If you are one of those people who feels the great Chaconne from Bach's D minor Partita for solo violin gets rather swallowed up in the elaborations of Busoni's arrangement for piano, Evgeny Kissin's new recording is not for you. Mesmerising as it is, the coruscating magic of the Russian keyboard wizard adds yet another layer of distraction between the listener and Bach's original conception. Brilliance is the order of the day for Kissin in Beethoven's G major Rondo and Rage over a lost penny, which rattles and snaps as you've never heard it before. And in an unbuttoned reading of Schumann's Kreisleriana Kissin swings readily and inimitably from reflection to wildness.
Michael Dervan
Schnittke: "Complete works for cello and piano" (Chandos)
Schnittke: "Piano Music" (Chandos)
Alfred Schnittke, who died in August, is best known as the creator of dramatic, stylistically prolix, large-scale orchestral canvasses. As a sort of musical action painter, playing with objets trouves as part of his material, Schnittke might seem unlikely to score successes in chamber music, but the First Cello Sonata of 1978 is among his most popular works. Alexander Ivashkin, biographer and cellist, and the composer's widow Irina are fiercely impassioned advocates who grasp the bleaker attitudes of the Sonata No 2 with equal insight. Boris Berman's survey of the solo piano music (minus the First Sonata, already recorded) adds five premiere recordings to the Schnittke discography, but the nervier, edgier playing of Irina Schnittke shows a style more precise in outline and impact.
Michael Dervan
Budapest Quartet: "The Original Budapest Quartet" (Biddulph)
It's one of the great ironies of the history of string quartet playing that the Budapest Quartet (1917-1967) achieved its greatest fame when its original line-up, three Hungarians and a Dutchman, had been replaced by players of Russian musical pedigree. The original style was less pressured, finer and gentler of temperament, sparer of interpretative gesture and with an altogether milder vibrato, though the use of portamento - a feature which may disturb modern listeners - was more pronounced. These late 1920s recordings of Beethoven portray the group both before the first infiltration (in the Quartet in F, Op. 59 No 1) and after (Joseph Roisman, who would later become leader, worked in some of the sessions for Op. 130). The disc presents a fascinating window into a style of playing long-disappeared and unimaginable from any group currently before the public.
Michael Dervan
