The latest releases reviewed

JOHANN LUDWIG TREPULKA, NORBERT VON HANNENHEIM: KLAVIERSTÜCKE UND SONATEN Herbert Henck (piano) ECM New Series 476 5276 ****

Arnold Schoenberg wasn't the only one to invent a technique of 12-tone composition. Joseph Matthias Hauer did so, too. And just as Schoenberg had followers, so did Hauer. Herbert Henck has uncovered two you're unlikely to have heard of. Johann Ludwig Trepulka (1903-45), said Hauer, wrote "formally perfect atonal music". Norbert von Hannenheim (1898-1945), said Schoenberg, was "absolutely one of the very most interesting talents". Henck offers Trepulka's Piano Pieces with Inscriptions Derived from Words by Nicolaus Lenau, Op 2, and four sonatas by Hannenheim. He plays with a sense of wonder and an often feather-like touch, giving the work of these sometimes strangely naive-sounding composers the appearance of little gems. www.ecmrecords.com

MICHAEL DERVAN

It's good that someone in Ireland - the RTÉ lyric fm label - is at last getting around to making recordings of Irish musicians in mainstream works. The programme chosen by Catherine Leonard and Hugh Tinney pairs Beethoven's best-known sonatas for violin and piano, the Spring

and Kreutzer, with Kreisler's much-loved Rondino on a theme

of Beethoven and the little-known Rondo by Beethoven which inspired it. The duo set a breezy tempo for the Spring Sonata, but then engage in playing that's often a bit more earnest than you might expect. They sound more at home in the heavier-duty terrain of the Kreutzer, and adapt beautifully

in the final pairing of short pieces. www.rte.ie/shop

MICHAEL DERVAN

This disc illustrates Hungarian composer György Kurtág's celebrated search for "the maximum possible density of expression by means of the minimum possible sound". Twenty-six pieces from his Játékok (Games), child-inspired, aphoristic investigations for piano and

piano duet, are played with unfailing focus by Kurtág and his wife, Márta. Szálkák (Splinters) successfully takes the cimbalom (Hungarian zither), into the world of post-Webern serialism. Grabstein für Stephan (Gravestone for Stephan) is a calmly implacable elegy for guitar and orchestra that's interrupted with shocking violence. www.uk.hmboutique.com

MICHAEL DERVAN

SMETANA: MÁ VLAST Czech Philharmonic Orchestra/ Václav Talich Naxos Historical 8.111237 ****

Bedrich Smetana was the great nationalist figure of 19th-century Czech music, and he conceived Má Vlast (My Country), a glorious cycle of six symphonic poems, as

a national epic. The most famous movement, the river-portrait Vltava, is still very well known, but performances of the complete cycle remain a relative rarity. The 1954 recording reissued here is the most highly regarded of the three Václav Talich made during his tenure as principal conductor of the Czech Philharmonic. Talich and his players had the work in their blood and, in spite of a certain fuzziness in the recorded quality, the music-making remains deeply stirring. www.naxos.com

MICHAEL DERVAN