CLASSICAL

The latest releases reviewed.

BACH: SONATAS AND PARTITAS FOR SOLO VIOLIN Gidon Kremer ECM New Series 1926/27 (2 CDs) ****

Gidon Kremer is not the typical virtuoso, and these are not typical virtuoso accounts of Bach's sonatas and partitas for solo violin. The playing is long-breathed but essentially low gloss. It's musically demonstrative but unshowy. The partitas were recorded in a Lockenhaus church in 2001, the sonatas in studio in Riga in 2002, and the focus throughout is successfully kept on the music rather than the player, with a level of mannerism that is generally very low. In these stimulating performances, the problems Kremer seems happy for listeners to hear him grappling with are those of Bach, even if this means the occasional rough edge to the violin playing. www.ecmrecords.com Michael Dervan

BOLCOM: MUSIC FOR TWO PIANOS Elizabeth and Marcel Bergmann Naxos American Classics 8.559244 ****

Seattle-born William Bolcom, now in his late sixties, is an eclectic composer, famous for the influence exerted on his work by ragtime. That influence can be clearly heard here on The Serpent's Kiss and Through Eden's Gates (both arranged from the 1969 solo piano suite, The Garden of Eden), and at an angle in Recuerdos (1991), a work that celebrates precursors of ragtime, including Ernesto Nazareth and Louis-Moreau Gottschalk. The full extent of Bolcom's eclecticism is well represented in the broad drama of Frescoes (1971), which also calls on the excellent Bergmann duo to play harpsichord and harmonium. The later Sonata for Two Pianos in One Movement (1993) is more restrained. Interlude (1963) serves as a reminder that Bolcom served an apprenticeship at Darmstadt, too. www.naxos.com Michael Dervan

MENDELSSOHN: MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM OVERTURE; SYMPHONY NO 2 (LOBGESANG) Anne Schwanewilms, Petra-Maria Schnitzer (sopranos), Peter Seiffert (tenor), GewandhausChor, Chor der Oper Leipzig, Leipzig Gewandhaus/ Riccardo Chailly Decca 475 6939 ****

Riccardo Chailly's inaugural programme as music director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra last September featured two works by one of his distinguished predecessors in that post. Following the markings in the 1826 manuscript score of Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream Overture, he gives a deliciously fresh account of that still magical-sounding teenage creation. The original version of the C12, written for the Gutenberg celebrations of 1840, is substantially different from the revised version that the composer approved for publication, and which has been heard in concert and on disc from the RTÉ NSO. The smoothing and balancing of Mendelssohn's revisions were not always improvements, so it's good to hear the original in as finely judged an account as Chailly's. The choirs are first-rate, the contributions of the two sopranos much finer than that of the tenor. The work itself, however, still remains a pale imitation of its model: Beethoven's Choral Symphony. www.deccaclassics.com Michael Dervan

BRYARS: ON PHOTOGRAPHY Latvian Radio Choir/Sigvards Klava, Kaspars Putnins GB Records BCGBCD 07 ****

The surfaces of the works here may be calm and contemplative, but the pull of strange currents is to be found underneath. Gavin Bryars's Three Poems of Cecco Angioleri includes the lines "If I were Pope, I would be happy/as I would harry all Christians". His On Photography sets words - fully on-topic - by Pope Leo XIII. The stillness of so much of the music here is rendered with unfailing beauty by the voices of the Latvian Radio Choir, from the wintry Angioleri settings and the obvious French references of On Photography, to Valentin Silvestrov's quietly spectacular, Orthodox-flavoured Diptychon, blurring with the musical equivalent of misty-eyed recollection, Latvian composer Arturs Maskats's soaring, pulsating setting of Psalm 141, and Bryars's low-key And so ended Kant's travelling in this world to words by Thomas de Quincey. www.gavinbryars.com Michael Dervan