Classical/Opera

Schubert: Octet; Spohr: Octet Op 32. Vienna Octet (Decca Legends, mid-price)

Willi Boskovsky (1909-91) had a long association with the music of the Strauss family and the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Day concerts, which he directed from the violin. In mid-life he pursued broader interests. In 1947 he founded the Vienna Octet, an ensemble he directed for the next 12 years. His own light and flexible Viennese style set the tone for the group, whose music-making on disc has not so much the feeling of a public performance, as of congenial and often spontaneous-sounding sessions between easy-going friends. The performances here were recorded in airy stereo in the late 1950s, and even then they probably represented a style of playing that was rapidly disappearing. The Schubert is a masterpiece, the Spohr extremely fine, and well worth getting to know.

Michael Dervan

Tansman: Works for Cello and Piano (Etcetera)

Alexandre Tansman (1897-1986) was a Polish composer who spent most of his life in Paris, save for a Nazi-enforced interlude in the US. In the years between the two world wars his music was played and conducted by the greatest musicians of the day, Casals, Piatigorsky, Stokowski, Koussevitzky, Mengelberg and Monteux among them. A good friend of Stravinsky (on whom he wrote a book), he absorbed many of the influences that were in the air - bi-tonality, jazz, neo-classicism - without forgetting his Polish roots. The five works on this new CD from the Russian duo of Alexander Zagorinsky (cello) and Alexei Shmitov (piano) range from the Sonata of 1930 to an idiosyncratic Partita of 1955. They are all written with rhythmic vivacity, easy but by no means unadventurous melody, and are frequently tinged with jazz-flavoured harmonies.

Michael Dervan

The Organ Music of Petr Eben I (Hyperion)

One of the most successful composers writing today for the "king of instruments" is the Czech, Petr Eben, who turned 70 last year. The nature of his musical output was doubly shaped by war - a shortage of able-bodied organists found him taking up duty at the age of 10, and later imprisonment by the Nazis turned him "to humanistic and philosophical interests and to spiritual music". It's on his choral and organ music that Eben's international reputation now rests. Laudes (1964) is intended to counter the negativity of the age. The cycle Job (1987) was inspired by what he calls "the wager between Satan and God on the fate of a human being". And Hommage a Buxtehude (also 1987) is self-explanatory. Halgeir Schiager's performances on the Gronlunds organ of Hedvig Eleonora Kyrkan in Stockholm do this never less than vividly-conceived music proud.

Michael Dervan

La Traviata a Paris: the soundtrack (Teldec)

The soundtrack???????? Verdi must be whirling in his grave. Remember the famous real-time Tosca, Rome, 1992? Here is round two, filmed in such sumptuous settings as the Hameau de la Reine at Versailles and starring Jose Cura as Alfredo and Eteri Gvazava as Violetta, both gorgeous enough to eat and attired in a series of indescribably glamorous outfits. This Traviata is certainly a looker - and if the sleeve notes are to be believed, opera in the 21st century will be as visual an art as it is musical. The singing counts for something too, of course, and while there are some distinctly dodgy dislocations between soloists and Zubin Mehta's Italian orchestra, the central pair produce moments of great drama and beauty. On second thoughts, maybe Verdi would be chuffed.

Arminta Wallace