CLASSICAL

Latest CD releases reviewed.

HUME: MUSICALL HUMORS
Jordi Savall (viola da gamba) Alia Vox AV 9837
****

Tobias Hume, who died in London in 1645, was a professional soldier and an amateur in the best and fullest sense when it came to music. He espoused the viol as a worthy rival to the lute and backed up his position with an important collection of solo pieces, which include early (1605!) experiments in pizzicato and col legno. The quirky titles, which include Death, Life, A Question and An Answer, convey the spirit of a composer on a brave journey of exploration, with often touching and sometimes startling results. It's the sort of music which is probably best heard in small amounts in a carefully chosen setting. Jordi Savall, who discovered it exactly 40 years ago, celebrates its looming quatercentenary with the indulgence of a full CD, performed with his familiar sensitivity and guile.

[ www.harmoniamundi.com ]

IMPERIAL FANFARES
The Art of Trumpet, Vienna/Leonhard Leeb   Naxos 8.555879
***

If you've ever wanted to test your tolerance of the art of fanfaring, this is the disc for you. The Art of Trumpet Ensemble from Vienna squeeze 76 fanfare or fanfare-like pieces into 68 minutes, and broaden the choice of music from the "Imperial Fanfares" of the title to include recent pieces, even a three-minute elegiac contribution written by Leon Bolten on September 11th, 2001. There may not be an incredible amount you can do with fanfares, though drums (which are of course used in some of the pieces here) add significantly to the possibilities. Lully, Salieri, Biber and Charpentier are the best known names to feature in a finely-performed collection that will amply reward anyone curious about the nature and scope of an art that remains an integral part of modern ceremonial.

[ www.naxos.com ]

These recordings, taped at concerts during the Lugano Festivals of 2002 and 2003, lack for nothing in terms of personality from the soloists. For my money the cellist Mischa Maisky is a bit self-seeking in Beethoven's Triple Concerto. But the combination with the sharply etched, dynamically mobile playing of pianist Martha Argerich and the more sober fiddling of Renaud Capuçon works very well, in spite of the limited vision of conductor Alexander Rabinovitch-Barakovsky. This is a performance that's more than the sum of its parts. In the Schumann concerto Argerich ranges from kittenish playfulness to serious overheating, and, magical as many moments are, there are some which will be found unduly wilful.

[ www.emiclassics.com ]

Various orchestras/Hans Rosbaud Deutsche Grammophon Original Masters 477 089-2
***

The Austrian conductor Hans Rosbaud (1895-1962) won the unstinting admiration of Pierre Boulez in new music. His Haydn was praised to the skies by the scholar HC Robbins-Landon - his clean-limbed, anti-romantic performances of Symphonies 92 and 104 are included here, as well as Mozart's Fourth Violin Concerto with Wolfgang Schneiderhan. There's a fine disc devoted to Sibelius (including Tapiola), and he skilfully illuminates two works by Boris Blacher, the Concertante Musik and Piano Concerto No 2 (with the composer's wife, Gerty Herzog). All of these are with the Berlin Philharmonic. Beethoven's Emperor Concerto (with Robert Casadesus) and Rachmaninov's Second (Julian von Karolyi) don't ignite, and in works by Stravinsky (Petrushka and Agon), Berg (Three Pieces, Op 6), and Webern (Six Pieces, Op 6) the strength of character is not always balanced by finesse.

www.dgclassics.com