Classical/Opera

Schubert Works for Violin and Piano. Pamela & Claude Frank (Arte Nova) There's a rare democracy at work in this new recording of Schubert's last three works for violin and piano, the Sonata in A, D574, the Rondo brillant, D895, and the Fantasy in C, D934. These are pieces which star - and other - violinists often prepare with accompanists rather than genuine partners in mind. Pamela Frank bucks the trend. The give and take with her father Claude, a Schnabel pupil who served on the Dublin International Piano Competition Jury in 1994, is both free and musically penetrating. The Franks show no interest in prettiness, but remain sensitive to a wide range of Schubertian wit. The Rondo and Fantasy, in particular, emerge all the more cogent and substantial for their insight.- Michael Dervan Works for String Quartet by Szymanowski & Stravinsky, Got doer Quartet (Naxos) Naxos here add to their store of the works of Karol Szymanowski, Poland's greatest composer of the early 20th century. Ten years separate the composition of his two string quartets, the First written in 1917, at a time when the composer was engaged in a war-time frenzy of composition. Both works are deeply imbued with the sensuality which was such a characteristic of Szymanowski's music. Stravinsky's music for quartet is altogether drier, though the extraordinary un-quartetlike Three Pieces of 1914, representing the composer at his most individual, are every bit as mesmerising. The Golden String Quartet of Australia, offer strongly characterised readings.- Michael DervanBeethoven, Wagner, Strauss: Orchestra of La Scala, Milan/Arturo Toscanin, (APR) For all his well-documented opposition to Fascism, Toscanini was something of a tyrant as a conductor. The pressured music-making of his best-known records, of the Los many taped in the dry, cramped acoustic of the notorious in town Studio 8-H, convey an unmistakable fierceness of character. The Beethoven (Leonora No 2, Symphony No 1), Wagner (Lohengrin Preludes) and Strauss (Tod und Verkiurung) collected here by APR from concerts in Milan and Lucerne in 1946 are still tight, and sometimes sprung with a remarkable tension. But the whip, as it were, is not wielded with the familiar relentlessness. The end of the War, perhaps, or re-acquaintance with friends in the La Scala orchestra he once commanded, may have prompted the old man - he was 79 - to a freer lyricism than he normally allowed himself. By Michael Dervan Jose Cura, Verdi arias (Erato)Thank God for Jose Cura. Everything he does is rooted in intelligent theatrical interpretation - no gaudy decoration, no empty rhetoric, no auto-pilot, clutch-the-lapels, high-C finish. Which doesn't mean these Verdi heroes are dull folk; check out his distraught Macduff, his dreamy Alvaro, his superbly human Otello, caught between self-loathing and self-destruction. At the end of the day, though, Verdi singing is all about power, and Cura has it by the bucketload. Other tenors of our times have struggled to scale the peaks of Verdi's music: Cura however, stands easy at the summit, his mastery of the mountain complete. Unless you kill somebody, you won't get a ticket for his sold-out concerts in Cork and Dublin later this month - but whatever you do, don't miss this outstanding album. By Arminta Wallace