CLASSICAL

Latest releases reviewed

BEETHOVEN: STRING QUARTETS VOL 1 Endellion Quartet Warner Classics 2564 62161-2 ***

The Endellion Quartet's new Beethoven cycle promises scholarly texts and completeness - all the string quartets and quintets, plus various fragments. The first fragment is just over 30 seconds long. Both its very slightness and genuine waywardness contribute to its evocativeness, as do the circumstances of its composition. It was written as an on-the-spot souvenier for an English visitor in 1817. The other works in this cleanly delivered collection span the composer's career. Op 18 No 2 in G is done with a kind of Haydnesque formality. Op 95 in F minor is forceful but also a bit forced. Op 135 in F brings the strongest sense of immediacy in the interaction between the players. www.warnerclassics.com

Michael Dervan

GEORGE ROCHBERG: SYMPHONY NO 2; IMAGO MUNDI Saarbrücken Radio SO/Christopher Lyndon-Gee Naxos American Classics 8.559182  ****

Hard romanticism" is George Rochberg's own description of the style of his Second Symphony of 1955-56, claimed by conductor Christopher Lyndon-Gee as the first 12-tone symphony by an American. It's a bold, often angry and gritty work, and under Lyndon-Gee it glows with persuasive inner fire. The performance is firmly driven, yet space is found for every blow and fleck to register. Imago Mundi is one of a number of pieces inspired by a visit to Japan in the early 1970s, by which time Rochberg had considerably broadened his stylistic palette. There are picturesque moments of shrill, keening woodwind and accelerating knocking percussion, in direct response to gagaku, the music of the Japanese imperial court, framing passages in darker moods. www.naxos.com

Michael Dervan

HAYDN: LE STAGIONI Gabriella Gatti, Francesco Albanese, Luciano Neroni, Coro Lirico e Orchestra dell'EIAR/Vittorio Gui Warner Fonit 5050467-7898-2-1 (2 CDs)  ***

This new Warner offering presents no everyday recording of Haydn's final oratorio, The Seasons. It's old (recorded at La Fenice in Venice in 1943), it's sung in Italian, and a fair amount of the score is cut. But it has something that persuasive advocacy can attach to ground-breaking ventures, and recording The Seasons in 1943 was certainly a pioneering undertaking. The hallmark of the performance is its affecting simplicity and directness. The conductor Vittorio Gui makes his points without fuss, and soprano Gabriella Gatti sings with an effortless, almost artless-seeming beauty. The second disc also features Gatti and bass Luciano Neroni in arias by Monteverdi, Mozart, Weber, Rossini and Bellini. If you want a more conventional Seasons, Warner have also recently re-issued Nikolaus Harnoncourt's live account from 1987, on their bargain-basement Apex label (2564 62086-2). www.warnerclassics.com

Michael Dervan

MANUEL HIDALGO: NUUT; INTRODUCTION AND FUGUE; GRAN NADA Teodoro Anzellotti, WDR Sinfonie- orchester Köln/Peter Rundel Winter & Winter 910 117-2 ***

The Introduction and Fugue on this new disc of works for accordion and orchestra by Manuel Hidalgo is the Spanish composer's arrangement of the Finale of Beethoven's Hammerklavier Sonata. Quite apart from the presence of the accordion, the prominent use of harp at the start is a clear indication that this is going to be no conventional re-working. Although the accordion is nearly as old as the music (the Hammerklavier was published in 1819, the accordion patented 10 years later), Hidalgo doesn't really set out to match the two. Unusually, the result is so full of strange effects it's almost light-headed. Just as Webern's orchestration of Bach offers insight into Webern, Hidalgo's way with Beethoven serves as a good introduction to the composer's own thinly stranded pieces, which, here, without any guiding programme notes, sound like a tantalising invitation into a world of secret theatre.

www.harmoniamundi.com

Michael Dervan