The latest releases reviewed
JOHN CORIGLIANO: STRING QUARTET; SNAPSHOT, CIRCA 1909; A BLACK NOVEMBER TURKEY; JEFFERSON FRIEDMAN: STRING QUARTET NO 2 Corigliano Quartet Naxos American Classics 8.559180
Eclectic American composer John Corigliano (born 1938) is fully up to speed on the world of the late- 20th-century avant-garde. In his 1995 String Quartet, you'll find Gloria Coates-like glissandos, chaste viol-consort emulations, fugal counterpoint mediated through contrasts of tempo, and neo-Bartókian dissonances. You'll also find an unreconstructed melodic expressionist whose personality is stronger than any of the gestural adoptions, making the work at once new and old-fashioned. Two shorter pieces sound well in the hands of performers who have adopted the composer's name. The quartet by his pupil, Jefferson Friedman, is more focused but less interesting. www.naxos.com MICHAEL DERVAN
BRUCKNER: SYMPHONY NO 4 (ROMANTIC) Berlin PO/Simon Rattle EMI Classics 384 7232
There's a smooth monumentality to this new recording of Bruckner's Romantic Symphony, compiled from concerts in Berlin last September. Simon Rattle is a steady Brucknerian hand; he always seems mindful that murmurs should murmur, and brass-heavy climaxes should blaze. But the articulation of the brass is often softly rounded, as if Rattle feels that, in the big outer movements, rhythmic bite is a quality to be carefully rationed. The result is a performance of lofty grandeur, the music viewed in grand curves, but as from a height, leaving a lot of detail obscured and its emotional impact muted. The grandeur, fully supported by the Berlin Philharmonic in fine form, is achieved at a cost. www.emiclassics.com MICHAEL DERVAN
DONNACHA DENNEHY: ELASTIC HARMONIC Various performers NMC D133
Donnacha Dennehy likes to imbue his pieces with an urban energy and drive them with the punchy impact of a rock band. He also likes an air of derangement, as if to suggest both a breaching of conventional boundaries and Jean Tinguely-like disintegration. Paddy, for solo percussion (Tatiana Koleva), resembles the output of a surreal machine, and you could easily imagine other works - especially Junk Box Fraud and Streetwalker (both from the Crash Ensemble), and Glamour Sleeper (ensemble Intégrales) - functioning as the soundtrack for a post-apocalyptic SF movie. pAt for piano (Joanna MacGregor) and clinically verbalised tape has a mad-scientist air about it, while Elastic Harmonic, a kind of anti-concerto for violin (Darragh Morgan with the RTÉ NSO under Gavin Maloney), is minimalist in feel. www.nmcrec.co.uk MICHAEL DERVAN
BEETHOVEN: SONATAS FOR VIOLIN AND PIANO Arthur Grumiaux (violin), Clara Haskil (piano) Decca 475 8460 (3 special-price CDs)
They were an odd couple. The Belgian violinist Arthur Grumiaux was a svelte-looking 35 when he made his first recording with Romanian pianist Clara Haskil. She was 26 years his senior and incapable of standing up straight due to spinal deformity. The year was 1956, and they would make musical magic together for another four years, until Haskil's tragic death after a fall in a railway station. Their Beethoven sonatas, recorded in 1956 and 1957, are gifted with the kind of ease and freedom that make it sound as if there's just a single musical intelligence at work. Of Haskil's infirmity there's not a hint to be heard. These performances still hold their own half a century on. www.deccaclassics.com
MICHAEL DERVAN
