabited a similar world. Perhaps one difference was that he was temperamentally better disposed than many of his contemporaries to the First Viennese School, an affinity that certainly comes across in the Three Preludes, Op. 65.
The pianist Sarah Beth Briggs, a consistent champion of Gál’s music, makes the Haydnesque connection in music that doesn’t betray all the pain its composer must have been feeling. A refugee from Nazism, he was interned by the British in 1940 as an enemy alien, but soon settled in Edinburgh, where he wrote these pieces in 1944. In the sparkling clarity of Briggs’s performance, the opening Vivacissimo lives up to its tempo marking, and a haunting slow movement anchors the work before the toccata-like finale which flies up and away at the end.
Briggs’s Haydn is similarly arresting. She opens with the variations on the future Austrian national anthem originally found in the Emperor Quartet, and brings out the delightful wit of Haydn’s Piano Sonata in C, Hob. XVI/50 – another work written in Britain, during Haydn’s second visit. A fine sense of sonority displayed here slightly deserts her in Mozart’s Sonata in A minor, K 310, where already the left-hand figure of the opening is a little insistent. But the good-natured serenity of her Schubert (the concise Sonata in A major, D 664) quickly restores balance in this attractive recital. John Allison PERFORMANCE ★★★★
RECORDING ★★★★
I Still Play
Piano Works by John Adams, Laurie Anderson, Andres, Andriessen, Dennehy, Glass, Mehldau, Metheny, Muhly, R Newman and Reich
Timo Andres, Jeremy Denk, Brad Mehldau, Randy Newman (piano) Nonesuch 75597920864 36:45 mins While some might receive a carriage clock or decanter to mark their retirement, in I Still Play
Bob Hurwitz has been given the ultimate gift. Hurwitz, who recently stepped back from his long-term position at the helm of Nonesuch, is the dedicatee of these 11 new pieces, each written by composers closely associated with the US label. The album’s title is taken from John Adams’s contribution
– a compact set of variations – performed by Jeremy Denk. It’s Adams, but not as we know him: romantic, occasionally expansive, melodies mix with rhythmic, jumping passages. In Philip Glass’s Evening Song No. 2 we’re in more recognisable territory, with a clear nod to Metamorphosis. This and the majority of the tracks are played by
Timo Andres, who also composed the etude Wise Words.
The collection was intended for Hurwitz to play himself; these are intimate, direct pieces, best suited to the home upright (they took on a particular poignancy during lockdown). That said, the cycle has been performed in concert – at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2017 – and Andres has released some of the miniatures via Youtube, in lieu of a recital that was due to take place at Carnegie Hall. Claire Jackson PERFORMANCE ★★★★ RECORDING ★★★★
Maestros of the Baroque
Rameau: Nouvelles suites de pièces de clavecin – Suite in G; Scarlatti: Keyboard Sonatas – in D, K491; in D minor, K213; in E, K380; in F minor, K466; in D, K118
Finbarr Malafronte (guitar)
Quartz QTZ2136 58:53 mins
You’d think that harpsichord music would transfer well to the guitar: after all, both are plucked string instruments. But whatever the guitar might gain in greater dynamic and tonal definition of the individual lines, it loses in crispness, especially in ornaments, and in rhythmic attack and tightness. La Poule in the Rameau Suite, doesn’t convey the relentless hen-pecking that is so important in this famous character piece, and Les Sauvages just isn’t savage enough. Conversely, the lines in Les triolets and L’enharmonique need smoother phrasing to capture their quiet mood. What can’t be disguised is the relative lack of sustaining power in the guitar, even when as well and intimately recorded as here.
The five Scarlatti sonatas come off better, not least because the composer was often inspired by the texture and technique of the guitar music which he heard during his long career in Spain. In K491 the repeated chords and strong bass lines do conjure up something of the atmosphere of the original, and the uncluttered counterpoint of K213, taken at an easy tempo, leads the ear forward. It’s in sonatas like this and K466, where more rhythmic flexibility is possible, that Malafronte’s musicianship has greater scope. Martin Cotton PERFORMANCE ★★★
RECORDING ★★★★★