Latest CD releases reviewed
THE FRENCH CONNECTION
Emmanuel Pahud (flute), Paul Meyer (clarinet), François Meyer (oboe), Eric Le Sage (piano) EMI 557 9482
****
If you like the idea of chamber music as a kind of hide-and-seek - instrumental sonorities interacting in unusual ways, sometimes clashing with, sometimes absorbing each other - then the playing on this new disc should keep you in a state of delight. None of the music by Villa-Lobos, Schmitt, Milhaud, Jolivet, Maurice Emmanuel and Shostakovich is actually first rate. But it's played with such insight, skill and affection, and presented in such delectable colours, you're almost prepared to believe for a moment that it is. A disc of minor pleasures, presented to perfection. www.emiclassics.com
Michael Dervan
SPOHR: CLARINET CONCERTOS 1 & 2; POTPOURRI IN F; VARIATIONS IN B FLAT
Michael Collins (clarinet), Swedish CO/ Robin O'Neill Hyperion CDA 67509
***
In his day, Louis Spohr (1784-1859) ranked among the greatest names in music, and was one of those composers inspired by the playing of a particularly gifted clarinettist. His relationship with Simon Hermstedt was a symbiotic one - the music he wrote prompted the player to develop his instrument to accommodate it. Those and subsequent developments notwithstanding, Spohr's clarinet works still offer some stiff challenges to the modern player. In this selection of four pieces, written between 1808 and 1810, Michael Collins conjures impressive moments, arpeggios of snake-like sinuousness, phrases that fly upwards with whiplash velocity. Elsewhere, though, the effect is not so much hand in glove as a coat that doesn't quite fit. With Robin O'Neill's conducting not always getting sufficiently beyond rum-ti-tum support, this is a curate's egg of an offering. www.hyperion-records.co.uk
Michael Dervan
MOZART: PIANO SONATAS IN C K330, IN A K331, IN F K332
Andreas Staier (fortepiano) Harmonia Mundi HMC 901856
****
Can we, should we, must we? asks Andreas Staier about ornamentation and alteration in Mozart. "We can, we should, we must!" he answers through his playing. Some of the nimble pirouettes and reshufflings of his performances here are so rapid, so momentary, you're left wondering if you've heard correctly, or if that last moment could really be what Mozart wrote. At other times the changes are blatant, cheeky, provocative, prodding every last listener to ask how far should these things go. There's a restaurant in Staier's native Germany that specialises in serving multicourse meals of unidentified food in total darkness. It's a strange analogy, but Staier's playing here has such a subtle range of interventions that - even if (perhaps, especially if) all you know is Rondo alla Turca -it will allow you to test your preconceptions in a similar way. www.harmoniamundi.com
Michael Dervan
MUSIC OF ARNOLD SCHOENBERG VOL 2
Jennifer Lane (soprano), Christopher Oldfather (piano), Fred Sherry String Quartet, Twentieth Century Classics Ensemble (New York)/Robert Craft Naxos 8.557520
*****
Arnold Schoenberg's String Quartet Concerto (1933), an elaborate re-composition of a concerto grosso by Handel, is a crazy piece that often sounds unconscionably awkward in performance. Robert Craft seeks out the wit and over-the-top fantasy of its grotesquerie rather than its discordance, and uncovers in it the exotic allure and surreal sensuality of a science-fiction world. He describes it as "arguably the happiest, most high-spirited, playful, tender, tuneful, and balletic music" Schoenberg ever wrote, and his conducting makes you believe it. For such a performance alone this disc is worth its modest outlay. But it comes with a performance of the Suite for piano, Op. 25, remarkable for its joie-de-vivre, good performances of the Lied der Waldtaube from Gurrelieder (no texts) and Das Buch der häng- enden Gärten (texts with translations), plus a 1949 interview with Schoenberg, mostly about his painting. www.naxos.com
Michael Dervan
