CLASSICAL

Recent releases reviewed

STRAUSS: CELLO SONATA; ROMANCE IN F; CELLO SONATA; REGER: CELLO SONATA IN G MINOR OP 28; ROMANCE IN D
Emmanuelle Bertrand (cello), Pascal Amoyel (piano) Harmonia Mundi HMC 901836 ****

Richard Strauss was not yet 20 when he wrote his sole cello sonata in 1883, Max Reger 25 when he composed the second of his four cello sonatas, his Op. 28, in 1898. Strauss's confident, clear-cut manner and bold ideas don't fully reveal the individuality that was to come, but they ensured him considerable immediate success with the work. The harmonic instability and rhythmic fluidity of Reger's harmonic world have long proved a barrier to wider acceptance of his music. Reger's day may yet come, if the rewards of the clear and lucid playing of the French duo of Emmanuelle Bertrand and Pascal Amoyel is anything to go by. Reger's notorious density seems less extravagant and more cogent than its reputation when the music-making is aligned with such technical and musical savoir-faire. www.harmoniamundi.com

Michael Dervan

HELPS: SHALL WE DANCE; PIANO QUARTET; POSTLUDE; NOCTURNE; IRELAND: DARKENED VALLEY
Robert Helps (piano), Spectrum Concerts Berlin Naxos 8.559199 ****

US composer and pianist Robert Helps (1928-2001) remains a little-known figure in this part of the world. He was an active and persuasive advocate of his own and other composers' music, and on this CD gives a highly evocative performance of his ruminative Shall We Dance (1994), and distils effects of exquisite beauty from John Ireland's Darkened Valley. The music here, from the 1960s and 1990s, shows him as an eclectic of romantic cast, who expressed himself through dissonant added-note harmony that's often delicately haloed. His music seems to get better the more still and atmospheric it becomes, especially in the 1960 Nocturne for string quartet, and parts of the Piano Quartet of 1997. www.naxos.com

Michael Dervan

THE 1953 AMERICAN DECCA RECORDINGS
New York Stadium SO/Leonard Bernstein Deutsche Grammophon Original Masters 477 0002 (5 CDs) ***

Deutsche Grammophon here restore to circulation Leonard Bernstein's move on disc from largely 20th-century repertoire into the the European mainstream. His recordings of these five symphonies - Beethoven's Eroica, Schumann's Second, Brahms's Fourth, Tchaikovsky's Pathétique and Dvorak's New World - were bought by the Book of the Month Club's Music-Appreciation Records, which commissioned illustrated talks for each piece (now also making their way onto CD for the first time). The talks, not merely explicatory but also hotly defensive of some of the composers, are driven by the same passionate nature personality as the performances by the New York Philharmonic, here working under its summer name and sounding on fine form. The typically interventionist interpretative approach, more vital than in later years, favours the effect of the moment over the cogency of the whole, and is probably at its best in the Schumann. www.dgclassics.com

Michael Dervan

DECCA RECORDINGS, 1950-1956
Zara Nelsova (cello) Decca Original Masters 475 6327 (5 CDs) ****

Canadian-born cellist Zara Nelsova, who died three years ago at the age of 83, was a major recording star for Decca while based in London in the 1950s. Her Beethoven with pianist Artur Balsam - the five sonatas and two sets of variations - is strongly projected. Rachmaninov's Sonata, like the Dvorak concerto with Josef Krips, is forceful but undercooked. The concertos by Lalo and Saint-Saëns (No. 1), both with Adrian Boult, are delightfully done. Nelsova recorded works by two contemporary composers who regarded her highly: Samuel Barber, who partnered her in his Cello Concerto, and Ernest Bloch, heard at the piano in From Jewish Life. The celebrated recordings of Bloch's Voice in the Wilderness and Schelomo with Swiss conductor Ernest Ansermet are also included, as are solo works by Kodály and Reger and the Bourrées from Bach's Third Suite. www.deccaclassics.com

Michael Dervan