Latest CD releases reviewed
MOZART: STRING QUARTETS IN D K499, IN B FLAT K589, IN F K590
Hagen Quartet Deutsche Grammophon 477 5081
There's every reason why the six string quartets Mozart dedicated to Haydn should take pride of place in concert programmes over his earlier quartets. But the four quartets which followed the Haydn Quartets are deserving of a lot more attention than they receive. Audiences would probably cherish them a lot more if they were regularly heard in performances with the sinewy vitality the Hagen Quartet here bring to three of them, and with the Hagen's effortlessly luminous clarity of part playing. The Hagens have listened to and learned from the world of period performance. Their approach is highly individual, mostly light of touch and lean in tone, but musically probing and also rewardingly full in expressive effect.
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ONDES MARTENOT
Thomas Bloch (ondes Martenot), plays works by Messiaen, Martinu, Bloch, Cooper, Redolfi, Rolin, Touchard, Wisson Naxos 8.555779
The 1920s brought the first major original electronic instruments, Lev Termen's Theremin, and Maurice Martenot's ondes Martenot. The Theremin has been mostly heard providing the spooky music for Hollywood movies. But the ondes Martenot was taken up by many French composers, including Messiaen, who wrote for it in his mammoth Turangalîla-Symphonie. Thomas Bloch's new CD interestingly includes a three-minute, posthumously-published snippet by Messiaen, and a chamber Fantaisie Martinu, who also wrote for Theremin. The other music here (including pieces by Bloch himself) is of an altogether lower standard, but will nevertheless reward the curious, as it explores a wide range of the less-frequently explored possibilities of this fascinating instrument, in mixed ensembles, with electronics and with orchestra. www.naxos.com
PROKOFIEV/PLETNEV: CINDERELLA SUITE; RAVEL: MA MÈRE L'OYE
Martha Argerich, Mikhail Pletnev (two pianos, piano duet) Deutsche Grammophon 474 8682
Mikhail Pletnev's reworking of music from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker ballet is the most celebrated piano transcription of the last half-century. The particular delight it offers a wide audience is the degree to which the instrumentation and colour of the original are suggested by just two hands on a single keyboard. This new two-piano arrangement of a 35-minute suite from Prokofiev's Cinderella can't possibly rival the nature of the earlier success, as the music is simply not sufficiently widely known. But successful it is, and highly delectable, too, in the hands of two of the greatest pianists of the age, Pletnev himself and Martha Argerich, to whom the arrangement is dedicated. The transcription is economical but not understated, and the playing matches it in the judicious placing of musical flare-ups. The short-measure fill-up, Ravel's Mother Goose, is, by contrast, chiselled with a precision that seems a shade too cool. www.dgclassics.com
ENCORES AND TRANSCRIPTIONS 3
Pablo Casals (cello) Naxos Historical 8.110985
Just as in the early 19th century Mendelssohn restored Bach's St Matthew Passion to audiences, in the early years of the 20th century the Catalan cellist Pablo Casals rescued Bach's cello suites. Casals was 38 when, in 1915, he made the first of his recordings to have survived. Within a couple of months he began recording movements from Bach's Third Cello Suite, and in spite of the halo of surface noise, these recordings still speak with the eloquently soulful advocacy, individual tone and freedom of technique that were uniquely his. The excerpts from the suite take up four of the 17 tracks here, alongside Casals specialities like Fauré's Après un rêve, and a host of other popular pieces, from Handel's Largo to Elgar's Salut d'amour and an Adagio by Tartini to Rubinstein's Melody in F.
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