Mozart: Piano Concertos K466, K491. Alfred Brendel, Scottish CO/Charles Mackerras (Philips)
Mozart's two minor-key piano concertos - K466 in D minor and K491 in C minor - would seem to be natural territory for a player as consistently probing as Alfred Brendel. True to form, here he's as thought-provoking as ever, lighter than you might expect in much of the passagework, though still apt to confound expectations by a variety of means - accentuation which tilts phrases in new directions, the occasional reluctance to tuck in the short notes in dotted rhythms (or the skittish opposite). Mackerras's accompaniments are lean and sinewy, with often raspy horns and an occasional surfeit of Angst. The fashionably period-aware orchestra makes a slightly strange bedfellow for the utterly modern centre of attention, Brendel himself.
- Michael Dervan
Alexander Tcherepnin: Complete Music for Cello and Piano. Alexander Ivashkin, Geoffrey Tozer (Chandos)
Alexander Tcherepnin (1899-1977) represents the middle generation of a minor Russian musical dynasty: his father and two of his sons were also composers. A precocious musical talent, he was strongly influenced by a period spent in Georgia (1918-21) before his family fled to Paris. He formulated an exotically flavoured nine-note scale (used in some of his music for cello), and a personal development of counterpoint which he called "interpoint". Folk influence is at its most explicit in the latest works in this collection, the Songs and Dances written for Piatigorsky in 1953. The strongest impression is made by three compact sonatas written between 1919 and 1926, sharp, pungent creations which will surely win new friends in these fine premiere recordings.
- Michael Dervan
Rheinberger: Organ Works Vol 1 (MDG Gold). Rheinberger: Organ Works Vol 1 (Naxos)
Opinion tends to divide sharply about the organ music of Joseph Rheinberger (1839-1901), the most important German organ composer between Mendelssohn and Reger. What's not in dispute is the very particular skill with which he wrote for the organ, a skill well evidenced in two new, very different CDs, each apparently heralding a complete survey. MDG's Rudolf Innig, on the resplendent 1840 Walcker organ of the Church of St Mary in Schramberg, shows us the precocious youth, beginning at the age of 12, and leading up to the First Sonata of 1869. Innig's playing is detailed, articulate, airy. Wolfgang Rubsam, who offers the first four sonatas on the plainer sounding, Rieger-restored organ of Fulda Cathedral, paints in broader, weightier, less imaginative strokes.
- Michael Dervan
Rossini: Mose (Orfeo D'Or)
This is one of those operas which started life as something else - namely, an oratorio-like beast written to circumvent the Lenten prohibition on opera in 19th-century Naples. After various tinkerings with the score, the indefatigable Rossini turned it into a French grand opera; it was subsequently translated back into Italian, but despite enjoying massive Euro-success in the 1830s, is now rarely heard. This 1988 performance from the Bavarian State Opera has all the amiable bumpiness of a live recording, but conductor Wolfgang Sawallisch and his distinguished cast - Ruggero Raimondi as Moses, Carol Vaness and Francisco Araiza as the young lovers - capture the grandeur and sweep of what is still, at heart, a choral work.
- Arminta Wallace