CLASSICAL

Latest CD releases reviewed

BRITTEN: STRING QUARTETS 1-3; DIVERTIMENTI
Belcea String Quartet EMI Classics 557 9682 (2 CDs)
*****

Benjamin Britten's output for string quartet is polarised at the ends of his creative life, the First and Second Quartets from the 1940s, the Third from 1975. The composer's first great international success had been a work for string orchestra, the Variations on a theme of Frank Bridge in 1937, and there were numerous apprentice-style quartets in advance of that, of which only the Three Divertimenti of 1936 are included in the 94 minutes of these two discs. The Belcea Quartet's playing is exceptionally fine, broad in its sweep, wide in its embrace of contrasts, unfailing in its communication of Britten's sensitive handling of string sonority, and utterly persuasive in the modernist slant it brings to the music. The recording, too, is of the highest quality. www.emiclassics.com

Michael Dervan

MESSE NOIRE
Alexei Lubimov (piano) ECM New Series 1679
****

The most familiar works here are Prokofiev's war-time Seventh Piano Sonata, with its notorious moto perpetuo finale, and Scriabin's penultimate, Ninth Sonata, the one subtitled Black Mass - the composer likened his performances of it to "practising sorcery". Altogether less well-known are Stravinsky's Serenade in A, from the height of his neo-classical preoccupations, and Shostakovich's Second Sonata, a work written in 1942 in memory of his piano teacher, Leonid Nikolaev, which moves from apparently prattling simplicities into more profound regions. Alexei Lubimov's performances are as thought-provoking as the programme itself, the i's and t's carefully dotted and crossed, but often in unexpected ways. The highlight for me was the sinuous, texturally rich handling of the Stravinsky, avoiding the four-squareness often imposed on it. www.ecmrecords.com

Michael Dervan

BOYCE: EIGHT SYMPHONIES OP 2
Aradia Ensemble/Kevin Mallon Naxos 8.557278
****

The eight three-movement symphonies of William Boyce's Op 2 take just 60 minutes to play. The scale makes it clear that these are (with one exception) pieces which began life as overtures to choral or operatic works rather than symphonies as we think of them from the pens of Haydn or Mozart. They are among the most attractive and best-known works from the pen of a native composer working in England at a time when that country's musical life was dominated by Handel. Belfast conductor Kevin Mallon's approach with his Canadian Aradia Ensemble is easy going and genial in a low-key way that's attractive enough to suggest smiles of simple pleasure were never that far away in the making of the recording. www.naxos.com

Michael Dervan

CHOPIN: PRELUDES; NOCTURNES
Garrick Ohlsson (piano) EMI Classics Gemini 586 5072 (2 CDs)
***

In 1970 the 22-year-old Garrick Ohlsson became the first US pianist - andhas remained the only one - to take the top prize at the Chopin Competition in Warsaw. These EMI recordings of Chopin's Preludes and Nocturnes were made between 1974 and 1979, and now re-apper in the Naxos price challenging Gemini series. The playing style in the Preludes is ruminative and sonorous, thoughtful rather than spontaneous, deliberate rather than rash - it's in the Nocturnes that Ohlsson occasionally shows greater signs of flightiness. One of his strengths in the Preludes is the way he can produce tone of great weight without hardness. In the Nocturnes, whether it's a vagary of the recording, the instrument, or the player, the tone, which remains exceptionally rich in the bass, can harden under pressure in the treble. www.emiclassics.com

Michael Dervan