A no longer essential recording, hindered by some muddy sound.

Kissin in the moonlight: Evgeny Kissin gives us mature and dazzling Beethoven.

Delightfully warm and elegant Classical Cello Concertos.

The Scottish composer Erik Chisholm was nicknamed McBartók because his use of traditional Scottish music was similar to his friend Bartók’s treatment of Hungarian folk music. Both composers found a way to integrate ethnomusical sources into classical structures and an imaginative 20th-century idiom. During the Second World War, Chisholm was stationed in India where he fell under the spell of Hindustani music, particularly traditional Indian ragas, and began incorporating them into his work. He noted a resemblance between Indian music and the Scottish bagpipe music called Pìobaireachd – for example, their use of improvisation over a drone. In 1947, Chisholm accepted a university post in Cape Town, South Africa, where he died in 1965 at the age of 61. While in South Africa he wrote several operas and wrote a book that helped revive interest in the music of Janácˇek. Chisholm’s output is barely known today. In 2012, Hyperion released a marvelous disc of his Piano Concertos No 1, Pìobaireachd (1937) and No 2, Hindustani (1949), neatly encompassing his major musical influences. Both are authoritative, colourful and significant works. On this new release, we get two pieces from his Scottish period. The composer’s orchestration of three of his 24 Preludes…

South African-born English composer John Joubert turns 90 this year and SOMM Recordings are celebrating. In July, Clive Paget reviewed their recording of the opera Jane Eyre, remarking on Joubert’s stylistic resemblance to Britten. It’s very apparent in this choral music, written between 1952 and 2015. The polytonal harmonies, the word setting, and the choral voicings strongly recall the early Britten of A Boy Was Born and Cantata Academica, although Joubert’s settings are more robust. These traits appear clearly in Three Portraits, a setting of poems by Tudor poet John Skelton. The works are mostly unaccompanied, one exception the charming Autumn Rain (1985). The longest, most interesting work is South of the Line: an anti-war cantata, setting Hardy’s poems about the Boer War. The singers are accompanied by two pianos, percussion and timpani (very Noye’s Fludde), excitingly used. Two movements employ solo vocalists: soprano Chloe Salvidge is impressive in the demanding tessitura of A Wife in London. The Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir used boys in their 2014 Howells recording, but this time the sopranos and altos are female. In fortes (such as Chorus 1 of Incantation, or the Sonnet Op. 123) the women overpower the men, whose tone is fairly…

The first edition of Schumann’s Etudes Symphoniques was published in 1837. The work consists of a theme “by an amateur” (Baron von Fricken) and 12 movements. The final movement, a variation on a theme by Marchner, was dedicated to Schumann’s friend, English composer and pianist William Sterndale Bennett (1816-1875). Both Schumann and Mendelssohn spoke glowingly of the young man’s gifts; however, on his return from Leipzig, Bennett forsook composition for conducting, teaching and administration at the Royal College of Music. (One of his students was Arthur Sullivan.)  The Piano Sonata is one of Bennett’s strong early works. It is Mozartean in its restraint, melodiousness and structure, although harmonically it most resembles Mendelssohn. The work is certainly promising, even though that initial promise was never fulfilled. London-based Japanese pianist Hiroaki Takenouchi gives a robust performance, bringing the music out of its shell, and finding plenty of sturm und drang. Schumann’s Etudes are more demanding and dynamic. Takenouchi is again robust, sometimes over-emphasising accompanying figures. He is at his best in faster movements such as the sprightly Scherzando (Study No 5), and the final Allegro brilliante (No 12) – but while it is bracing to hear this music attacked so fearlessly, Takenouchi lacks Pogolerich’s…

S Bach composed his French Suites (or at least the first five) in 1722 for his second wife, Anna Magdalena, who used them for teaching. (They are in her “notebook”). These dance suites, showing all the composer’s contrapuntal skill, are less outgoing than the English Suites and Partitas, suggesting they were designed solely for domestic use and may in fact have been intended for the clavichord. Vladimir Ashkenazy, on this new recording, plays a concert grand. “I use few ornaments and don’t think of the sound of the harpsichord,” he writes. “What I try to do is play on what we have today, and make the combination of voices as clear as possible.” That he does, and produces some warm-toned pianism into the bargain. The Sarabandes, in particular those from Suites Nos 1 and 5, are sensitively caressed; the Gigue from Suite No 3 teeters excitingly on the edge. Ashkenazy turned 80 in July of this year, and has retired from public piano concertising due to arthritis, but this is barely hinted at in these 2016 recordings. The Courante from Suite No 5 would probably have been more fluent earlier in his career, but overall there is no doubting his…

The second release in Andrew Manze’s complete traversal of Vaughan Williams’ symphonies, is as impressive as its predecessor. Despite the name “Pastoral”, the Third was a wartime symphony. Parts were written while Vaughan Williams was stationed at Écoivres during World War I, and its elegaic, melancholy mood is directly related to that experience. Manze’s recording embraces a post-war reading of the work in one very specific way: he employs a tenor for the wordless vocalise in the final movement, rather than a soprano. The ghostly sound of a man’s voice produces an almost tangible link to the unknown soldier that came to represent the casualties of the Great War. And how deeply contemplative is Manze’s pacing of the magical orchestral passage following the tenor’s appearance? The Fourth, composed between 1931 and 1934, seems with its harsh harmonic clashes to represent the threat of war once more, but the composer indicated that his point was purely musical. This was his first symphony to follow a traditional, recognisably symphonic form, namely that of Beethoven’s Fifth. Manze treats it that way. His urgency and clarity point out the symphony’s structural coherence, helped by a fresh and open sound. Manze reveals… Continue reading Get…

An imaginative programme, and the premiere of a significant vocal work.

Carl Czerny was a piano student of Beethoven, and played his teacher’s sonatas as they appeared. As a composer he was responsible for many pieces designed to address specific aspects of piano technique. In time, Czerny taught Liszt and possibly influenced his writing; hence the CD title, Master & Pupil. Melvyn Tan first came to prominence as a proponent of the fortepiano, recording the Beethoven concertos on that instrument in the early 1990s with period-style conductor Roger Norrington. Here Tan plays a modern Steinway, but his classical sensibility remains in terms of polish over profundity. Having said that, he employs appropriately Romantic rubato in both the Beethoven Sonata No 30 and Liszt’s B Minor Sonata, and his overview of those two masterpieces contains much lovely playing, while always remaining in scale. In the Liszt we are probably used to more sheer heft, but Tan’s subtle detail proves engrossing. Beethoven’s Six Bagatelles (his final piano composition) benefit from the simplicity of Tan’s approach; he does not push them out of shape by being over-emotive. To my mind, the pianist is most impressive in the Czerny works: the Variations on a Theme by Rode, and the Funeral March… Continue reading Get unlimited…

Fierce fiddling, and a lovely neo-romantic blend.

DG continues to releases live recordings of Grigory Sokolov. His mastery is unquestionable but he is famously enigmatic. He refuses all interviews, will not record in a studio, and as of 2005 stopped performing with orchestras. The Mozart concerto comes from January of that year. Was it the straw that broke the pianist’s back? The legend of the reclusive artist is rejected by many but not by DG, who enclose a documentary entitled Grigory Sokolov: A Conversation That Never Was. In it, friends and colleagues praise Sokolov extravagantly, although he himself is absent. One viewing suffices. Despite Pinnock at the helm, the Mozart is given an old-school reading. Poetry abounds in the first movement, while the Adagio builds to a climax of cinematic proportions. Sokolov expends more energy in the finale than other pianists do in Brahms. He is more suited to the Rachmaninov, where his innate mastery of the music’s ebb and flow is on the highest level. As in his solo recitals he is fond of extremes. He thunders through the cadenza of the first movement (a passage where I feel less is usually more), but the section immediately following is beautifully delicate. As a live recording (from…