CLASSICAL

Latest releases reviewed

MUSSORGSKY/SHOSTAKOVICH: SONGS AND DANCES OF DEATH; RACHMANINOV: SYMPHONIC DANCES Dmitri Hvorostovsky (baritone), St Petersburg PO/Yuri Temirkanov Warner Classics 2564 62030-2 ****

These performances were recorded at the Royal Albert Hall in London during the BBC Proms of 2004. Dmitri Hvorostovsky is wonderful in Shostakovich's economical and effective orchestrations of Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death. He's in vocally commanding form, and moves as necessary across the line between narration and acting with persuasively effortless ease. The coupling is presumably motivated by the quotation of the Dies Irae in the third of Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances, though the composer left precious few clues as to any programmatic connections in this, his last orchestral work. Temirkanov is a hand-in-glove partner in the songs, but his account of the Rachmaninov is rather too soft in its outlines. www.warnerclassics.com

Michael Dervan

BRAHMS: VIOLIN SONATAS 1-3; SCHERZO IN C MINOR Renaud Capuçon (violin), Nicholas Angelich (piano) Virgin Classics 545 7312  ***

If you regard the Brahms of the works for violin and piano as primarily a melodic thinker, then these consistently thoughtful, tonally sophisticated and technically polished performances by Renaud Capuçon and Nicholas Angelich may be just the thing for you. The major shortcoming arises in the way harmonic purposefulness is downgraded in the concentration on the linear aspects of the music. This can cause the welcome airiness of the French duo's approach to float a little too freely, as if insufficiently grounded. As a corrective to overweight, musically paunchy Brahms playing, the lean-toned, often reserved approach has a lot going for it, but it's not quite the whole story. www.virginclassics.com

Michael Dervan

BARTÓK: CONCERTO FOR ORCHESTRA; CONCERTO FOR TWO PIANOS AND PERCUSSION; ROMANIAN FOLKDANCES Heini Kärkkäinen, Paavali Jumppanen (pianos), Lassi Erkkilä, Tim Ferchen (percussion), Finnish RSO/Sakari Oramo Warner Classics 25646 19472  ***

Bartók's 1940 Concerto for two pianos and percussion, an orchestration of his 1937 Sonata for two pianos and percussion, is often regarded as a redundant exercise, rather as Schumann's piano accompaniments for Bach's solo violin sonatas are. However, there's something in both the recorded atmosphere and musical spirit of this new Finnish performance which makes the extra underlinings and redistributions of the concerto seem more persuasive than usual. Sakari Oramo's light touch in the 1943 Concerto for Orchestra makes for clean lines, but there's a price to be paid in the way he dismisses so many of the work's darker undertones. The strings-only version of the much earlier Romanian Folkdances is perkily delivered. www.warnerclassics.com

Michael Dervan

TREASURY OF HARPSICHORD MUSIC; DANCES OF ANCIENT POLAND Wanda Landowska (harpsichord) Naxos Historical 8.111055 ****

For half a century or so, from her concert début on the instrument in 1903, Wanda Landowska was the public face of the harpsichord. She fought for its revival through public performances, scholarly research, the advocacy of new music (Poulenc and Falla wrote concertos for her) and even through the use of strong-toned instruments built to her specifications by the firm of Pleyel. It's those instruments, with her frequent supercharging of the bass register through the use of the 16-foot stop, which may well trip up unsuspecting modern listeners, used to harpsichords built on 17th- and 18th-century principles. But the spirit of Landowska's playing still has a winning vitality, and in the two collections here, recorded in 1946 and 1951, she even colonises three pieces by Mozart (including the Rondo alla Turca) and, even more provocatively, Chopin's Mazurka in C Op 56 No 2. www.naxos.com

Michael Dervan