CLASSICAL

Latest releases reviewed

SCHUMANN: CHAMBER MUSIC
Various performers
Warner Classics 2564 61400-2 (6 CDs) ***

Between 1977 and 1979, without a major anniversary in sight, Erato made recordings in Paris of Schumann's chamber music using mostly French musicians. These have now been reissued as an attractive six-CD set at sub-Naxos prices. The bulk of the work was done by pianist Jean Hubeau and the members of the Via Nova String Quartet with viola-player Gerard Caussé and cellist Frédéric Lodéon. The piano trios, string quartets, Piano Quartet and Piano Quintet come off with a thrusting ardency that's unfussy and to the point. Although the violin sonatas and other mixed duos and trios are more variable, the set as a whole is an attractive proposition at the price.

KLEZMER CONCERTOS AND ENCORES
David Krakauer (clarinet), Barcelona Symphony/National Orchestra of Catalonia, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin/Gerald Schwarz, Scott Goff (flute), Alberto Mizrahi (tenor), Seattle SO/Gerald Schwarz
Naxos 8.559403 ****

Widespread interest in the music typically heard at Jewish weddings is a relatively recent phenomenon. Yet, although the New York clarinettist David Krakauer has been a leading light in promoting klezmer, only one of the works on his new collection, part of the Milken Archive's collaboration with Naxos to celebrate American Jewish music, was actually written for him, Osvaldo Golijov's electro-fusion quartet, Rocketekya, of 1998. The earliest, encore-style pieces, by Jacob Weinberg (1879-1956) are straight out of the 19th-century tradition of nationalist arrangements, and the Hassidic Dances by Abraham Ellstein (1907-63) are in the same general style, colourfully updated. K'li Zemer by Robert Starer (1924-2001) is altogether more probing, and all of these works give Krakauer a chance to gyrate and inflect. The Klezmer Rondos written by Paul Schoenfield in 1989 offer an unusual opportunity to hear a klezmer-influenced work involving solo flute and tenor. www.naxos.com

SCHOENBERG: GURRELIEDER
Stephen O'Mara (tenor), Melanie Diener (soprano), Jennifer Lane (mezzo soprano), David Wilson-Johnson (bass), Martyn Hill (tenor), Ernst Haefliger (speaker), Simon Joly Chorale, Philharmonia/Robert Craft
Naxos 8.557518-19 (2 CDs) ****

Craft was one of the earliest popularisers of Schoenberg's music on disc, working on a complete LP edition for US Columbia in the 1960s. His more recent recordings for Koch International are now reappearing on Naxos, beginning with the vast canvas of Gurrelieder, recorded just three years ago. Craft tends to be regarded as an intellectual conductor, but here he captures the late romantic sensuousness of a work whose style Schoenberg would quickly abandon, although he retained great affection for it - its première brought him one of his greatest public successes. Craft's account of the medieval Danish legend of love transmuted in the poetry of Jens Peter Jacobsen is spacious and refulgent, Schoenberg's lavish choral and orchestral textures kept as well in focus as the solo voices. www.naxos.com

SCHUBERT: COMPLETE SYMPHONIES; GRAND DUO; ROSAMUNDE OVERTURE
Chamber Orchestra of Europe/Claudio Abbado
Deutsche Grammophon 476 2626 (5 CDs) ****

Claudio Abbado's recordings of Schubert's symphonies won a Gramophone magazine orchestral award in 1989, and have now been reissued in the Gramophone Awards Collection. The performances were textually pioneering, as the composer's autograph manuscripts were consulted for the symphonies which hadn't yet been published in Bärenreiter's Neue Schubert-Ausgabe. This led to the excision of editorial material added by Brahms in the 19th century. However, the real joy of the set is the playing itself, remarkable for its joie de vivre and its vivid sense of musicians collectively communicating their own immediate pleasure in the act of making music. What brings the set to five CDs is the inclusion of Joseph Joachim's orchestration of the Grand Duo for piano duet, well-played but hardly essential. www.dgclassics.com