Classical

Strauss: Don Quixote; Romance. NSO/Gerhard Markson (Naxos)

This recording of Strauss's Don Quixote feels slow and careful. In line with their earlier Strauss for Naxos, Gerhard Markson and the National Symphony Orchestra are at the longer end of the spectrum, heading for some five minutes over the composer's own 1930s performances. Ultimately, however, it's not the speed which counts the most. The limitations are rather those of respectability and dullness. Even that early trigger of Straussian scandal, the notorious representation of sheep in the haze, sounds tame here. In spite of instrumentally alert solo playing from cellist Alexander Rudin and particularly Lars Anders Tomter on viola, this is a version for people who want their Strauss with diminished pictorialism and character. The early Romance for cello is a slight makeweight.

Michael Dervan

Dutilleux: Complete orchestral works. BBCPO/Yan Pascal Tortelier (Chandos, 4 CDs for the price of 3)

Henri Dutilleux is one of the master orchestral craftsmen of the age and a composer, now 84, regarded by some in his native France more highly than Messiaen. Mystery, magic, memory, metamorphosis and time are among the self-confessed concerns of his fastidiously limited output. Fellow countryman Yan Pascal Tortelier has just the right colouristic sensitivity to penetrate Dutilleux's imagination. His 1990s BBC Philharmonic survey of the composer's major orchestral works (sans ballets, incidental music and some early pieces) is now collected in a special-priced set with the addition of the war-related The Shadows of Time, the recording made at the work's British premiere in July 1998. This shows the composer with undiminished powers, and the recordings come with his own personal endorsement.

Michael Dervan

Beethoven: String Quartets Op 18. Vlach Quartet (Supraphon Archiv, 3 mid-price CDs)

There are instrumentalists who occasionally display characteristics that seem to impose themselves between the listener and the music, rather like a physical attribute which draws attention to itself at the expense of the rest of an individual's appearance. The fast, nervy-seeming vibrato of the Vlach Quartet's leader, Josef Vlach, seemed set to affect me that way in these historic recordings, made between 1967 and 1970. But, happily, fast vibrato or no, the style is actually soft-spoken and relaxed, the musical approach unintrusively direct, and the chamber-music qualities of balance, blend and ensemble are those one would expect from a group in the higher strata of Czech tradition. Beethoven, pure and simple: a real pleasure. And that vibrato? I stopped noticing it in no time at all.

Michael Dervan