Classical

The latest CD releases reviewed

BEETHOVEN: PIANO TRIOS IN C MINOR OP 1 NO 3; IN D OP 70 NO 1 (GHOST); HUMMEL: TRIO IN G OP 65
Daniel Sepec (violin), Jean-Guihen Queyras (cello), Andreas Staier (fortepiano) Harmonia Mundi HMC 901955 ****

It's the latest of the three trios on this CD which sounds the earliest. The fourth of Hummel's mature piano trios, the Trio in G, Op 65, was published some two decades after the three trios of Beethoven's Op 1 of 1795, but the style harks back to Mozartean manners that Beethoven was already leaving behind in the 1790s. It's at its best in its scherzo- like finale, but even there it can hardly compare with the fiery imagination of Beethoven in the early trio that Haydn recommended him not to publish, and in the famous Ghost Trio, where the period instruments of Sepec, Queyras and Staier are at their revealing best. www.uk.hmboutique.com   MICHAEL DERVAN

SHOSTAKOVICH: SYMPHONY NO 14; MAHLER: ADAGIO FROM SYMPHONY NO 10
Yulia Korpacheva (soprano), Fedor Kuznetsov (bass), Kremerata Baltica/Gidon Kremer ECM New Series 476 6177 ***

The devil is in the detail, and the fine print here is that the Adagio of Mahler's Tenth Symphony is played in an arrangement for string orchestra. This involves a shift from luxuriant fullness to spare-textured thinness, and the effect of the music changes radically in the process. Some of the wiriness is, of course, a matter of the performers' musical approach. Kremer seems to look back on Shostakovich's death- obsessed Fourteenth Symphony through a 21st-century lens, rather than through earlier Shostakovich or through the influence of Shostakovich's fellow composer, Benjamin Britten, to whom it is dedicated. The outcome is a reading of disturbing brittleness. www.ecmrecords.com   MICHAEL DERVAN

MELCER: PIANO CONCERTOS
Jonathan Plowright (piano), BBC Scottish SO/Christoph König Hyperion CDA 67630 ****

The Polish composer Henryk Melcer (1869-1928) won competition prizes for the piano concertos he completed in 1894 (at the Anton Rubinstein of 1895) and 1898 (the Paderewski of the same year). He liked the kind of romanticism that gives the impression of music which bursts at the seams. Soloist Jonathan Plowright and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Christoph König are happy to oblige, and respond to Melcer's urgings with great heart. Bearing in mind that both pieces are by a composer still in his 20s, there's no shortage of promise in the writing. The cumulative effect may be rather less than the sum of the parts, but there's actually an unexpected number of original touches along the way. www.hyperion-records.co.uk MICHAEL DERVAN

HERZ: PIANO MUSIC
Philip Martin (piano) Hyperion CDA 67606 ***

Hyperion's championship of forgotten and neglected piano music extends beyond the 44 volumes of romantic piano concertos to exhumations of rarities for solo piano. Philip Martin follows his eight volumes of Louis Moreau Gottschalk with a disc of Henri Herz (1803-1888), who was one of the most successful but also one of the most derided pianist/ composers of all time. The 10 pieces here show a musical mind of great facility (especially in the creation of technical hurdles for the player) but limited imagination, which suffers from the disability of high distractibility. Martin's approach is in good taste, perhaps too much so at times, as he seems to shirk elements of essential swagger and brinkmanship in favour of well- turned gracefulness. www.hyperion-records.co.uk MICHAEL DERVAN