Latest CD releases reviewed
IN THE SHADE OF FORESTS -THE BOHEMIAN WORLD OF DEBUSSY, ENESCU, RAVEL
Philippe Graffin (violin), Claire Désert (piano) Avie AV 2059 ****
The title of this disc comes from a letter by Debussy describing a gipsy fiddler he heard in Budapest, and Enescu's Impressions d'enfance evokes a morning encounter with such a fiddler as the start of a musically pictorial day in the life of a child. Improvisatory evocation is what informs Graffin and Désert's musical approach on this disc, which includes Debussy's Violin Sonata and a handful of Debussy arrangements, the posthumously-published sonata of Ravel's youth, and his mature Tzigane. The gipsy atmosphere of Tzigane is enhanced by the use of a luthéal, a piano modified by a contraption which creates four different stops and allows the instrument sound like the cimbalom of Hungarian music. The recording has been made using the very instrument on which the version with luthéal was premièred in 1924. www.avierecords.com Michael Dervan
BRIDGE: STRING QUARTETS 2 & 4; PHANTASY QUARTET
Maggini Quartet, Martin Roscoe (piano) Naxos 8.557283 ****
Frank Bridge's Fourth String Quartet of 1937 is not the sort of music most people associate with the England of the 1930s. It's too consistently harsh in its dissonances, the tinges of bitterness in its lyricism too pronounced. It's a work of real fibre and substance that deserves the wider recognition the Maggini Quartet's sensitive new recording will surely win for it. The couplings were composed earlier (the Phantasy for piano quartet in 1910, the Second String Quartet in 1915), and lack the outward-looking European perspective which makes the later quartet so distinctive for its place and time. www.naxos.com Michael Dervan
BACH: ORGAN WORKS
Karl Richter Deutsche Grammophon Originals 477 5337 (3 CDs) ***
If you like your organ recordings to capture the sonic perspective as it might be experienced in the nave of a church, give this set a wide berth. Karl Richter's 1960s Bach performances on the Marcussen organ of the Jaegerborg Church near Copenhagen are presented with a vivid closeness that brings an organ into your living room rather than creates any real sense of the resonances that halo the sound of an organ in a church. The playing, however, can well bear such scrutiny, though listeners of a nervous disposition may well find the experience very draining. The selection of 20 pieces from the great corpus of Bach's organ music has been well made - many of the great favourites are there - and three of the pieces were recorded at a more conventional distance on the 18th-century Silbermann organ in Freiberg Cathedral. www.dgclassics.com Michael Dervan
SCHUMANN: PIANO SONATAS 1 & 2; PAPILLONS; ROMANCES OP 28
Catherine Collard Apex 2564 61797-2 ****
The French pianist Catherine Collard, who died in 1993 at the age of 46, is much more celebrated at home than abroad. Some of her Schumann recordings from 1978 now make a welcome appearance on Warner Classics cheapest, Apex label. The big achievement here is the F sharp minor Sonata, Op 11, where the ruminative turnings of the music's rich inner fantasy are given full rein, often in finely spun colours, with magical momentary shifts which are like pulling the carpet from under your feet, or whisking a wall away to reveal a vista that's utterly unexpected. The later Sonata in G minor and the shorter pieces, though very well done, are not quite on the same elevated level. www.warnerclassics.com Michael Dervan
