Elgar and Beach quintets offer the richest rewards
The Takács Quartet and pianist Garrick Ohlsson deliver delicacy and drama, says Kate Wakeling
Beach • Elgar
Beach: Piano Quintet in F sharp minor, Op. 67; Elgar: Piano Quintet in A minor, Op. 84
Garrick Ohlsson (piano); Takács Quartet Hyperion CDA68295 63:36 mins
This excellent release celebrates two glorious pieces for piano quintet with performances of unabashed élan. The Takács Quartet are renowned for the warmth and drama of their playing and could not be a better fit for such full-blooded works, while Garrick Ohlsson, a noted Chopin exponent, proves a similarly fine match in this generous, lyrical interpretation.
Amy Beach was one of the earliest American composers to rise to prominence without European conservatory training, and her Gaelic Symphony (1896) was the first symphony by an American woman to be composed, performed and published.
Beach’s Piano Quintet of 1907 is a work of luscious neo-romanticism which rings with subtle echoes of the Brahms Piano Quintet. In this recording, the ensemble brings an extraordinary range and depth of sound to Beach’s closely-worked score. The dreamlike slow movement, with its sombre muted strings, is a particular highlight and the subtle delicacy of this performance is almost unbearably moving, while the ensemble balances a real sense of drama alongside sparkling clarity in the work’s restless finale. Elgar’s Piano Quintet is one of the masterpieces of the genre, by turns mysterious, affecting and joyful. Ohlsson and the Takács Quartet are vividly alert to the work’s sense of story, particularly to the hints of the supernatural in the ‘wonderful weird beginning’, as Lady Elgar described the quintet’s very opening. This is a performance every bit as imaginative and expressive as Elgar’s remarkable never overblown score, and rich always in contrast precise. and With daring excellent but recording quality throughout, this is in every respect an outstanding disc.
★★★★★ PERFORMANCE RECORDING
★★★★★
Beethoven
Violin Sonata No. 4 in A minor, Op. 23; Violin Sonata No. 5 in F, Op. 24 'Spring'; Violin Sonata No. 8 in G, Op. 30/3; German Dances, WOO 42; Rondo for Piano and Violin in G, WOO 41 James Ehnes (violin),
Andrew Armstrong (piano)
Onyx ONYX4208 69:02 mins
Record companies like composer brands, not least the Beethoven one. Music publishers liked it in Beethoven’s day too, and he was determinedly good at turning out the quantities of piano and chamber music that they wanted and would pay for.
The Violin Sonatas Nos 4 (in A minor, Op. 23) and 8 (in G major, Op. 30 No. 3) display all the qualities of an already formidable master-composer: the rhythmic drive whose forcefulness so amazed and disconcerted Beethoven’s early listeners, the epic range of moods, the moments of off-the-wall surprise. But not even the strength of James Ehnes’s playing – a feast of likeably gloss-free tone, magisterial technical command and flawless tuning – can quite transform the underlying feeling that both works sound relentlessly willed by their composer, rather than released by the deep self-expression that marks out vintage Beethoven.
Sure enough, the inspired Spring Sonata (No. 5 in F major, Op. 24) sings and shines all the more beautifully in this company, and Ehnes responds to it as the soulwarming masterpiece it is: the very first note of the violin’s opening phrase here becomes a quietly radiant musical world in itself, and the slow movement’s deep lyricism wells up with a lovely naturalness.
As so often in compendium releases of this kind, there are lessfamiliar gems on offer too. The
Six German Dances and Rondo in G major find Beethoven enjoying himself in freed-up style with pastoral drones, rich invention and foot-stamping relish. Andrew Armstrong’s accompanying, personable and rock-steady, is a pleasure to savour at every point. Malcolm Hayes
PERFORMANCE ★★★★
RECORDING ★★★★
The Takács could not be a better fit for such full-blooded works
Brahms • C Schumann • R Schumann
R Schumann: Violin Sonata No. 1 in A minor, Op. 105; Brahms:
Violin Sonata No. 2 in A, Op. 100;
C Schumann: Three Romances,
Op. 22
Fanny Robilliard (violin),
Paloma Kouider (piano)
Evidence Classics EVCD 066 56:17 mins The spirit and inspiration of Clara Schumann hangs over this imaginatively devised release. Her Three Romances for violin and piano are performed here separately rather than as an integral cycle.
It’s an intriguing idea, allowing the listener to draw more intimate musical connections between the four featured composers that might not have arisen so obviously with a conventional layout.
Fanny Robilliard and Paloma Kouider bring all the necessary intensity and sense of unease to the first movement of Robert Schumann’s A minor Violin Sonata, and I very much like the clarity and precision that they secure in the teasing semiquaver passages in the Finale. The central movement is projected with warmth and expressivity, though perhaps the duo could have been bolder and more spontaneous in their negotiation of Schumann’s almost schizophrenic changes of mood.
It’s good to hear the much less well-known first movement of the FAE (Frei Aber Einsam) Sonata by Albert Dietrich. Once again, Robilliard and Kouider respond with great sensitivity to Dietrich’s ardent writing, but despite a strikingly memorable opening idea, it has to be admitted that the level of musical interest here is not really sustained throughout the movement.
No such qualms can be levelled against Brahms’s wonderfully lyrical and structurally succinct A major Sonata. Here of course Robilliard and Kouider face formidable competition from a stream of benchmark recordings, but the strengths of their performance lie in the wonderfully integrated sense of interaction achieved between the two instruments, and their refusal to superimpose interpretative mannerisms onto the music when Brahms’s intentions are made perfectly clear through his precise instructions on phrasing and dynamics in the score. Erik Levi PERFORMANCE ★★★★ RECORDING ★★★★
Grieg • Hemsing
Grieg: Violin Sonatas Nos 1-3; Hemsing: Homecoming
Eldbjørg Hemsing (violin),
Simon Trp eski (piano)
BIS BIS-2456 72:30 mins
You wait some time for Grieg violin sonatas on disc, and then six come along more or less at once – which is to say three from the married duo of Elena Urioste and Tom Poster (on Orchid), then the same three again from Norwegian violinist Eldbjørg Hemsing and top Macedonian pianist Simon Trp eski. I’d like to hear a third set with the fullest con anima tone at the big climaxes, but these recordings are complementary enough to sit side by side. Personally I’d go for just a shade more emotional warmth in Urioste’s playing, but Hemsing can be a touch more sophisticated, and her elegant taking-flight is signalled beautifully just after the opening piano chords of Op. 8 – a ‘Spring’ Sonata if ever there was one. She also has just a bit of ornamented edge in the imitation of Hardanger fiddling at the heart of that work, and a touch more majestic lyricism in the largesse of Op. 13. Though the piano sound very occasionally overpowers the violinist, Trp eski twinkles and scintillates, but so does Poster – a seriously underrated artist. The finales are still relatively weak spots in the three works, but there’s no lack of conviction or finesse here either.
Urioste and Poster punctuated the sonatas with arrangements of two great spring songs; Hemsing makes her own, unaccompanied homage to the folksong her greatgreat grandfather in the Valdres region of Norway sang to Grieg, who made significant use of it in his only large-scale work for solo piano, the Op. 24 Ballade. David Nice PERFORMANCE ★★★★
RECORDING ★★★★
Hellendaal
Cambridge Sonatas –
Sonatas Nos 1-6
Johannes Pramsohler (violin),
Guirim Choi (cello),
Philippe Grisvard (harpsichord) Audax ADX13720 68:03 mins
Dutch composer Pieter Hellendaal is one of a small number of foreign composers who settled in England during the 18th century. A pupil of Tartini, he was a gifted composer as well as being an accomplished violinist whose Six Grand Concertos, or concerti grossi, plentifully endowed with English seasoning, deserve to be better known. In 1762 Hellendaal settled in Cambridge where he lived and served as an organist until his death in 1799.
The six Sonatas on this disc are drawn from a manuscript collection preserved in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge and are not to be confused with collections printed as the composer’s Opp 1, 2 and Op. 4. Sometimes the Corelli template is clearly on display, but these Cambridge Sonatas break, often startlingly, with Corellian conservatism and notably in fugal movements which push boundaries, both technical and expressive, to impressive heights.
Johannes Pramsohler has on several occasions recently proved his intuitive musicianship, notably with his London and Paris albums which I have previously reviewed in these pages. In this recording, his skilfully poised bow highlights the considerable merits of this unjustly overlooked music. Slow movements are mostly lyrically expressive, while faster ones are generally genial with an abundance of individual gestures, some of which foreshadow early classicism. All these ingredients blend well in movements like the tripartite conclusion of the Sonata No. 2 in A major and the opening of the Sonata No. 6 in D major. There are melodic patterns, too, which momentarily bring to mind those of his teacher, Tartini. This worldpremiere recording is affectionately and stylishly played by Pramsohler and his responsive cello and harpsichord continuo.
Nicholas Anderson
PERFORMANCE ★★★★
RECORDING ★★★★
Akoé
– Nuevas Músicas Antigua Adrien Le Roy: Passamèze;
G Caccini: Amarilli, mia bella; Claudin de Sermisy: Tant que vivray; Despres: Mille Regretz; Dowland: Preludio; Come again, sweet love doth now invite; Encina: ¡Ay triste que vengo!; Hildegard:
O Quam mirabilis est; Isaac: Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen Taracea
Alpha Classics ALPHA 597 49:07 mins The debut album of the ensemble Taracea is nothing if not creative – an aural ‘marquetry’ (or ‘taracea’) that pieces together folk and art, past and present. The ensemble has arranged
– and transformed – an assortment of pan-european medieval and Renaissance works, whose yearning melodies and wistful harmonies are suffused with nostalgia. Like the music itself, the interpretations are highly eclectic, drawing freely on jazz, improvisation, folk, Latino and non-western traditions. Instruments, too, are a strange miscellany, selected – one supposes – for their mellow timbres and melancholy hues: husky recorders and flutes, the hoarse serpent, moody double bass and delicate vihuela (a Hispanic lute). Added to these are exotic, folk percussion instruments which tap out hypnotic rhythms or call up the whispering sounds of the natural world. The whole is a tapestry of quivering colours, associations and memories – indeed, the title of the disc, Akoé, comes from the Greek word for ‘remembered sound’.
Among the highlights are Dowland’s ‘Come again’, an entrancing fusion of Elizabethan, Latino and Moorish styles; Caccini’s ‘Amarilli mia bella’, turned into a madrigal-blues – crooned by the soft-rasping serpent with the bassline plucked on a sulky double bass; Isaac’s plaintive farewell to Innsbruck (T5), prefaced with ebbing sounds that suggest the turning tide and Hildegard of Bingen’s ‘O quam mirabilis’, whose original melody is fragmented – like a distant memory – into a ‘mosaic of the air’.
The disc may not be to all tastes, but for anyone interested in an innovative approach to early music, it will surprise and delight. Kate Bolton-porciatti PERFORMANCE ★★★★
RECORDING ★★★★★
Cantilena
Albéniz: España, Op. 165 – Tango; Casals: En sourdine; Cançó catalana, No. 1 – En el mirall canviant de la mar blava; El ángel travieso; Tres estrofas de amor; Falla: Siete Canciones populares Españolas; Granados: Tonadillas al estilo antiguo; Montsalvage: Cinco Canciones Negras; Piazzolla: Le Grand Tango; Villa-lobos: Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 – Aria Tabea Zimmermann (viola),
Javier Perianes (piano)
Harmonia Mundi HMM 902648
67:58 mins
The violist Tabea Zimmermann and pianist Javier Perianes make a good team in this disc of transcriptions plotting a journey around Spain and Latin America. They start in Argentina with Piazzolla’s Grand Tango, written for Rostropovich, and while this big, brash showstopper makes a slightly heavy-handed opener it puts into relief the dreaminess of the second track, ‘Cuba in a piano’ from Xavier Montsalvatge’s Cinco Canciones Negras, which offers a haunting Caribbean reverie in Zimmermann and Perianes’s distant, song-like playing. In fact, all these pieces use melodies that were originally sung, with the exception of the Piazzolla and the Tango from Albéniz’s España, which closes the disc as if in a deserted milonga.
In the Montsalvatge, the hymn-like lines of Chévere bring out an aching, keening quality in Zimmermann’s tone, one heard to forceful effect in the flamencolike curlicues of ‘Polo’, from
Falla’s Siete canciones populares Españolas. Granados’s Tonadillas en estilo antiguo are less familiar but just as atmospheric, and there are also four miniatures by Pablo Casals that would beg to be sung if Zimmermann were not colouring them so lyrically. Playing on a glorious-sounding instrument made by Patrick Robin only last year, she can elsewhere occasionally sound a touch self-conscious in the more pointed phrasing. Perianes, however, brings to everything just the right rhythmic flexibility, supportive of Zimmermann but never merely receding into the background. It would be good to hear them tackle some meatier repertoire together; in the meantime, this is a disc that’s easy to enjoy. Erica Jeal
PERFORMANCE ★★★★
RECORDING ★★★★
Requiebros
Falla: Suite populaire espagnole
(arr. Maréchal); Saint-saëns:
Allegro appassionato in B minor; The Swan; R Schumann: 5 Stücke im Volkston, Op. 102; plus pieces by Cassado, Fauré, Frick, Granados, Hosokawa & Ravel
Rohan de Saram (cello),
Junko Yamamoto (piano)
First Hand Records FHR 97 62:09 mins There can’t be many cellists around who can claim to have studied with the great Gaspar Cassadó, but Rohan de Saram is one. He first met the Catalan composer and virtuoso in his native Sri Lanka in the early ’50s and at 11 went to Siena to study with him.
Cassadó’s robustly Iberian Requiebros is performed in a unique version here, edited by his teacher, as is Granados’s ‘Intermezzo’ from Goyescas, to which Cassadó made 13 changes on De Saram’s copy, not major but distinctive.
Both are terrific pieces, to which the duo brings rich character and undeniable authority. But while De Saram has the requisite intensity, what’s lacking here and in Falla’s dreamy Suite populaire espagnole, is sensuality and mystery: it’s all quite hard-edged, as if in the glare of the midday sun. Junko Yamamoto displays fiery command of the
‘Polo’ and ‘Jota’, and the haunting ‘Nana’ and ‘Asturiana’ are sincerely tender, but there’s more magic to be found here. It’s a similar story in Ravel’s Pièce en forme de Habanera and Fauré’s Après un rêve: these transcriptions are woven from such delicate tissue, they need to be released rather than carved out.
The programme moves on to more familiar fare, with Saintsaëns’s Le cygne and a lively rendition of Schumann’s Funf
Stücke im Volkston, but it’s the contemporary works that stand out, reflecting De Saram’s musical life: a syncopated toccata by Olivier Sascha Frick and the glassily exotic Lied III by Toshio Hosokowa. It’s delivered with sombre drama, and is perhaps the most moving track on the disc. Helen Wallace PERFORMANCE ★★★
RECORDING ★★★