Latest CD releases reviewed
JOHN ADAMS: ROAD MOVIES
Leila Josefowitz (violin), John Novacek (piano), Nicolas Hodges, Rolf Hind (pianos) Nonesuch 7559 79699-2
****
The best-known pieces here are the two early works for solo piano, Phrygian Gates - the work Adams now reckons to be his mature Op 1 - and China Gates, both written in 1977. The remaining pieces come from the opposite end of the composer's career. Road Movies for violin and piano is from 1995, Hallelujah Junction for two pianos from 1996, and American Berserk for solo piano from 2001. Placed beside the formal, minimalist purity of the earlier music, the latest pieces, shared between Hodges and Hind, seem kaleidoscopic in a fractured, sometimes Nancarrowish way. By contrast, the central movement of Road Movies lolls with lazy indulgence, and fires up into a hectic moto perpetuo finale. Fine performances all round. www.nonesuch.com
Michael Dervan
SAINT-GEORGES: VIOLIN CONCERTOS, VOL 2
Qian Zhou (violin), Toronto Camerata/Kevin Mallon Naxos 8.557322
***
Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1745-99), son of a Guadeloupe planter and his African slave, was renowned as the finest swordsman in Europe as well as one of the leading violinists in late 18th-century France - it was for Saint-Georges's Concert de la Logue Olympique that Haydn wrote his six Paris Symphonies. His life seems to have been as colourful as his violin music is challenging to the soloist and agreeable to the listener. You might for a moment think passages from the three concertos (as performed here by Qian Zhou) were from the pen of Mozart. The musical thought is a lot more diffuse than that of the teenage Mozart of the violin concertos. And it's also a lot more concerned with virtuosity for its own sake. www.naxos.com
Michael Dervan
SAINT-SAËNS: STRING QUARTETS; VIOLIN PIECES
Quatuor Viotti, Olivier Charlier (violin), Jean Hubeau (piano) Apex 2564 61426-2 (2 CDs)
***
Saint-Saëns once remarked of himself that he produced music as naturally as an apple tree produces apples. Yet he shied away from completing a string quartet until 1899, when he was 64, intimidated, it seems, by the great shadow of Beethoven. The quartets, like the two earlier sonatas for violin and piano, are not just finely crafted, but rich in the felicities of detail that Saint-Saëns seems to have contrived with such ease. Why, then, aren't all four works rather better known? Well, there's an air of the impersonal about the music, even in its moments of greatest ardency, and listeners may share something of the reserve that the composer seems to have felt when writing them. Violinist Olivier Charlier's stylish contributions extend to four shorter works but are compromised by a recording that presents Jean Hubeau as a heavy-fingered pianist. The Viotti Quartet's finely-gauged playing is more sympathetically recorded.
Michael Dervan
BEETHOVEN: HAMMERKLAVIER SONATA (ORCH WEINGARTNER); PROMETHEUS OVERTURE; SYMPHONY NO 5
Royal PO, London PO/Felix Weingartner Naxos Historical 8.110913
***
Naxos rounds off its reissue of Felix Weingartner's Beethoven recordings with the conductor's orchestration of the Hammerklavier Sonata and the last of his four recordings of the Fifth Symphony, made with the London Philharmonic in 1933. Weingartner, one of the greatest conductors of the first half of the 20th century, also scored successes as a composer, with an output that includes nine operas and seven symphonies. But orchestrating the Hammerklavier was a quixotic undertaking. The raw difficulty of the piano writing is so tightly linked to the music's expressive effect that a great deal is actually lost through making it easier to play. The performances of the symphony and overture demonstrate the clear-headed stance through which Weingartner argued against romantic interpretative excess. www.naxos.com
Michael Dervan
