Haydn: Cello Concertos; Sinfonia Concertante. Steven Isserlis, Chamber Orchestra of Europe/Roger Norrington (RCA)
If you want conventional big-toned accounts of Haydn's two cello concertos, then this is not the disc for you. Isserlis's playing here conveys not so much the feeling of having a spring in his step, but rather a sense of the levitational freedom of flight. It's not uncommon, even in Haydn, to find cellists getting bogged down in the search for big tone, and in the process destabilising the music's rhythmic momentum. Isserlis is, by contrast, like a dancer whose every contact tells, and whose finely-weighted balance guarantees elegance of shape and eloquent clarity in situations where others frequently founder in the pursuit of effects that were surely far from the composer's mind.
By Michael Dervan
J.G. Graun: Concertante music for viola da gamba. Christophe Coin, Ensemble Baroque de Limoges (Auvidis Astree) Of the two Graun brothers who thrived in the Berlin of Frederick the Great, Carl Heinrich is the better known.
One of his operas received the attention of Joan Sutherland and two are currently available in complete recordings. The composer of the viola da gamba music on this new CD is Johann Gottlieb, one of the few individuals to have left concertos for the viola da gamba, an instrument which, due to royal interest, flourished later in Prussia than elsewhere. The two concertos recorded here bear engaging affinities to the work of CPE Bach, the two trios which fill up the disc are, fascinatingly, more of stylistically international melting pot. First-rate performances from Coin and his colleagues.
By Michael Dervan
Stravinsky: Violin Concerto; Bartok: Violin Concerto No 2. Viktoria Mullova (violin), Los Angeles PO/Esa-Pekka Salonen (Philips).
Stravinsky once provocatively declared that music expresses nothing other than itself. Judging by their handling of the composer's Violin Concerto, Viktoria Mullova and Esa-Pekka Salonen know exactly what he meant. It's not just that they have chosen to play the piece straight, unburdened by inappropriate emotional baggage, but also that their acutely formal perspective is allied to an ever-renewing delight in the clear lines and fresh sounds of Stravinsky's instrumental combinations. Bartok's near-contemporary Second Concerto may be far removed from the neo-classicism of Stravinsky, but the lively intelligence, airy clarity and unassuming mastery of the playing are equally successful here. The recordings are exemplary in their matching of sonic imagery to performing style.
By Michael Dervan
