The latest releases reviewed

TORMIS: CHORAL WORKS
Holst Singers/Stephen Layton
Hyperion CDA 67601
*****
Estonian composer Veljo Tormis was born in 1930, within five years of Henze, Stockhausen, Kurtág, Penderecki, Schnittke, and Pärt. His best-known music, however, harks back to the likes of Bartók and Kodály, who laid the ground for the kind of folk-inspired choral music that was to become Tormis's speciality. Tormis, who's still alive but retired from composing, wrote both original, folk-inspired works as well as direct arrangements of folk-songs; he also researched, avidly collected and politicked on behalf of choral and folk music. His grasp of choral sonority is so sure and his delight in it so obvious, it's no surprise that he ended up a specialist. The pieces included in Stephen Layton's new gorgeously sung collection cover a half century, from 1948 to 1998. www.hyperion-records.co.uk
MICHAEL DERVAN

RZEWSKI: THE PEOPLE UNITED WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED!; WINNSBORO COTTON MILL BLUES
Ralph van Raat (piano)
Naxos 8.559360
****
Commissioned in the mid 1970s to write a companion piece for Beethoven's Diabelli Variations, Frederic Rzewski came up with a second mammoth (60 minutes or so) set of variations, 36 in all, on a Chilean protest song. The People United Will Never Be Defeated!is so wide-ranging in its reach of styles and compositional techniques that it functions as a kind of late 20th-century thesaurus of pianistic possibilities. It's both tightly constructed and protean, so that, in spite of its apparently free-wheeling nature, it remains compelling and cogent. Ralph van Raat adds to the music's range by taking up the option of an improvised cadenza, and supplies a barnstorming performance of the machine rhythms of the Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues. www.naxos.com
MICHAEL DERVAN

CAPRICCIO
Renaud Capuçon (violin), Jérôme Ducros (piano)
Virgin Classics 374 0872
***
French violinist Renaud Capuçon (who's due to make his Irish debut in concerts at the IIB Bank Music in Great Irish Houses Festival on Sunday and Monday) here turns his attention to a selection of 21 encore pieces. Capuçon has established himself as a force to be reckoned with in the major works of the violin repertoire. He's rather more variable in the lighter end, where the lovely sound flows easily, but the lyrical shaping is sometimes too fidgety to be entirely persuasive. Give him the liveliness of Dinicu's Hora staccato, the steady background tread of Stravinsky's Russian Song, or any amount of flashy fingerwork to negotiate, and he's fully in his element. www.emiclassics.com
MICHAEL DERVAN

SCHOENBERG: QUARTETS; BERG: QUARTET; LYRIC SUITE; WEBERN: FIVE MOVEMENTS
Juilliard String Quartet
United Archives UAR 023 (3 CDs)
****
The first two complete recordings of Schoenberg's four string quartets were made in the US - by the composer's close associates in the Kolisch Quartet in the 1930s and by the young Juilliard Quartet in the early 1950s. According to the quartet's leader, Robert Mann, the composer found their playing "wilder" than he expected, but still gave it his sanction. The Juilliard's recordings quickly achieved classic status, and United Archives' new transfers convey clearly the edgy character of the playing, which often takes the music to the verge of hysteria. As in the disc devoted to Schoenberg's pupils, Berg and Weber, portents of the musical future are to the fore rather than the links with the romantic past. www.harmoniamundi.com/uk/news.php
MICHAEL DERVAN