This week's classical CD reviews
PIOTR ANDERSZEWSKI AT CARNEGIE HALL
Piotr Anderszewski (piano)
Virgin Classics 2672912 (2 CDs priced as 1) ****
Piotr Anderszewski has always given the impression of being a pianist who likes to surprise. This New York recital, recorded in Carnegie Hall last December, runs to extrovertly dancing Bach (the Partita in C minor), an account of Schumann’s Faschingsschwank aus Wien that’s remarkable for its swirling, stomping, outdoor energy (though some of the exaggerated left hand effects – like the giant strides he creates in the central Scherzino – sound quite out of scale), both super-gentle rumination and gutsy thrust in Janacek’s In the mists, and some late Beethoven (the Sonata in A, Op. 110) that peaks in a thundering fugue. Bartók’s Hungarian Folksongs from the Csík District make an attractive encore. www.emiclassics.com
PROKOFIEV: CELLO CONCERTO; SYMPHONY CONCERTO
Alban Gerhardt (cello), Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra/Andrew Litton
Hyperion CDA 67705 ***
Prokofiev rewrote his Second Piano Concerto after the score was lost in a fire. But he rewrote other works out of free choice. It was at the instigation of Mstislav Rostropovich that he returned to his Cello Concerto, Op. 58, of 1938 and turned it into the Symphony Concerto, Op. 125, in the early 1950s. He never lost faith in the original – “the indifference to it is mere stupidity,” he said. Rostropovich helped him make the work more performer- friendly, and more popular. If you’re the kind of person who enjoys comparing Flann O’Brien’s Third Policeman and Dalkey Archive, then Alban Gerhardt’s slightly understated performances of this striking pair of non-identical musical twins may be just the thing for you. www.tinyurl.com/5jub7c
QUANTZ: FLUTE SONATAS NOS 272-277
Verena Fischer (flute), Klaus-Dieter Brandt (cello), Léon Berben (harpsichord)
Naxos 8.557805 ***
Johann Joachim Quantz (1697-1773) was flute teacher to Frederick the Great and author of one of the great musical treatises of the 18th century, the Essay on Instruction for Playing the Transverse Flute.
He was also a prolific composer, finding time to write more than 300 flute concertos and 200 flute sonatas. The six, three-movement sonatas offered here are believed to date from around 1750. They're light, graceful, mostly busy pieces. Verena Fischer and her colleagues are fully up to their technical demands, with the greatest burden in the workouts being borne by the flute. For sheer liveliness, there's no faulting the playing, but Fischer's tone is sometimes so pressuredthat her baroque flute sounds like a modern instrument. www.naxosdirect.ie
BEETHOVEN: EARLY AND MIDDLE QUARTETS
Wihan Quartet
Nimbus Alliance NI 6105 (Early Quartets; 2 CDs); NI 6109 (Late Quartets; 3 CDs) ***
These two sets complete the CD issue of the Wihan Quartet's complete Beethoven quartet cycle, recorded at concerts given in the Convent of St Agnes in Prague in the 2007-08 season. As in the set of late quartets, which was the first to be issued, the sense of the live occasion is strong, and the immediacy of the moment is intensified by the forward balance of the recordings. The mode is mostly extrovert, meaning that the profound slow movements of the early quartets are not always ideally served. But there's a freshness to the playing which often compensates for momentary failings. www.wyastone.co.uk
