CLASSICAL

Latest CD releases reviewed

Matthias Goerne (baritone), Alfred Brendel (piano) Decca 467 092-2
****

It is seven years since Seán Doran brought Matthias Goerne and Alfred Brendel to the Belfast Festival for a memorable all-Schubert programme of Winterreise and the late Sonata in B flat. The duo's new CD was recorded much more recently, during two performances at London's Wigmore Hall last October. Goerne has one of the most malleable voices before the public today, one which he often presents on the smallest scale, as if he were musing quietly on his melancholy, expressing his anguish privately into your ear. And, of course, his sparing use of force makes that force, when it comes, all the more striking. The word and mood-painting is also all the more vivid for the expressive latitude of the two performers' co-operation. www.deccaclassics.com - Michael Dervan

Curt Thompson (violin), Rodney Waters (piano) Naxos American Classics 8.559119
***

This is the second bargain-basement recording of Ives's violin sonatas - four three-movement pieces which combine knotty thinking, hymn tunes and popular material with typical Ivesian relish. These works often show a sort of gauntness, a spareness of colour, which is probably a factor that limits their appeal. On the other hand, all of Ives is there, the jumbling of materials, the childhood evocations, the switches from severity into sentimentality. These new performances shape the works with an awareness which seems more finely attuned to their modernist inclinations than their romantic roots. www.naxos.com - Michael Dervan

Carl Schuricht Decca Original Masters 475 6074 (5 CDs)
****

The German conductor Carl Schuricht (1880-1967) had turned 70 by the time the first of the recordings included here (a 1949 Beethoven Fifth with the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra) actually appeared on disc. In his youth Schuricht had championed new music by Schoenberg, Stravinsky and Delius. In old age he was more closely associated with Brahms, Bruckner and the earlier Viennese classics. The highlights of this collection come in Brahms (a rugged Second Piano Concerto with Wilhelm Backhaus, a serene Violin Concerto with Christian Ferras, and an exciting Second Symphony, all with the Vienna Philharmonic) and Schumann (ruggedly romantic accounts of the Second Symphony and the Overture, Scherzo and Finale from Paris, and a Viennese Rhenish Symphony). Also here are Beethoven's First and Second Symphonies, four Mendelssohn overtures, Schubert's Unfinished, Tchaikovsky's Capriccio italien and the Variations from his Third Suite. The transfers are not among Decca's best. www.deccaclassics.com - Michael Dervan

Griller Quartet Decca Original Masters 475 7071 (2 CDs)
*****

The Griller Quartet were closely associated with Ernest Bloch's five quartets, premièring a number of them and recording the first four (written in 1916, 1945, 1952, 1953) under the supervision of the composer in the early 1950s. The Swiss-born Bloch, who became a US citizen in 1924, is best known for those of his works which have a Jewish flavour and associations. The quartets are more abstract, and half a century ago the Grillers' moody performances of these finely wrought works, often distinguished by a characterful melancholy, provoked comparisons with Bartók (because of a shared angularity) and Beethoven (because of an inward, restrained lyricism). Although those comparisons now seem exaggerated, the persuasiveness of the Grillers' playing remains of a very high order. www.deccaclassics.com - Michael Dervan