Kevin Volans: Cicada; Duets (Black Box)
The two-piano work Cicada (1994) is the piece Kevin Volans acknowledges as "my first genuinely minimalist piece". It was inspired by watching the transformation of a square of sky from within a large cubic light box at a James Turrell opening in Kilkenny. In Cicada, played here by Mathilda Hornaveld and Jill Richards, the passing of time is measured not by the draining of blue to black, but by the lapping echoes of sound between the two pianos. Whereas most of the minimalism of recent years has been expanding in range, Volans's variety is decidedly narrow in palette. The dance-commissioned, silence-punctuated Duets (composed and performed with Matteo Fargion "for multiple pianos on tape, natural and electronic sounds") range from Feldman-like delicacy to Nancarrowish mechanical giddiness.
Michael Dervan
Beethoven: String Quartets Op 74, 95 & 135. Eroica Quartet (Harmonia Mundi USA)
The four players of the Eroica String Quartet - Peter Hanson, Lucy Howard, Gustav Clarkson and David Watkin - have adopted the idea of approaching the music of the 19th century through the performing editions of the time. Not for them the scholarly pure, nothing-beyond-the-composer's-own-indications of a typical Urtext. In Beethoven they are guided by the editions of Ferdinand David, the dedicatee of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. Their playing of three Beethoven quartets diverges in many striking details from current norms of performing style. In fact, they sound closer to the manner of the quartets of the 1920s than those of today. It's a fascinating and rewarding exercise, but not yet one where all the practices seem fully absorbed or internalised.
Michael Dervan
Claudio Arrau: The Early Recordings (Pearl, 2 CDs)
Performers, we like to think, mature with age. But sometimes they go beyond ripeness. The recordings which document the later playing of Chilean Claudio Arrau (1903-91) show a man fond of underlining the obvious at tempos which border on the ponderous. The Arrau of Pearl's new two-disc set (GEMS 0070), recorded between 1927 and 1940, is a far more interesting player, still forceful of character, but altogether freer of temperament. The repertoire may surprise, too: Balakirev's exotic Islamey delivered in virtuoso style, and small helpings of Busoni and Stravinsky to set against the expected Chopin and Liszt. The two largest pieces are Schumann's Carnaval and Weber's Sonata No 1 (a work that has since disappeared from the repertoire), both done with sensitivity and a vigour that the older Arrau either lost or eschewed.
Michael Dervan
