A musical encounter that lingers in the memory
Helen Wallace is enchanted by this juxtaposition of composers and an unforgettable performance Une rencontre (An Encounter)
R Schumann: Fantasiestücke; Stücke im Volkston; Tristan Murail: Attracteurs étranges; Une lettre de Vincent; C’est un jardin secret; Relecture des Scènes d’enfants Samuel Bricault (flute), Marie Ythier (cello), Marie Vermeulin (piano) Métier MSV 28590 67:10 mins This album brings together Schumann’s great duo works for cello with three fascinating Murail pieces, culminating in his new arrangements of Kinderszenen. The result is an iridescent sonic weave which lingers long in the ear.
Marie Ythier is a discovery for me: a musician of exquisite subtlety and charisma, whose every phrase is alive with penetrating intelligence. Despite Murail’s initial indifference to his Romantic forebear, she intuited the connection, articulated in his revealing booklet note where he identifies the ‘elegant instability’ in Schumann’s music as a spur.
His Attracteurs étranges for cello solo delves into turbulence, melodies spiralling and twisting in graceful arabesques, frictionless airiness juxtaposed with punchy pizzicato. Une lettre de Vincent takes as its starting point the rhythm of the phrase ‘Cher Vincent’, deftly implying the sad tenderness of Theo’s missives to his brother, illuminating the strange, anxious space separating them. The earliest of his pieces C’est un jardin secret… (1974) is a precision-made ghostly miniature. In Ythier’s hands it’s a four-minute opera. Ythier and Marie Vermeulin deliver Schumann’s folk-style and fantasy pieces with quick-fire wit and disarming eloquence. The circus comes to town for Murail’s arrangements of Kinderszenen: they tremble on the edge of Poulencian kitsch, with prepared piano and flutter-tongued flute adding startling effects. The cello becomes a musical saw in ‘Von fremden Ländern’, a frosty breath chills the deep-dreaming ‘Kind im Einschlummern’, the dust flies up in a breathless ‘Hasche-mann’. 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
JS Bach
French Suite in G, BWV 816; Chorale Preludes – Kommst du nun, Jesu, vom Himmel herunter, BWV 650; Ach Gott un Herr, BWV 692; Woll soll ich fliehen hin, BWV 646; Italian Concerto, BWV 971; Viola da Gamba Sonata No. 2 in D, BWV1028, etc
Cellini Consort
Ramée RAM 1911 65:44 mins
The title of this album, ‘Wo soll ich f liehen hin?’ (Where shall I f ly to?), is the first line of a 17th-century Lutheran hymn. There is, though, not a single vocal item on the disc, its title, in this instance suggesting a departure from Bach’s intentions. In short, this is a programme of arrangements and transcriptions for three viols of varying sizes. Some come across more persuasively than others but all, to a varying extent, is redeemed by the accomplished playing and musical sensibility of the artists.
Over an hour’s listening to the unalleviated sound of viols creates a somewhat sombre sound palette, but the skilfully chosen items help to dispel any monotony. The most effective of the arrangements, at least to my ears, are the chorales of which there are five, but at least one of which is not by Bach. Perhaps the most alluring of them are ‘Kommst du nun, Jesu’, the sixth and most exuberant of the Schübler organ chorales, and ‘Wer nur den lieben Gott lässt walten’, seemingly a favourite of Bach’s of which he made several of his own arrangements.
Where the French Suite in
G major and the Italian Concerto are concerned, on the other hand, I found myself longing for the keyboard originals. Cellini Consort’s treatment of the D major Sonata for viola da gamba and harpsichord is fascinating, inasmuch as a tenor and bass viol are allocated the keyboard part, laying emphasis on the equal importance of the three voices. As I have implied, the sophisticated ensemble playing and the thoughtful, if not always convincing, transcriptions deserve exploration. Nicholas Anderson
PERFORMANCE ★★★★
RECORDING ★★★★★
Marie Ythier is a musician of exquisite subtlety and charisma
Beethoven
Piano Trios: in C minor, Op. 1/3; in B flat, Op. 97 (Archduke)
Trio con Brio Copenhagen
Orchid Classics ORC100101 68:19 mins Trio con Brio Copenhagen couple Beethoven’s opening gambit as a published composer with the last work he played in public. Haydn, under whose aegis the young Beethoven wrote his first three piano trios, wasn’t keen on the third because he didn’t think audiences would understand it, and, early though it comes in the oeuvre, it does indeed possess the qualities of the composer’s mature style, even including a prescient appearance of the Fifth Symphony’s four-note ‘fate’ theme. In the ‘Menuetto’ the stark contrast between the piano’s peremptory parade-ground smartness and the airborne lightness of the other instruments foreshadows the music which will come later.
In the Allegro of the ‘Archduke’ this strategy finds its full flowering, as the development opens with diaphanous staccato textures on all three instruments: here the Copenhagen trio, whose playing is excellent throughout, create a gorgeous effect; the juxtapositions of contrasting soundworlds in the Scherzo are brilliantly handled. In their hands the great theme of the Andante develops massive expressive power, while the finale has an engaging freshness. Altogether, a triumph for Beethoven and Trio con Brio Copenhagen. Michael Church
PERFORMANCE ★★★★
RECORDING ★★★★
Chausson • Ravel
Ravel: Piano Trio in A minor; Chausson: Piano Trio in G minor Vienna Piano Trio
MDG 942 2130-6 (hybrid CD/SACD) 59.05 mins
By the time Ravel composed his Piano Trio in 1914, he had to a large degree transformed the urbane and often gently melancholic mischief of his early style into something of greater gravitas. It seems to me that the Vienna Piano Trio, recorded in a generous but not too cloudy acoustic, capture the work’s character well: their performance has a natural flow which yet conveys its musical substance and emotional import. There’s also a sense of larger paragraphs being presented. And their reflective performance of the first movement’s final pages remind us that Ravel was Vaughan Williams’s teacher.
Some listeners may wish for a slightly livelier speed for ‘Pantoum’, but its dance-like character and stylised abandon come across well. And I like the viol-like sound produced by Clemens Hagen’s cello on his entry in the ‘Passacaille’; David Mccarroll on violin adds just a touch of vibrato, but this expressive touch is surely implied by the change of key at his entry.
In the Chausson, a work that has already been coupled with the Ravel in several other recordings, melancholy becomes quite explicit. Though a relatively early composition, one can already hear several lyrical elements which will come to full flower in Chausson’s widely admired Poème. A touch more impetuosity in the opening movement than is provided by the Vienna Piano Trio would have suited this youthful work. There is no lack of that quality, though, in the finale, and the Schumannesque scherzo has a spring in its step which makes a fine contrast to its brooding neighbouring movements. Daniel Jaffé
PERFORMANCE ★★★★
RECORDING ★★★★★
Croes
Six Trio Sonatas, Op. 5 Barrocotout
Linn CKD 597 62:19 mins Henri-jacques de Croes, born 1723 in Antwerp was director of the musical establishment at the court of Brussels from 1746 until his death in 1786. His last set of trio sonatas, published in Paris before he took up that appointment, shows him a capable and engaging composer in the already outdated Italian Baroque tradition, but also fluent in his handling of the new, simpler galant manner. The combination of the two styles within each piece results in some rather lopsided constructions, but in the last of the set (a recent rediscovery) they are more successfully reconciled in a Bachian four-movement plan.
Barrocotout is a quartet of young French and Spanish performers (flute, violin, cello and harpsichord) which was formed at the Brussels Conservatoire and has established a European reputation, notably winning the York Early Music Competition in 2017. The players of the upper lines are well matched in tone and approach, over purposeful continuo support and in clear textures, well caught by the recording. It’s a pleasure to hear this talented and thoughtful group – as it is to encounter the music of the versatile De Croes.
Anthony Burton
PERFORMANCE ★★★★
RECORDING ★★★★
A Bohemian in London
Violin Sonatas by
Gottfried Finger
Duo Dorado
Chaconne CHAN 0824 78:00 mins Gottfried
Finger was a contemporary and compatriot of Biber. Born in about 1660 he was in England by the mid-1680s, when he became part of the équipe of the Roman Catholic chapel of James II. However, perhaps as a result of his coming last – probably unjustly – in a prize competition in 1700 to determine the best composer in England, Finger left for Germany where he died in 1730.
These sonatas reveal Finger as an imaginative composer with interestingly wide terms of reference. As we might expect, Corelli and the Italians provide the prevailing role model, but in the case of the first of three A major sonatas the strongest kinship is with Biber. It is the only work here, Hazel Brooks helpfully remarks, that is preserved in a single source. Elsewhere among the Sonatas there is plentiful variety in character and in form.
Brooks is a great enthusiast for Finger’s music, as is evident from her engaging and well written essay and amply confirmed in the expressive delicacy of her playing. Felicitous examples abound: for instance, in the lightly-bowed unaccompanied opening of the second A major Sonata, and the well-judged tempos of the many dance measures. David Pollock’s discreet and sympathetic continuo support sets the seal on a rewarding recital. Nicholas Anderson PERFORMANCE ★★★★★ RECORDING ★★★★★
The Leipzig Circle
Fanny Mendelssohn: Piano Trio; Felix Mendelssohn: Songs without Words, Op. 109; C Schumann: Three Romances, Op. 22;
R Schumann: Piano Trio No. 1 London Bridge Trio
Somm Recordings SOMMCD 0199
72:22 mins
Fourteen years separate the births of Fanny Mendelssohn (1805) and Clara Schumann (née Wieck, 1819). During that time, Fanny’s brother Felix and Clara’s