Schubert: Die schone Mullerin. Wolfgang Holzmair (baritone), Imogen Cooper (piano). (Philips)
As a team, in the songs of Schubert, Austrian baritone Wolfgang Holzmair and English pianist Imogen Cooper are one of the wonders of the age. Theirs is not an art that calls attention to itself, although Cooper does make one that bit more aware of her interventions than Holzmair. And even then, that slight difference in approach is ultimately an enriching one. Listening to their unfolding of the infatuation of the young miller, I couldn't help but think of those gifted actors who, without so much as a facial twitch or bodily gesture, seem to be able to convey a change in psychic state. Die schone Mullerin is often seen as a simpler enterprise than the obviously darker Winterreise. From Holzmair and Cooper it is every bit as full and rewarding an experience.
By Michael Dervan
Busoni: Piano Music. Claudius Tanski (MDG)
This re-issue of Claudius Tanski's Busoni recital from the early 1990s is really welcome. Busoni was one of the greatest pianists of his day, but when he died in 1924, aged 58, he left only a handful of recordings. His magnum opus, which had preoccupied him for 12 years, the opera Doktor Faust, was unfinished. And now, 75 years later, his original music takes a distant second place in concert behind those acts of veneration, his piano transcriptions of organ works by Bach. Tanski includes some transcriptions along with four of the Elegies, the Sonatina seconda and the late Toccata. He is wonderfully astute in gauging the tonal balances the music calls for, and shows a firm grasp of the intellectual fantasy, whether rigorous, playful or austere, that runs through this tantalisingly elusive music.
By Michael Dervan
Stravinsky: Orpheus; Danses concertantes. Orpheus Chamber Orchestra (DG)
Stravinsky may be one of the greatest musical figures of the century, but that has never guaranteed him an equitable representation across the full range of his output in concert programmes. The early ballets dominate, and so, too, in his later music, can a performing style that's based on the needs of those ballets. The two works played here by the conductorless Orpheus Chamber Orchestra - Orpheus a ballet score written for Balanchine, Danses concertantes a concert work appropriated by him - are from the 1940s, and call for a special delicacy, a rhythmic agility with a velvet-fingered touch. The Orpheus players bring to them just the right laid-back, skilled affection, and the two pieces come into focus with fresh-minted appeal.
By Michael Dervan