Hope plays Schnittke, Weill, Takemitsu (Nimbus)
The British violinist Daniel Hope (born 1974) has made an adventurous debut CD - two works by Schnittke, the Sonata for Violin and Chamber Orchestra and the Concerto Grosso No 6, Weill's Concerto and Takemitsu's Nostalghia. He's a player of interesting character, confident enough in his mid-20s to eschew the well-worn paths of virtuosic self-aggrandisement. Natural recorded balances with the English SO under William Boughton combine with the laid-back style to uncover the secrets of Weill's often unyielding early concerto. Hope treads sensitively through the colliding slopes - theatrical, grotesque, expressionist, artificial - of Schnittke's two variously Shostakovich-imbued works. Takemitsu's Tarkovsky memorial clears the air with haunting directness.
By Michael Dervan
Pablo Casals plays Bach (Pearl, 2 CDs)
Where would cellists be if Pablo Casals hadn't discovered the Bach solo cello suites in a Barcelona music shop as a youngster and decided to start offering them complete in concerts 13 years later? Casals's Bach, as left to us in his 1930s recordings, remains one of the century's great musical legacies. The tone is lean and sinewy yet sensually alluring, the bowing a miracle of control - lightness, weight, agility always at the command of the expressive intent. That intent is of a probing spirituality that may be out of keeping with later, historical performance concerns. But, listening to Casals, all you can do is yield willingly to this most visionary of visionary musicians, often imitated, never equalled on his own terms. Pearl's set includes the other Bach recordings Casals made in the electrical era.
By Michael Dervan
