Beethoven, "Op 18, Six quartets", Vanbrugh String Quartet, Intim Musik,
Nos 1-3, IMCD 043 (78 mins) Nos 4-6, IMCD 44 (78 mins) Dial a track code: 1201
The Vanbrugh String Quartet celebrated their 10th anniversary with Beethoven cycles in Dublin and Cork, culminating last April in a compressed repeat with all the works given over a single weekend. Last year also saw the quartet tackling the works in the recording studio.
The Vanbrughs offer playing of considerable tonal refinement in performances which are clearly thought out and securely delivered. The general style is engagingly outgoing and the group's many admirers will surely appreciate the fact that the recordings are so exceptionally lifelike.
For me, one of the drawbacks to the set is the players' too-immediate relish of certain aspects of periodicity in the music. What you might call their fondness for emphatic dotting of i's and crossing of t's can make one too aware of junctions and seams. Try the opening of the sixth quartet (the accent on the third long B flat is not Beethoven's idea) or the finale of the fourth (where the sense of segmentation into four-bar units is extremely strong) to see if this aspect of the quartet's style is to your taste or not.
My own preference in these pieces would be for a lighter manner of accentuation, but the Vanbrugh's playing accurately represents the strongly projected rhetoric favoured by most ensembles in public performance today.
Ottorino Respighi, "Ancient Airs and Dances", NSO, Rico Saccani, Naxos,
8.553546(53 mins) Dial a track code: 1311
Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936), whose La fiamma will be seen at this year's Wexford Festival, is best remembered for his skill in orchestration. His three suites of Ancient Airs and Dances were arranged between 1917 and 1932 from lute pieces by Italian and French composers of the 16th and 17th centuries.
In the new NSO recording on Naxos, conductor Rico Saccani adopts a polarising approach, tending towards pressure in the fast movements and towards slackness in the slow ones. His best moments capture an appealing breeziness, but he rarely uncovers much of the music's tenderness, so that, while everything is done cleanly enough, these performances would leave you with the impression that the composer's interest in his material was more academic than affectionate.
Andras Schiff, "Schubert Piano Sonatas", Decca, seven disc set, 448 390-2 (498 mins) Dial a track code: 1421
The Hungarian pianist, Andras Schiff, who rounded off the National Concert Hall's Schubert weekend at the beginning of the month has recorded all of the composer's piano, sonatas for Decca. The recordings, issued individually over the last few years, have now been collected as a mid-price set.
The Decca engineers, working in the Brahms-Saal of the Musikverein in Vienna, have captured his playing in a beautifully perspectived, natural sounding recording. And the performer's choice of a Bosendorfer Imperial Grand assists in his leaning towards colours and nuances one would associate more readily with period instruments than with the sound of a modern, as exemplified by Steinways.
Schiff's, then, is a Schubert of restraint and delicacy, of resignation rather than struggle. The Hungarian's playing is the opposite of highly strung. You won't find here the visionary monumentality which has been such a feature of Richter's Schubert, or the stormily probing acuity of Brendel.
Schiff is at his most revealing when searching out the Schubertian characteristics of the early works, and is not as consistently insightful (though never uninteresting) in charting the extraordinary journeys of the late masterpieces. But he is a supple and graceful Schubertian, who works in subtly muted colours to picture the composer through these performances as essentially a songfully dreamy poet.
