This week's classical CDs reviewed

MARIA YUDINA EDITION
Maria Yudina (piano) Brilliant Classics 8909 (8 CDs) ***

If you have an aversion to musicianship that takes liberties with rhythm, then the playing of Russian pianist Maria Yudina (1899-1970) may leave you with something akin to sea-sickness. Yudina’s weaving lines stretch and contract in often extraordinary ways. And sometimes she has moments of matter-of-factness (as in Beethoven’s last sonata) that seem inexplicable. But in the music of the 20th century, and in Bach and Haydn, Yudina’s contrapuntal clarity can be revelatory, and her Liszt is searing. Brilliant Classics’ bargain-priced collection includes Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments, duo sonatas by Prokofiev, Debussy, Hindemith, Honegger and Shaporin, and a quartet and quintet by Taneyev. Adventurous spirits will enjoy the strange and stimulating journey with one of Russian music’s most radical spirits. www.classicalmusic. ie

SCHUMANN: MUSIC FOR CELLO AND PIANO
Steven Isserlis (cello), Dénes Várjon (piano) Hyperion CDA 67661

Schumann wrote only one original work for cello and piano, the giddy, sweet and blustery Fünf Stücke im Volkston. Steven Isserlis has had to borrow and arrange to make up a full CD's worth – the Fantasy Pieces(originally for clarinet), the Adagio and Allegro (horn), the Romances (oboe), and the complete, rarely heard Violin Sonata No 3. The fantasy and poetry of the music are paramount for Isserlis. The danger of a cello poaching violin repertoire only to end up as a kind of elephant on a tightrope is completely sidestepped. And the whole enterprise is graced by the piano playing of Dénes Várjon, who seems to find Schumann's music as compulsive as Isserlis, and has a similar ability to make it so for the listener. www.tinyurl.com/5jub7c

LORRIANE HUNT LIEBERSON AT RAVINA
Lorrain Hunt Lieberson (mezzo soprano), Peter Serkin (piano) Harmonia Mundi HMU 907500*****

The calm before the storm in the opening song, Brahms's Unbewegte, laue Luft (Motionless, balmy air), sets the tone for this recital from the 2004 Ravinia Festival. The dark liquidity of the smoothly caressing voice is set against gloomily hazy rumblings from the nether regions of the piano. The sentiments of the poetry are familiar throughout the programme: lovers in all their delights and agonies. But the musical representations, by Handel, Debussy and Mozart, are delivered with such imaginatively penetrating insight that everything grips with unwonted power. Lieberson (caught two years before her untimely death from cancer) and Serkin (plus counter tenor Drew Minter, for a single duet by Handel) work in perfect harmony. www.tinyurl.com/ 6mchwb

SCHMIDT: SYMPHONY No 1; NOTRE DAME (EXC)
Malmö SO/Vassily Sinaisky Naxos 8.570828 ****

The opening of the First Symphony that Franz Schmidt completed in 1899, the year he turned 25, is a gloriously affirmative statement of post-Brucknerian grandeur. Schmidt has been pilloried for the obviousness of his influences; Nicolas Slonimsky remarked on the piece's "Wagnerophiliac excrescences," and Strauss protrudes as well. But there's also an almostpuppyish innocence about the whole enterprise that defuses the significance of the borrowings. Schmidt, whose day job was in the cello section of the Vienna Philharmonic, completed his first opera, Notre Dame, in 1904, writing the orchestral part first and adding the voices later in what's been called a "symphonist's opera". Vassily Sinaisky and his Swedish orchestra are ardently persuasive in both works. www.naxosdirect.ie