This week's classical CDs reviewed
BACH: MASS IN B MINOR
La Petite Bande/Sigiswald Kuijken Challenge Classics CC 72316 (2 CDs)****
Sigiswald Kuijken has become a convert to the one-to-a-part approach first advocated on disc by Joshua Rifkin in the early 1980s. Kuijken’s confessional, non-ideological note in the accompanying booklet dates his conversion to 1999. His new recording was made last March and employs just eight singers, who undertake all the solos as well as the choruses. This yields all the benefits in clarity and agility that you would expect. What Kuijken offers is a B minor Mass shaped after the manner of chamber music. The poise is impeccable, the detail of what we normally think of as the choral lines is delivered with breath-taking precision. And, paradoxically, the musical grandeur is all still there. www.challenge.nl
BEETHOVEN: STRING QUINTET IN C MINOR; EYEGLASS DUO; PIANO QUARTET IN E FLAT
Nash Ensemble Hyperion CDA 67745****
This is a disc of youthful Beethoven, but not as you usually know him. The String Quintet in C minor is an 1817 arrangement of the C minor Piano Trio from Beethoven’s Op 1, originally published in 1795. Beethoven made his own fully fledged adaptation in response to another rudimentary arrangement, which he lampooned as a “three- voiced quintet”. Only the piano runs of the Menuetto seem to misfire on strings. The Piano Quartet, Op 16, is a fine piano quartet version of the Quintet for Piano and Wind – the two versions were published in 1801. And the two-movement viola and cello duo (written for bespectacled friends and humorously titled “Duet with two obligato eyeglasses”) is a lot more enjoyable than its obscurity might suggest. The Nash’s performances are first-rate. www. tinyurl.com/5jub7c
RACHMANINOV: PRELUDES
Steven Osborne (piano) Hyperion CDA 67700****
Steven Osborne plays Rachmaninov’s most famous Prelude (the early one in C sharp minor) as he will continue with the two later sets. His playing is thoughtful, fresh, nicely turned, the tone carefully controlled even when his hair is flying in the climactic wind. He is, in other words, inclined towards reflection. It’s not that Osbourne is afraid to run with Rachmaninov’s virtuosity, but it’s the inwardness of the composer’s melancholy that he seems to serve best. There’s an expansiveness of heart and a perturbation of the soul in the very best performances of these pieces which Osbourne does not venture to challenge. But he does in his own way make them fully engaging. www.tinyurl.com/ 5jub7c
SHADOWS OF SILENCE
Leif Ove Andsnes, Bavarian Radio SO/Franz Welser-Möst EMI Classics 264 1822****
Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes's latest CD is an authoritative survey of new(ish) piano concertos and pieces for solo piano. What links all of the pieces is the way they blend new and old. Danish composer Bent Sørensen's brief Lullabiessound almost like a modern setting of old melodies, and his much longer Shadows of Silencestruggles to encompass a dream about bells. Marc-André Dalbavie's Piano Concerto of 2005 morphs in and out of graphic romanticism. In the shimmering fluidity of Witold Lutoslawski's 1987 Concerto, it's more a matter of auras and whiffs. In the spare world of selections from György Kurtág's aphoristic Játékok (Games), a series begun as long ago as 1973, past and present seem to inhabit a single space without discomfort. www.emi classics.com
