Steffen Schleiermacher (piano): Enfants Terribles (hat/ now/ART)
It's rather like tempting fate to assemble a group of composers as enfants terribles, and then to include yourself in their number. But that's exactly what Steffen Schleiermacher has done. His own klavier & klaviere sounds like an exercise in mock-minimalism until recorded pianos emerge to deluge and transform the landscape. Two of the pieces sound like rigorous process works, Nicolaus Richter de Vroe's choppy Gabbro, and Sven Ake Johansson's extended Vom Gleichwertigen und Ungleichwertigen, not unlike late Morton Feldman without the content. John Zorn's Carny is too cleverly referential by half. But Tom Johnson makes his point with commendable brevity in a relentlessly mangled short tango.
- Michael Dervan
Mozart: Three Piano Trios. Vienna Piano Trio (Nimbus)
Mozart's piano writing has nothing to compare with the torrential demands made by the romantic composers of the last century. But 19th-century students viewed the prospect of playing a Mozart concerto with more than a modicum of real fear; their romantic razzmatazz just couldn't be applied satisfactorily. You would expect 20th-century cellists to sense a similar challenge in Mozart's piano trios, where the cello-writing, liberated from the left-hand of the piano part, doesn't yet have the expressive independence of the 19th century. But, no. And it's the touches of over-cooked cello-playing that pose the most serious stylistic problems in the Vienna Trio's generally perky and pointed, if slightly brittle playing of the three piano trios here: K502, K542 (the greatest Mozart wrote) and K548.
- Michael Dervan
Summer Tale; Fantastic Scherzo. Czech PO / Charles Mackerras (Decca)
Josef Suk (1874-1935) was Dvorak's favourite pupil and later married the great composer's daughter. It was the deaths of his father-in-law and wife within 14 months of each other that spurred Suk to his greatest creation, the Asrael Symphony, named after the Angel of Death of Muslim mythology. His next orchestral work, A Summer Tale, followed him through the process of accommodation to his fate - the first movement, for instance, is titled "Voices of life and consolation". Suk is not at all as persuasive in healing mode as he was in the pain that has since provoked not unwarranted comparisons with Mahler. On this disc, it's the separate, 15-minute Fantastic Scherzo which makes the more cogent and lasting impression.
- Michael Dervan
Alison Stephens and Craig Ogden: Music from the Novels of Louis De Bernieres (Chandos)
Let's face it, mandolin players don't often get a chance to show off - but the phenomenal sucess of the novel Captain Corelli's Mandolin has, perhaps inevitably, inspired this collection of loosely related pieces performed by mandolinist Alison Stephens and guitarist Craig Ogden. After a written introduction by the great man himself (De Bernieres not Corelli), the CD opens with Vivaldi's mandolin concerto and moves through pieces by Hummel, Villa-Lobos and a host of lesser-known names, adding up to a good deal of good-natured, well-bred plonking which, frankly, almost drove this listener demented. You may be a fan of Captain Corelli, but unless you're also an ardent admirer of the mandolin sound, approach with caution.
- Arminta Wallace
