CLASSICAL

The latest releases reviewed.

BIBER: THE MYSTERY SONATAS Maya Homburger (violin), Camerata Kilkenny Maya Recordings MCD 0603 (2 CDs) ****

The Mystery Sonatas of Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644-1704) are among the greatest violin works of the 17th century, but their demands are so unusual that you will rarely hear the set in a concert hall. The 15 sonatas, each named after a decade of the rosary, require different tunings of the violin, opening up unique worlds of sound and symbolism but making concert performances on a single instrument a practical impossibility, not to mention providing vertiginous problems for the performer. Swiss violinist Maya Homburger, who lived in Ireland for nine years up to 2004, has done more than anyone to bring the riches of these extraordinary pieces to life for Irish audiences. She has now recorded them, with Camerata Kilkenny providing a colourful five-person continuo. www.maya-recordings.com Michael Dervan

SAINT-SAËNS: ORGAN SYMPHONY; POULENC: ORGAN CONCERTO; BARBER: TOCCATA FESTIVA Olivier Latry (organ), Philadelphia Orchestra/Christoph Eschenbach Ondine ODE 1094-5 ***

The Philadelphia Orchestra's home since 2001, the Verizon Hall at the troubled Kimmel Center ($275 million to build, a $30 million overrrun, and a lawsuit against the architect), inaugurated its 100-stop, 6,938-pipe Fred J Cooper Memorial organ, built by Dobson Pipe Organ Builders, last May, when this CD was recorded. It's best to approach the disc as an old-fashioned, demonstration-style, sonic spectacle. That's also probably the way to take Samuel Barber's showy Toccata Festiva at the best of times. Poulenc's concerto and Saint-Saëns's Third Symphony, the most popular works for organ and orchestra, sound spectacular, too, but in a strange way. As recorded, the dryish but bass-rich acoustic is more comfortable at dynamic extremes than in the middle ground, presenting finely crafted performances with an intriguing, fish-eye perspective. www.uk.hmboutique.com Michael Dervan

STRAUSS/LEOPOLD: METAMORPHOSEN; STRAUSS: PIANO QUARTET; SEXTET FROM CAPRICCIO Nash Ensemble Hyperion CDA 67574 ****

The young Richard Strauss who completed his Op 13, a Piano Quartet in C minor, at the age of 20, was a composer heavily indebted to Brahms. Yet at the same time the work shows flashes more typical of the mature Strauss, sonorous build-ups and stretches within the melodic line that Brahms would never have undertaken, plus turns of phrase that were to become commonplace in Strauss's well-known later tone-poems. What this admirably constructed, 40-minute piece lacks, even in this sensitive performance by the Nash Ensemble, is the kind of musical tension that Brahms could so successfully generate. There's no shortage of such tension in Strauss's late Metamorphosen, here heard in Rudolf Leopold's realisation of the string septet version that was a stepping stone to the final and familiar version for 23 strings. It's rather like rediscovering an early stage in the development of a famous recipe. It's an interesting might-have-been, but with too much missing to be the real thing. The opening sextet to the opera Capriccio makes an apt filler. www.hyperion-records.co.uk Michael Dervan

BACH: VIOLIN CONCERTO IN E; MOZART: VIOLIN CONCERTO IN D K218; MENDELSSOHN: VIOLIN CONCERTO IN E MINOR David Oistrakh (violin), Philadelphia Orchestra/Eugene Ormandy Naxos Historical 8.111246 ****

All three recordings here were made on Christmas Eve 1955, when the great Odessa-born violinist David Oistrakh reaped the benefits of the Cold War thaw and went into a US studio with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy. The fiddling is first-rate. The approach to Bach is on the heavy side by modern standards, and Oistrakh responds energetically to the upbeat demands of Mozart's Fourth Violin Concerto. But the crowning glory is his Mendelssohn, where the springing vitality sweeps all before it. www.naxos.com Michael Dervan