CLASSICAL

Latest releases reviewed

BEETHOVEN: PIANO SONATAS OP 31
Paul Lewis
Harmonia Mundi HMC 901902
****

Three recorded surveys of Beethoven's complete piano sonatas have recently gotten underway. Kun-Woo Paik's Decca cycle opened with a three-disc set covering the sonatas from Op 31 to Op 81a in boldly drawn, vigorous but sometimes unstable accounts. András Schiff started his ECM cycle, recorded in concert in Zurich, with the first four sonatas extravagantly spread over two discs; the deliberation behind his always thoughtful playing sometimes results in an intrusively distracting style of detailing. Paul Lewis's single disc offers the three highly contrasted, post-Moonlight sonatas of Op 31. The young British pianist commands the ebb and flow of a persuasively natural Beethovenian. Strange as it may seem, even when he's less faithful to the letter of the score than the others he usually manages to sound more true to the spirit of the music. www.uk.hmboutique.com

TCHAIKOVSKY: SYMPHONIES 4-6
Vienna Philharmonic/Valery Gergiev
Philips 475 6315 (3 CDs)
****

Valery Gergiev's live Vienna Philharmonic recordings of Tchaikovsky's Fourth, Fifth and Sixth symphonies for Philips always seemed mean offerings at full price, with each work given a disc to itself. Now, in a clear pre-Christmas move, they've been re-packaged at mid price as a 133-minute, three-disc set. The Vienna Philharmonic is its distinguished, tonally distinctive self and Gergiev in heart-on-sleeve mode, tilting balances lushly and darkly towards the lower instruments of the orchestra. At its new price this is definitely a very attractive proposition. www.deccaclassics.com

FOUR X FOUR
Ioana Petcu-Colan (violin), John Ryan (horn), Aisling Casey (oboe), Clíona Doris (harp), RTÉCO/Robert Houlihan
RTÉ Lyric fm CD 105
***

The message carried by the title of this new Lyric fm CD is straightforward: four different Irish soloists in four different concertos. It's Ioana Petcu-Colan in the opening work, Bruch's G minor Violin Concerto, who shows the strongest temperament, and the Bruch is also the piece that conductor Robert Houlihan and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra sound most at home in. John Ryan takes a steady-as-she-goes approach to Mozart's Horn Concerto in E flat, K417, letting his hair down only in the hijinks of the famous closing Rondo. Aisling Casey shows a kind of heavyweight agility in Richard Strauss's late Oboe Concerto, though the strange recorded perspective of the orchestra creates claustrophobic effects - the sometimes giant-seeming double basses are more problematic here than elsewhere. The nimble Clíona Doris is rather better served in Handel's Harp Concerto. www.buy4now.ie/rte

ELGAR: ENIGMA VARIATIONS; COCKAIGNE OVERTURE; POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE MARCHES 1-5
Royal Albert Hall Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, BBCSO/Edward Elgar Naxos Historical 8.111022
*****

The major Elgar recordings collected here are extremely well-known. The composer, a first-rate interpreter of his own music (he was at one time principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra) recorded his Enigma Variations with the Royal Albert Hall Orchestra in 1926, the Cockaigne Overture with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1933, and the Pomp and Circumstance Marches variously with the LSO and the RAH Orchestra between 1926 and 1930. The sound is excellent for its period, though the transfers of EMI's expensive Elgar Edition still have the edge on Naxos for sharpness of articulation. However, Naxos includes a bonus track which has never been issued before and which makes this disc indispensable: The last five minutes of Cockaigne were recorded simultaneously on two 78rpm turntables fed from different microphones, making it possible to reconstruct this section of the performance as a kind of "accidental stereo". The resulting effect is quite amazing.

www.naxos.com