Chamber
CD and Other Review

Review: Sea Eagle: Works for horn (Richard Watkins)

Sea Eagle is a survey of seven pieces from the British horn repertoire, recorded by venerable hornist Richard Watkins. Released by NMC Recordings, its name comes from the Peter Maxwell Davies work with which this album begins. This is the oldest work on the disc, composed for the hornist in 1982, and is the only featured solo work. Watkins approaches Maxwell Davies’ challenge with an intense conviction; his sharp-sighted tone and innate ability to convey such contoured phrasings make him a true rhetorician of the instrument. This is especially apparent in the Adagio, in which Watkins soars freely between registers as if slipping between a series of up and downdraughts. The turbulence of his trills and flutter-tongued notes in the outer movements are always well measured and add a marked contrast to the surrounding legato sections. Gerald Barry’s trio for voice, horn and piano (Jabberwocky) is entirely raucous in the best sense of the word and is a perfect marriage to Lewis Caroll’s nonsensical text. Here the hornist possesses an electric cuivré that penetrates the ears, matching Mark Padmore’s fierce and guttural German pronunciation and Huw Watkins’ jaunty and well-judged piano. My only qualm with this album is that the remaining… Continue reading Get…

May 6, 2016
Chamber
CD and Other Review

Review: Bruckner: String Quintet, Intermezzo, String Quartet (Fitzwilliam String Quartet)

I’ve always had a high regard for Bruckner’s String Quintet in F Major, the work he wrote in the afterglow of his Fifth Symphony, and every bit as symphonic in scope and ambition. Alongside the Quintet, the Fitzwilliam String Quartet has included the String Quartet in C Minor, which Bruckner composed when studying under Otto Kitzler, and an alternate view of the chamber music path he might have followed presents itself. Young Anton revels in inhabiting the compositional fabric of Mozart, Schubert and Mendelssohn. The tone is light and playful; but ultimately Bruckner’s sonic imagination drove him elsewhere. Adding guest violist James Boyd, the Fitzwilliam Quartet performs with gut strings and period instruments configured to exactly the pitch Bruckner himself would have expected. Vibrato is expertly controlled throughout, and although the medium might cross into unfamiliar terrain, the sound and motivation behind this music is pure Bruckner. Beginning in the midst of an unfolding harmonic argument, the fulsome and fine-grained blend of the Fitzwilliam approach sings proudly. Phrasing breathes luxuriously and is never allowed to tip into the red heat of faux-Romanticism. The extended Adagio – where Lucy Russell’s… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe…

April 19, 2016
Chamber
CD and Other Review

Review: Brahms: Piano Quartet Op. 60, Piano Trio Op. 8 (Trio Wanderer)

A decade has passed since Trio Wanderer gave us a superb set of Brahms’ Piano Trios with the first Piano Quartet as filler. That recording set a benchmark thanks to the ensemble’s ideal balance of elegance and expressive intensity, so this sequel is long overdue. The rarely heard first version of the Op. 8 Trio is a fascinating adjunct to that set and the Wanderers tackle the work with a different mindset, helping to delineate the self-critical composer’s maturing concision. They don’t linger as they did during the lengthy first movement, which Brahms initially over-egged with five themes,  several of which were replaced by the lovely secondary subject. Hanslick thought the fugato passage as inappropriate as a schoolboy Latin quotation in a love poem and the composer took note and cut it. The marvellous Scherzo he left well alone but for a few nips and tucks, however he wisely remodelled the middle of the slow movement; the mood swings of the original are superfluous with such animated flanking movements. The last movement meanders through some tortured passages with a good third of the movement later excised and the clunky conclusion… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month…

April 19, 2016
Chamber
CD and Other Review

Review: Lalo: Piano Trios (Leonore Piano Trio)

Following their acclaimed album of works by Arensky, British outfit Leonore Piano Trio moves to France to take on the three trios by Germanophile Édouard Lalo. These attractive works are full of melody, combining Gallic charm with a weightier feel. As Roger Nichols’ liner notes wittily describe the Scherzo in No 1: “rather like fairies dancing in lederhosen.” The Leonores – Benjamin Nabarro violin, Gemma Rosefield, cello and pianist Tim Horton – play with the assurance of noted soloists in their own right but also with precision and sensitivity as an ensemble. Although Lalo was a violinist, playing in several of Berlioz’s concerts, it is the solo cello that introduces the first and last movements of the First Trio where the footprints of his musical hero Schumann lie deeply embedded. This serves as a reminder that the Frenchman also wrote a characteristically melodic and energetic concerto for cello. Schumann is also an influence in the passionate Second Trio, written a couple of years later in 1852. For the next 12 years Lalo suffered writer’s block until he remarried and his creative spark rekindled. This was the time of Symphonie Espagnole and eventual success. His Third Trio, from 1880, is a…

April 15, 2016