The latest releases reviewed.
CHAUSSON: POÈME; JOLIVET: VIOLIN CONCERTO Isabelle Faust (violin), Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin/Marko Letonja Harmonia Mundi HMC 901925 ***
The concertos of French composer André Jolivet (1905-1974) have engaged a number of great performers - Mstislav Rostropovich, Maurice André, Lily Laskine and Jean-Pierre Rampal among them. His 1972 Violin Concerto was written for Leonid Kogan and has now been taken up on disc by German violinist Isabelle Faust. Faust is a gutsy virtuoso, and clearly enjoys digging into the friction of the angular challenges of Jolivet's writing. The orchestral style in this work includes many nuances of scoring, which create the effect of vividly-coloured exotic fauna, caught in sharp close-up, yet still finding their place as the background to the high-as-a-kite gyrations of the ecstatic soloist. In spite of the intoxication, however, that impression of the music is somewhat vaporous. Faust and conductor Letonja are less at home in Chausson's perfumed Poème, explicit where they need to be mysterious, matter-of-fact where they need to be suggestive. www.uk.hmboutique.com Michael Dervan
RAMEAU: SUITES IN E MINOR, G MINOR, A MINO R Angela Hewitt (piano) Hyperion SACDA 67597 ***
Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt, who makes her belated Dublin debut next June, has turned her concentration in the recording studio from Bach to the French baroque. Her new recording of three suites by Rameau offers a demonstration of beautifully-turned pianism, the gorgeous sounds she produces coming from an instrument made by the small Italian firm of Fazioli. But for all her lightness of touch, stylistic awareness, and fleetness of finger, something about these performances doesn't quite gel. Perhaps it's that the reconception in pianistic terms is just too thorough. Or that, given the rarity of Rameau (as opposed to Bach) on the piano, she's making interpretative assumptions that just don't work in the absence of a rich tradition. Either way, her handling of this genuinely great music is admirable but oddly unsatisfying. www.hyperion-records.co.uk Michael Dervan
STRAVINSKY: SOLDIER'S TALE SUITE; RENARD; PLUS SHORTER PIECES Conducted by Robert Craft Naxos 8.557505 *****
The most familiar works here, the Soldier's Tale Suite and Renard, account for less than a fifth of the titles on this disc, but three-fifths of the playing time. Aside from the Three Pieces for Clarinet, most of the other works are of the kind that often fall through the cracks. Be glad that here they haven't, for many of these slivers are exquisite, the craft and cunning of the composition matched by sharp-witted performances directed by the composer's long-time assistant, Robert Craft. The music ranges from the Scherzo à la Russe as scored for the Paul Whiteman Band and a garish, brassy Song of the Volga Boatmen, to rarely-heard songs (with Susan Narucki and Catherine Ciesinski) in exotic chamber settings. www.naxos.com Michael Dervan
ZEMLINSKY: LYRIC SYMPHONY; PLUS OPERA PRELUDES AND INTERLUDESSoile Isokoski (soprano), Bo Skovhus (baritone), Gürzenich-Orchester Köln/James Conlon EMI Classics Encore 372 4812 ****
It's only in the last 25 years or so that Alexander Zemlinsky's seven-movement Lyric Symphony of 1923 has come to be widely recognised as a major contribution to the post-Mahler symphonic repertoire. Zemlinsky himself pointed out his debt to Mahler's Song of the Earth, but the Lyric Symphony has a surge and glow all its own. James Conlon's radiant 2001 recording, with an excellent pair of soloists, should win even more friends for the piece through this reissue in EMI's bargain-priced Encore series. The orchestral opera excerpts usefully range over the composer's entire career, but beware that, at its low price, the disc has neither texts nor translations for Rabindranath Tagore's poems in the symphony. www.emiclassics.com Michael Dervan
