Latest CD releases reviewed
CPE BACH: THE SYMPHONIES FOR STRINGS WQ182
English Consort/Trevor Pinnock Archiv Produktion Gramophone Awards Edition 476 7109
****
There is at times in the music of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach an unpredictability of juxtaposition that's almost surreal. Imagine Dali or Breughel toying with 18th-century musical conventions and you won't be too far from the space his music occupies. Trevor Pinnock's award-winning 1979 recordings of the six symphonies for strings from 1773 are leaner in tone and drier in manner than might be expected from a period instruments band today. But they deliver the surprises around the composer's unexpected corner turnings with lively punch and, sometimes, the musical equivalent of that disorienting internal suspension you can get by driving too fast over a humpback bridge. Even the transitions from movement to movement don't work out as you might expect. www.dgclassics.com
Michael Dervan
BYRD: CONSORT SONGS
Emma Kirkby (soprano), Fretwork Harmonia Mundi HMU 907383
****
Emma Kirkby, long an iconic presence on the early music scene, is a frequent visitor to Ireland. She'll be back again at the MBNA Shannon International Festival next month and at the East Cork Early Music Festival in September. On this new CD she sings a selection of Byrd's consort songs, interspersed with instrumental fantasias plus a pavan and galliard, in a manner that's at once chaste and penetrating. It's almost as if her voice were developed just to sing this, and the intricately woven music itself conceived with her specially in mind. Fretwork's viol playing is sinewy. www.harmoniamundi.com
Michael Dervan
SAINT-SAËNS: CHAMBER MUSIC
Nash Ensemble Hyperion CDA 67431/2 (2 CDs)
****
Saint-Saëns, who said he could produce music "like a tree produces apples," died 10 years after Mahler at the age of 86. There's hardly a hint of angst in his music, which delights in classical values and formal elegance. The sophisticated spirit of the man who created Carnival of the Animals is to be found in a number of the works here, though of course the humour is less broad. The best pieces are the Septet, Op 65 (for piano quintet with trumpet and double bass), the Piano Quintet Op 14, and the late Clarinet Sonata. This is light music in the best sense, played here with unaffected straightness - no agenda beyond stylish pleasure. The other works included are the Tarentelle, Op 6, the Bassoon Sonata, the Oboe Sonata, the Piano Quartet, Op 41, and the Caprice, Op 79. www.hyperion-records.co.uk
Michael Dervan
BEETHOVEN: EROICA VARIATIONS; VARIATIONS OP 34; BAGATELLES OP 33; & OTHER PIECES
Artur Schnabel (piano) Naxos 8.110764
*****
Naxos has reissued all of the concerto and piano sonata recordings Artur Schnabel made for the subscription-only Beethoven Society in the 1930s, and has now reached the smaller pieces. In stylistic terms, Schnabel's playing is as distinctive as the flavour of a strong cheese - and it's as easy to tell it's not going to be to everyone's taste. Anyone who finds the going too disruptive in the sonatas may find greater pleasures in the works here, which are all either shorter or more clearly sectionalised. Schnabel's mixture of intellectuality and emotional urgency ("safety last" was a favourite motto) brings a spur-of-the-moment persuasiveness to the improvisatory challenges of the rarely-heard Fantasia, Op 77, and he plays Für Elise with minimal pedal and no hint of cliche. The two sets of variations are as strongly characterised as you would expect. Good transfers. www.naxos.com
Michael Dervan
