Reger: Cello Suites.
Guido Schiefen (Arte Nova)
Egon Wellesz put Max Reger in the class of composers who had great facility in expression, but lacked "the supreme instinct for form and faculty of self-criticism". Reger was both extremely prolific (his tally of Opus numbers was almost at 150 when he died in 1916 aged 43) and prolix of invention. But not everything he wrote is dense and long. The music for solo cello of 1915 is, for Reger, unusually spare. The three suites were written during a period of physical recuperation, and the spirit of Bach, the greatest composer of solo cello music, is manifest throughout. Guido Schiefen plays with great sweep, an unforced, natural opulence of tone, and what you might call a big-paw ease in the stretches of the double-stopping - his fingers seem naturally to fall in the right place. A real snip at under a fiver.
Michael Dervan
Medtner: Violin Sonata No 2; Nocturnes Op 16; Canzonas and Dances Op 43.
Moscow-born Nikolai Medtner (1880-1951) was one of those composers who kept a comfortable distance from the musical revolutions that went on around him. Political and social revolutions were a different matter, and Medtner ended his days in England, an isolated and lonely figure, comforted perhaps by the fact that for Rachmaninov, he was "the greatest composer of our time". His material is distinctive - Medtner is always recognisably himself - but not always distinguished. The interest lies in the formal and textural ingenuity of the treatment. Mateja Marinkovic is a violinist with an ascetic approach which can make Medtner sound closeted and remote. Pianist Linn Hendry finds more wide-ranging responses to this quietly fascinating music.
Michael Dervan
