Bach: Art of Fugue. Berliner Bach Akademie/Heribert Breuer (Arte Nova)
Don't be fooled into thinking the name Berliner Bach Akademie means a period performance of Bach's Art of Fugue. Conductor Heribert Breuer's arrangement for four diverse quartets and keyboard is a very self-conscious adaptation for our age, creating ensembles that carry connotations of the classical period, jazz and romanticism, as well as, naturally enough, given present-day preoccupations, actual period instruments. Breuer's contention is that he's merely doing the sort of thing that Bach's sons, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Schoenberg others did in their own time. Purists won't relish the sound of piano duet with double bass and vibraphone, a lineup which epitomises Breuer's concern - largely well-realised - to dispel the aura of monolithic abstraction that attaches to the work.
- Michael Dervan
Piano Quintets by Schumann & Dohnanyi. Earl Wild, American String Orchestra/Isaiah Jackson (Ivory Classics)
It was in the 1930s that veteran US pianist, Earl Wild, 85 next November, heard Egon Petri perform the Brahms Piano Quintet with the NBC Symphony. Wild's own first venture in this area came in the 1970s, when he upsized Chausson's Concert for piano, violin and string quartet. Now, in the recording studio, he has extended the treatment to quintets by Schumann (the work that launched the piano quintet as a medium) and Dohnanyi (the Hungarian's Op. 1). The Schumann acquires a fullness of body that five players can suggest but not actually deliver, and the large forces convince in a way Mahler's arrangements of quartets by Schubert and Beethoven don't. Wild's contribution is engagingly direct, and though the Dohnanyi doesn't fully replicate the success of the Schumann, the disc is well worth investigating.
- Michael Dervan
Schubert: Winterreise. Peter Pears (tenor), Benjamin Britten (piano) (Decca Legends)
The late Hans Keller identified a number of what he called "phoney musical professions": the viola player, the opera producer, the conductor, the music critic, and the musicologist. Given his friendship with Benjamin Britten, it's surprising he didn't include the concert pianist in the list. Britten was really no concert performer, but the insight of his playing - and frequently the actual pianism itself - was exceptional. At the keyboard, the non-specialist Britten showed full mastery of problems that many a hard-working pianist simply never solves. His complex probing in this now mid-priced 1963 studio recording of Schubert's dark winter journey, hand in glove with the ever-distinctive Peter Pears, is a memorable instance of quite how creative the re-creative act of music making can actually be.
- Michael Dervan
Regina Nathan: With Love (Lunar Records)
Regina Nathan's has, for the past decade or more, been one of our most beautiful voices; and as her ongoing series of Recital Club performances in Dublin shows, she is devoted to the art of song. This album samples a selection of songs from Schubert and Strauss (Gretchen Am Spinnrade and Ich Schwebe) to traditional airs such as The Gartan Mother's Lullaby and Fill, Fill A Run O, pausing for a glance at musical theatre (Before I Gaze At You Again from Camelot) and a bit of gritty Bible thumping - "In the mornin' when I rise/Give me Jesus!" It's a difficult mix, and even Nathan's occasional moments of reflective purity and Scott Gilmore's impeccable accompaniments couldn't quite convince me that it works.
- Arminta Wallace
More CDs reviewed in tomorrow's Weekend supplement.
