Michael Durvanreviews four new classical releases
IRISH CONTEMPORARY ORGAN MUSIC David Adams (organ) www.cmc.ie *****
David Adams, an unassuming virtuoso of the organ, here lavishes his skill on eight Irish works, all but one written since the inauguration
of the instrument they're played on (Kenneth Jones's 1991 organ at the National Concert Hall). The musical idioms are highly varied, but the lure of the toccata infiltrates most of the pieces, overtly in Kevin O'Connell's studious Chorale, Toccata and Fugue, with high contrast interludes in both John Buckley's hocketing Carillon and Gerald Barry's testing The Chair, manically spitting in Donnacha Dennehy's Mad, Avid, Sad (and rather more mildly in his Work for Organ). John McLachlan's Here Be Dragons stokes little fire. Raymond Deane's Apostille intriguingly intercuts seemingly incompatible sound worlds. John Godfrey's for David Adams explores a low pedal throb. Kevin Volans's Walking Song is light, almost ticklish.
SCHWARZ-SCHILLING: INTRODUCTION AND FUGUE; SYMPHONY IN C; SINFONIA DIATONICA Staatskapelle Weimar/José Serebrier Naxos 8.570435 ***
The centenary of the German composer Reinhard Schwarz- Schilling (1904-85) was commemorated on a German stamp four years ago. Yet the composer doesn't even merit a listing in the latest edition of The New Grove Dictionary. Perhaps the influence of his politician son had a bearing on the one, and the conservative nature of his musical language on the other. In 1957, the year of the late Karlheinz Stockhausen's Gruppen for three orchestras, Schwarz-Schilling completed his Sinfonia diatonica, and six years later he wrote his Symphony in C. The most important influence on his work was his teacher, Heinrich Kaminski (who also taught Carl Orff), but the musical flavour of the works on this CD is one of post-Sibelius austerity. www.naxos.com
FRANCK: STRING QUARTET; FAURÉ: STRING QUARTET Dante Quartet Hyperion CDA 67664 ***
Performers seem to regard the string quartets of César Franck and Gabriel Fauré as somewhat treacherous territory. The Franck, completed in 1889, is 45 minutes long and, apart from its scherzo, is conceived in a mode of gravity and grandeur. Franck invites the extravagant gesture, and Fauré, who also completed his quartet in the last year of his life, invokes the quotidian as special and intimate. The Dante Quartet play them with the kind of honourable directness of response which is apt to misfire in such challenging works. There's nothing amiss in the playing, but the qualities which can bring both pieces fully to life don't quite materialise. It's very much a case of the moments working much better than the totality. www.tinyurl.com/5jub7c
GODOWSKY: STRAUSS TRANSCRIPTIONS AND OTHER WALTZES Marc-André Hamelin (piano) Hyperion CDA 67626 ****
The late-romantic pianist/composer Leopold Godowsky (1870-1938) remains notorious for the amount of fanciful filigree he could transfuse into other men's music. Marc-André Hamelin's main helpings are three "symphonie metamorphoses" on Strauss waltzes, the purpose of which, said Godowsky was "to build up a living, pulsing, colourful transformation of the simple original legitimately, by means of theme inversion and theme development, rich and glorified instrumental counterpoint, imitation and embellishment". Hamelin adds in some other waltz-oriented pieces from Walzermasken and Triakontameron, and plays everything in a style that manages
to be both sober and indulgent, as if he were telling Baron Münchhausen tales and increasing the sense of wonder by concentrating on plausibility rather than exaggeration. www.tinyurl.com/5jub7c
