Latest CD releases reviewed
MOZART: VIOLIN CONCERTOS; SINFONIA CONCERTANTE K364
Thomas Zehetmair (violin), Ruth Killius (viola), Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century/Frans Brüggen
Glossa GCD 921108 (2 CDs)
****
These recordings were taped at concerts in the Netherlands and Brazil between 2000 and 2005, concertos one, four and five directed from the violin by Thomas Zehetmair, everything else conducted by Frans Brüggen. It's the great Sinfonia Concertante that is the gem of the set. Zehetmair and viola player Ruth Killius work hand in glove, and Brüggen's palpable delight in every minute orchestral detail is captivating. The solo playing throughout the set straddles the worlds of period instruments' practice and modern playing style, the orchestra strong on the former, the solo violin's vibrato often inclining to the latter. The overall effect is slightly on the austere side of bracing.
www.glossamusic.com
MICHAEL DERVAN
ENESCU: OCTET; VIOLIN SONATA NO 3
Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo/Lawrence Foster, Valeriy Sokolov (violin), Svetlana Kosenko (piano)
Virgin Classics 519 3122
***
The rise and rise of George Enescu's Octet continues, this time through an upscaling for string orchestra by Lawrence Foster. The work, written at the age of 19 in 1900 and long a sleeper, now seems to be winning ever more friends, thanks to its multi-stranded melodic lushness. It's a piece that often threatens to burst at the seams, but is held firm through seanchaí-like command of the bigger picture. Foster's arrangement has the measure of the music's long trajectory. Valeriy Sokolov brings perhaps too explicit a virtuoso sheen to the astonishingly detailed, astonishingly authentic-sounding faux folk music of the Third Violin Sonata, a mesmerising work, and still the composer's best-known piece of chamber music.
www.emiclassics.com
MICHAEL DERVAN
SEÓIRSE BODLEY: A SMALL WHITE CLOUD DRIFTS OVER IRELAND; SYMPHONIES 1 & 2
RTÉ NSO/Robert Houlihan
RTÉ lyric fm CD 121
***
Seóirse Bodley's A Small White Cloud Drifts Over Ireland of 1976 juxtaposes flavours of traditional Irish music (though the material is original, not borrowed), gestures of the mid-20th-century avant-garde, and calmer tonal material. It has always been a daring if not entirely persuasive mix, a work constructed on the lines of a 1960s montage piece, but with the unlikeliest of material. The traditional and tonal aspects persist in the 1981 Symphony No Two (I have loved the lands of Ireland), a work which seems set on an unsuccessful course to emulate Seán Ó Riada's Mise Éire music. The undoctrinaire serialism of the First Chamber Symphony of 1964 is altogether more appealing in these sympathetic performances under Robert Houlihan.
www.classicalmusic.ie
MICHAEL DERVAN
JANÁCEK: SINFONIETTA; OPERATIC PRELUDES; WEINBERGER: SCHWANDA THE BAGPIPER POLKA; SMETANA: BARTERED BRIDE OVERTURE
Pro Arte Orchestra/Charles Mackerras
EMI Classics Encore 235 7202
****
Janácek's Sinfonietta began life as a fanfare, and the spectacular brass writing of the first and last movements (a phalanx of 12 trumpets in the finale) will always make it something of a rarity in the concert hall. It's a thoroughly intoxicating piece, one of those creations so individual it almost seems to stand outside of time. Charles Mackerras's first, halfcentury-old recording of the work is not without its rough edges, but there is a surge to the musicmaking that remains hugely engaging, as if something of the thrill of discovery and first love infuses the playing. This smoothsounding reissue is coupled with idiomatic accounts of more Janacek and pieces by Weinberger and Smetana.
www.emiclassics.com
MICHAEL DERVAN
