Brahms: Piano Concerto No 2. Maurizio Pollini, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra/Claudio Abbado (DG)
Maurizio Pollini, now 56, has become a sort of grand old man before his time. His playing retains its nobility, stylistic circumspection and phenomenal accuracy (a German critic once joked about him playing as though he wished for a few wrong notes). But over the years, the glinty edge has gone from the reputation and he no longer seems the pianist of the age. His Brahms Second Piano Concerto, recorded live in Berlin, is a fine achievement, controlled, stable and revealing, particularly of the richness of the writing in the tenor and bass regions. The recording, however, is claustrophobic and manages to shear something from the music's inherent brilliance and grandeur, leaving us with playing of narrowed expressive gamut.
By Michael Dervan
Schnittke: Esquisses. Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra/Andrei Shistiakov. (CDM Russian Season)
Schnittke: Requiem; Piano Concerto. Igor Khudolei (piano), Russian State Symphonic Cappella & SO/Valeri Polyansky (Chandos)
Schnittke extended his music for a stage adaptation of Gogol's Dead Souls for a 1985 Gogol-inspired ballet, Esquisses. These 22 miniatures find Schnittke's polystylism at its most playfully agile, with cartoon-like transmogrifications (full of spot-the-reference invitations) carried through in a fascinating sequence of bold instrumental combinations. The component styles of the deeply personal 1975 Requiem (originating as incidental music to Schiller's Don Carlos to circumvent the Soviet prohibition on sacred music) do, however, fracture uncomfortably. The Piano Concerto's switchback ride is ultimately more persuasive and involving.
By Michael Dervan
Cecilia Bartoli: "An Italian Songbook" (Decca)
The songs of Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini were largely ignored until quite recently in favour of those composers' large-scale operatic works, and even after years of painstaking work by musicologists, many of them remain unpublished and unsung - of Donizetti's 250 songs, for instance, only about 30 are available in modern editions. Recordings as sumptuous as this one will, with any luck, encourage further detective work in libraries and dusty attics, for Cecilia Bartoli - with the help of James Levine on piano - brings these enchanting miniatures vividly to life, spinning out the glorious bel canto lines like skeins of silvery embroidery thread, yet retaining the atmosphere of intimacy so crucial for the success of the art song. More, please.
By Arminta Wallace
