Classical

The latest releases reviewed.

CHOPIN, DEBUSSY, RAVEL Vladimir Ashkenazy (piano) Decca The Originals 475 8499 ****

Ashkenazy tied for first place with John Ogdon in the 1962 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, and he was still under 30 when he recorded this recital for Decca in 1965. The virtuosity of the young Ashkenazy has an unusually relaxed air, accomplished with something of the ease which allows a tennis ace like Roger Federer to bring off the most implausible shots without apparent effort. The recital is a short one - Chopin's Scherzo in E, and Nocturne in B, Op 62 No 1, Debussy's L'Isle joyeuse, and Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit - and the playing offers a stylish blend of lyricism and showmanship from a young player at the height of his powers. The recording captures a much more attractive palette of colour than the new Beethoven disc. www.deccaclassics.com MICHAEL DERVAN

BEETHOVEN: DIABELLI VARIATIONS; VARIATIONS ON A RUSSIAN DANCE Vladimir Ashkenazy (piano) Decca 475 8401 ***

Vladimir Ashkenazy turns 70 today, and his record company, Decca, has been busy with the issue of recordings new and old. Beethoven's Diabelli Variations, recorded last August, find Ashkenazy tackling the composer's astonishingly fertile response to Diabelli's trite waltz with virtuoso freedom. The tone is typically bright, sometimes hard, the shaping pointedly angular, the mood extrovert. There's no lack of energy as Ashkenazy dots his Is and crosses his Ts in snappy rhythms, gleeful-sounding accentuation and affirmative phrase-endings. But, oddly, the more profound currents and often wicked humour which lie not that far below the surface are rarely hinted at. www.deccaclassics.com MICHAEL DERVAN

SILVESTROV: SYMPHONY NO 6 SWR Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra/Andrey Boreyko ECM New Series 476 5715 ***

All music deals with time. But not much of it does so in the manner of Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov, whose orchestral writing often evokes the slow freewheeling of objects tumbling in zero gravity. His melodies move in trajectories that seem slightly skewed, and seem to disgorge their contents around them in a way that causes present and past to become blurred. The terrain is sometimes Mahler-like (but without the same level of angst), yet the overall effect is entirely Silvestrov's own. Nostalgia is the dominant mode in the arch- shaped, five-movement Sixth Symphony of 1994-5. It's a time- stilling work, but in spite of its haunting atmosphere its span of 54 minutes is more than the manner actually manages to sustain. www.ecmrecords.com MICHAEL DERVAN

WALTON: VIOLA CONCERTO; RUBBRA: MEDITATIONS ON A BYZANTINE HYMN; VIOLA CONCERTO Lawrence Power (viola), BBC Scottish SO/Ilan Volkov Hyperion CDA 67587 ****

Performers and record companies are always on the lookout for fresh approaches to familiar repertoire. Lawrence Power here offers the "first modern recording" of the original 1929 orchestration of William Walton's ground-breaking Viola Concerto. Power is not one of those viola players who wants to sound as light and nimble as a violinist. There's an earthy richness to his tone which well matches the romantic melancholy to which the young Walton turned in this work. The two unusual couplings by Edmund Rubbra (1901-86) include the unaccompanied Meditations on a Byzantine Hymn (1962) as well as the rather more conventionally flavoured Viola Concerto of 1952. www.hyperion-records.co.uk MICHAEL DERVAN