This week's classical CDs reviews

BEETHOVEN: STRING QUINTETS OPP 4 &29

Nash Ensemble Hyperion CDA 67693*****

Beethoven's sole original string quintet, the Quintet in C, Op 29, completed in 1801, is a little-known gem. Beethoven followed the two- viola scoring of Mozart rather than the two-cello option favoured by Schubert and Boccherini, and the Op 29 quintet has a gorgeous, Mozartean Andante. The Presto finale, full of exploding rockets and tremolando, has earned the nickname Storm in Germany. The Nash Ensemble couple it with the Quintet in E flat, Op 4, which appeared in 1796 and is a reworking of an earlier octet for wind (which, confusingly, was published as Op 103 after the composer's death).

The Nash Ensemble's performances are daringly light on their toes, full of fantasy, and sure to win a host of new friends for both pieces. www.tinyurl.com/5jub7c

HOMMAGE À MESSIAEN

Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano) Deutsche Grammophon 477 7542*****

French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard here offers a centenary homage to one of the major musical influences of his life. He avoids the obvious (the Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus, which he has already recorded). Instead, he offers the complete set of early Preludes, eight pieces from a time of personal crisis (the composer's mother, the poet Cécile Sauvage, had just died) that are infused with an impressionist flavour, but are also already highly personal. There also two movements from the 1950s Catalogue d'Oiseaux, a work which does exactly what its title suggests (his choices are Cetti's Warbler and the Woodlark), and the two Île de feu movements (1949 and 1950) from the forward-looking four studies in rhythm. Aimard captures their every turn of style and feeling. www.tinyurl.com/5b9s4r

JOHN CAGE: CREDO IN US; IMAGINARY LANDSCAPE NO 1; CONCERT FOR PIANO AND ORCHESTRA; ROZART MIX; MUSIC FOR AMPLIFIED TOY PIANOS; MUSIC FOR CARILLON

Ensemble Musica Negativa/Rainer Riehn, Gentle Fire  EMI Classics 2344542****

EMI's new American Classics series here focuses on some of John Cage's most iconoclastic pieces. Ensemble Musica Negativa's early 1970s recordings highlight the inherent shock value of tin cans juxtaposed with recorded classics

in Credo in Us from 1942 (this version has Dvorak's New World Symphony), and the sliding test tones of the otherwise percussive Imaginary Landscape No 1 of 1939. Add to this the unexpected sounds of Music for Amplified Toy Piano and Music for Carillon, and the utterly unpredictable Concert for Piano and Orchestra, and the result is a thoroughly provocative disc. www.emiclassics.com

WEBER: OVERTURES

New Zealand SO/Antoni Wit  Naxos 8.570296 ***

Carl Maria von Weber's most popular overtures (Oberon, Der Freischütz and Euryanthe) are longtime favourites in the concert hall, and it always seems unfair

that the best of the rest, which can fare so well in the right hands, get so little attention. The answer may well lie in these serviceable accounts of 10 overtures in all provided by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra under Antoni Wit. Wit's interpretative hand tends to be just that bit too heavy, and the orchestral playing can flatten out contours in ways that resist the incipient romanticism of Weber's music. Although the disc is good in spots, the brio - of which the music has a lot -can end up sounding more forced than atmospheric, and the overall effect is on the patchy side. www.naxosdirect.ie