The latest CD releases reviewed

GESUALDO: FIFTH BOOK OF MADRIGALS
Consort of Musicke/Anthony Rooley L'Oiseau Lyre 475 9110 ****

The L'Oiseau Lyre label promoted early music in the 1950s and 1960s, but had its heyday as a leading source of period instruments recordings in its Florilegium series from the 1970s onwards. Some years ago its distinctive programming strand was merged into Decca. Florilegium has now been revived

as a series of mid-price reissues. Among the earliest items to appear is the Consort of Musicke's ground-breaking 1983 account of the fifth book of madrigals by Gesualdo, a man whose life and music are both strange enough to

fit comfortably into a David Lynch movie. The dry clarity and light vibrato, and the singers' harmonic awareness, gave clear outlines to the adventurous swings that Gesualdo is so famous for, and set foundations for later performers to build on. www.deccaclassics.com  MICHAEL DERVAN

BLOCH: PIANO QUINTETS; NIGHT; PAYSAGES; TWO PIECES
Piers Lane (piano), Goldner Quartet Hyperion CDA 67638 ****

The Swiss-American composer Ernest Bloch was by no means unique in investigating the use of quarter-tones in his substantial, 35-minute First Piano Quintet of 1923. They appear in what's otherwise a blatantly normal context as a way of adding to the expressive inflections of a melodic line. The brooding, stormy piece is the most high-powered work on this CD, where it's coupled with the much slighter Second Quintet of 1957, and a handful of shorter, mood pieces

for string quartet. The performances have just the right mixture of the fiery and the plaintive. www.hyperion-records.co.uk  MICHAEL DERVAN

WF BACH: 12 POLONAISES; SONATA IN D; FANTASIA IN A MINOR~
Robert Hill (fortepiano) Naxos 8.557966 *****

Among JS Bach's composer sons, Wilhelm Friedemann (1710-84) seems to have been the great man's favourite. To modern ears his music sounds like the work of a maverick, more fanciful, even, than that of his brother Carl Philipp Emanuel in stretching harmonic logic out of its expected trajectory. Neither the set of polonaises nor the sonata on Robert Hill's new disc deliver anything close to what those familiar titles might suggest. Instead, you get a credibility- stretching, quasi-futuristic journey that abounds in Alice in Wonderland-like ploys and transformations. Robert Hill plays a gorgeous Keith Hill reconstruction of an early 18th-century Florentine fortepiano, and successfully stretches the imagination without too much teasing. www.naxos.com  MICHAEL DERVAN

MENDELSSOHN: VIOLIN CONCERTO; OCTET; 3 SONGS
Daniel Hope (violin), Chamber Orchestra of Europe/Thomas Hengelbrock, Sebastian Knauer (piano) Deutsche Grammophon 477 6634 ***

This is not the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto as you have known it. Daniel Hope here makes the first recording of what is essentially a pre-publication version of the work, offering the music as it was before the soloist Ferdinand David had some words in the composer's ear, which resulted in more than 100 changes. Some of them are quite startling on a first hearing - just try the famous cadenza for size - and the rawness of Hope's approach to the first movement is explained by the original Allegro con fuoco marking. The playing of the Octet, again performed in a new critical edition, rather tilts into hysteria in search of orchestral weight. This fascinating disc is completed by three songs arranged for violin and piano. www.deutschegrammophon.com  MICHAEL DERVAN