The latest releases reviewed

BEETHOVEN: VIOLIN CONCERTO; MOZART: VIOLIN CONCERTO NO 4; SILVER: CREEPIN' IN

Polish Chamber Orchestra/Nigel Kennedy (violin)

EMI Classics 395 3732

**

Make Richmal Crompton's William a serious violin-playing talent with real musicianship and what would you get? Maybe the Nigel Kennedy of this new CD. Kennedy likes to appear as a kind of antihero in the world of classical music. He strikes some strange attitudes in this new recording of Beethoven's Violin Concerto, as if he's gone through the score with a marker, highlighting things that particularly interest him and passages he plays in slightly unexpected ways. But in Mozart's Violin Concerto in D, K218, his first-movement cadenza is from another world entirely, a kind of easy-listening doodle with heavy sound-processing that sounds little other than ridiculous. William would be grinning from ear to ear with glee.  www.emiclassics.com MICHAEL DERVAN

SHOSTAKOVICH: CELLO CONCERTOS

Daniel Müller-Schott, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks/Yakov Kreizberg

Orfeo C 659 081 A

****

Daniel Müller-Schott's personal note to this new Shostakovich recording offers some politically confused, resolutely black-andwhite historical assessments. His musical commentary is, happily, richer and more insightful, as is his actual playing. The First Concerto of 1959 is well known, the Second of 1966 altogether less so. Müller-Schott sees the later work as "the most emotionally multilayered of all cello concertos", and tackles the brooding and manic qualities of its opening movement head-on, yet somehow manages to keep his personal sweetness through the work's enigmatic contrasts of harshness and balm. That sweetness may seem odd to some listeners, but conductor Yakov Kreizberg's dark vision somehow keeps it in check. The First is plain sailing by comparison. www.tinyurl.com/6mchwb
MICHAEL DERVAN

BEETHOVEN: SONATAS IN E OP 109; IN A FLAT OP 110; IN C MINOR OP 111

Glenn Gould (piano)

Naxos Historical 8.111299

**

There's a strange, no-nonsense directness to the 23-year-old Glenn Gould's handling of the tender opening of Beethoven's late Sonata in E, Op 109. Later in the work, the manner becomes one of what you might call manic deliberation. The peaky clarity of heavily mulled-over music-making is maintained in spite of a speeded-up delivery. The real shocks come in the sublime Sonata in C minor, Op 111, where the main Allegro is at times like a tongue-twisterish race against the stopwatch, and some of the second movement's variations sound patently absurd, as off-the-wall as Shakespeare arbitrarily done in a Chinese accent. Only the Sonata in A flat sounds relatively plausible in these pianistically remarkable but often musically perverse performances. www.naxos.com  MICHAEL DERVAN

PSALTERION & FORTEPIANO

Aline Zylberbach (fortepiano), Margit Übellacker (dulcimer)

Ambronnay AMY 012

***

This disc celebrates the work of Pantalon Hebenstreit (1668-1750). Before the earliest pianos appeared, he developed a hammered mega-dulcimer which became an influence on early piano makers. The crucial characteristic of his 185-stringed "pantalon" was the halo of sound created by its lack of damping. This was regarded as one of its special charms. There is, unfortunately, no repertoire for (nor an extant copy of) this once highly regarded and influential instrument, so Zylberbach and Übellacker have arranged duo sonatas by CPE Bach, Johann Schobert, Johann Ernst Eberlin and Mozart for fortepiano and more regularly sized dulcimer in ways intended to emulate the sound-world of this lost wonder. There's also a single sonata, by Melchior Chiesa, for dulcimer alone. The "Psalterion" of the title comes from the French word for dulcimer. www.tinyurl.com/6mchwb  MICHAEL DERVAN