CLASSICAL

Latest CD releases reviewed

CHOPIN: SCHERZOS 1-4; POLONAISE NO 6; BALLADE NO 3; BERCEUSE
Nelson Freire (piano) Apex 2564 61261-2 ****
Brazilian pianist Nelson Freire, a longtime duo partner of Martha Argerich who will be 60 later this year, recorded this Chopin recital for Teldec when he was around 30. The pianism is dazzling. Freire's control of tone doesn't falter under the pressure of precipitous tempos, and the sense of a play as you feel or dare approach is mitigated by the fluidity and natural grace of his rubato. More probing and profound Chopin you will certainly find, but there's an easy, natural-sounding litheness here that has its own appeal. The disc also includes a number of shorter pieces, the Berceuse, the Prelude in C sharp minor, Op 45, and the three Écossaises. - Michael Dervan

LISZT, KREISLER/RACHMANINOV, CHOPIN, BRAHMS, BACH/FEINBERG
Polina Leschenko (piano). EMI Classics 562 6662 ***
Polina Leschenko, born in St Petersburg in 1981, is the latest young pianist to be given a platform through the Martha Argerich Presents series on EMI. Her programme is a mostly showy one - Liszt's Rhapsodie espagnole and Paganini Étude No. 6, the second book of Brahms's Paganini Variations, Chopin's Rondeau, Op 16, and Andante spianato and Grande Polonaise, plus arrangements by Rachmaninov (of Kreisler's Liebesleid) and Feinberg (a Bach Largo). She plays with such a fanciful flightiness that it's easy to see why she caught the attention of the mercurial Argerich. Her playing reveals racy fingers, a fearless temperament (both in music and technique), and an evident delight in the sonorities of the piano, soft as well as loud. It would be interesting to know how her exciting, easy, fluid pianism might fare in repertoire that makes deeper musical demands. www.emiclassics.com - Michael Dervan

IVES: THREE PLACES IN NEW ENGLAND; NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAYS; THEY ARE THERE!
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra/David Zinman Decca Rosette Collection 476 1537
****

David Zinman's Ives collection was spectacularly recorded in Baltimore 10 years ago, and issued to acclaim on the Argo label in 1996 - Zinman responds as well to the extrovert as to the contemplative in Ives. The Three Places in New England, evocative and stirring, dreamy and clangorous, are from the Ivesian mainstream. Altogether less well known are the four tone-poems of the New England Holidays Symphony. There's one per season (Washington's Birthday, Decoration Day, The Fourth of July, and Thanksgiving and Forefathers' Day), each a typically Ivesian photo-album trawl through musical associations. The brief opening piece, They Are There! (A War Song March), for unison chorus and orchestra finds Ives in popular tune mode, with those scatter-gun additions he made so much his own. www.deccaclassics.com - Michael Dervan

MOERAN: VIOLIN SONATA; LONELY WATERS; WHYTHORNE'S SHADOW; SYMPHONY IN G MINOR
Geraldine O'Grady, Charles Lynch, English Sinfonia/Neville Dilkes EMI Classics 5851542 ***
The major international record companies have rarely paid attention to classical music in Ireland. But EMI made an LP with Geraldine O'Grady, a former leader of the RTÉSO, and Charles Lynch, the most important Irish pianist of the mid-20th century, in 1974. The recording from those sessions of the Violin Sonata by EJ Moeran here appears on CD for the first time. Lynch had a close association with Moeran, and gave the première of the Cello Sonata with Peers Coetmore, the composer's wife, in 1947. He plays the very English-sounding Violin Sonata of 1923 with understated authority; O'Grady's musically sensitive playing is not, however, free of intonational worries. The disc also includes Moeran's best-known work, the G minor Symphony completed in 1937, in a sturdy 1973 performance under Neville Dilkes. www.emiclassics.com - Michael Dervan

CD reviews compiled by Tony Clayton-Lea