This is a Recording

While the string quartets of Nikolai Yakovievich Myaskovsky (1881-1950) were all published in the Soviet era, a few of them had pre-revolutionary origins. Two quartets he wrote in 1911 and '09 while a conservatory student re-surfaced some twenty years later designated as Quartets Nos. 3 and 4.  An even earlier "schoolboy" piece was later re-worked more radically as Quartet No. 10, premiered in 1945. Myaskovsky partook of an ample share of the turmoil and tragedy of his times: he was wounded and shell-shocked after service on the front line in World War I, and his father, who had been a high-ranking military engineer, was brutally murdered by a revolutionary mob. Despite that, his music, even at its most sombre, hasn't the black bile or biting sarcasm of Shostakovich's, or of his friend Prokofiev's. Of the works collected here, in excellent early '80s performances by the Taneyev Quartet, only Quartet No. 1 has any significantly metallic tang of early S...

Georgy Vasilyevich Sviridov was a Soviet-era Russian composer, probably best-known internationally for his choral and other vocal works: cantatas, oratorios, hymns. etc.. Russians of a certain age will remember him for his piece Time, Forward! part of which was used as the theme for the TV evening news broadcast «Время» . As well as a substantial corpus of choruses, film scores & the like, he also produced some chamber music, which is the focus of the present CD. Sviridov had studied with Shostakovich, nine years his senior, with the older man's influence strongly evident on the pieces included here. Sviridov's 'Piano Trio', written in 1945 and revised ten years later, is, at times, very reminiscent of Shostakovich's 2nd Trio written the year before: such in the piano chords in the agitated Scherzo second movement. Elsewhere (so Iossif Rajskin's booklet notes inform me), Sviridov was more broadly inspired by the Russian tradition of elegaic music for piano ...

Remarkably extensive though it is, the Discogs database doesn't contain everything, with its coverage of classical releases patchier than that of rock, pop & jazz ones. Had I continued to rely on the 'Random Item' button there, then I wouldn't have been in a position to write about this 2-CD Anniversary Edition album which brings together notable performances of half a dozen works by the Soviet composer Alfred Schnittke: as far as I can tell, no-one has added it there yet*. The album was released in 2020 on the Russian Melodiya label, intended to mark what would have been the composer's 85th birthday (but a year late for that). It's a handsome package with a very informative booklet in an unusual double-digipak which folds out into an L-shape. I bought it when it came out, being particularly interested to get a recording of his 'Concerto for Piano and String Orchestra' (1979), which I'd been listening to via YouTube. It's represented here by...

Frederick Youens' sleeve-notes on this UK release of Louis (or Ludwig) Spohr's Nonet in F, op. 31 , say of the composer that "he never attained profound depths or a wide range, but his undoubted gift for melody made him a much-loved composer during his lifetime" (rated ahead of Beethoven by some contemporaries). Such seems to be Spohr's legacy: to be half-damned by lukewarm praise. Youens reckons the Nonet "has much of the charm of the Schubert Octet" - when, to my mind, Spohr's is the more enjoyable piece of the two.  Though not a musical revolutionary in the same vein as Beethoven, Spohr was also an innovator in his own way - credited with inventing the violin chin-rest, and of being the first to conduct an orchestra with a baton. And in his compositions, Spohr not infrequently "experimented with unusual combinations of instruments" (Youens again) with the Nonet a case in point. Similar instrumental groupings had been used in late-18th-Ce...

While resident in the US in 1919, Rebecca Clarke entered her Viola Sonata in a composition competition sponsored by patron of the arts Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. Out of a field of 72 entrants, Clarke's piece was adjudged the joint winner, unluckily losing out via Coolidge's casting vote to Ernest Bloch's Suite for Viola and Piano, a similarly excellent piece. Something must have been in the water that year, as it also saw the publication of Paul Hindemith's wonderful Op. 11 No.4 Viola Sonata. Might her career have flourished more fruitfully had she won? Perhaps, but the obstacles in her way were formidable: entrenched sexism; the demands of family life; persistent depression. Most of her major compositions date from the latter 1910's and the early '20s, with only sporadic creative episodes thereafter. I can't recall if I read about her work before hearing it or vice versa, but it was after listening to a movement from her Viola Sonata on BBC Radio 3 that I ...

Between about 2011-16 I drove a car that must have been among the last made with a cassette player installed. I had no cassettes, so if I wanted in-car entertainment, it had to be via the radio. I found BBC Radio 3 to be the least annoying of the readily receivable stations. One afternoon while stuck in traffic on the way home from work I heard a delightful piece for violin and piano that captured my attention: checking the playlist later I learned it was one of Carl Maria von Weber's Violin Sonatas, performed by Isabelle Faust and Alexander Melnikov. A few months later I bought the CD of which that performance was a part. It includes a complete set of six such sonatas that Weber wrote in 1810 and a Piano Quintet dating from the year before. All, then, are youthful works from the composer's early twenties. Roman Hinke's booklet notes (given in French, English and German) tell us that the sonatas were written for a publisher who'd requested short and simple works meant f...

Georg Friedrich Haas is a contemporary Austrian composer of "art music". "Haas's style recalls that of György Ligeti in its use of micropolyphony, microintervals and the exploitation of the overtone series; he is often characterized as a leading exponent of spectral music" says wikipedia. Only a relative few of his many compositions have been issued on CD - many more of them can be found on YouTube. On this 2020 disc are three of his works in which standard classical instrumentation is augmented and altered by "live electronics". Two are string quartets and one is for solo piano. Is a string quartet still really a quartet if there are meanwhile some other people with laptops busily twizzling the sound? There is a live performance video of the 'String Quartet No. 7', the first work on the disc, where the JACK Quartet are supplemented by a trio of sound boffins to realise the composition. Whether it's properly a quartet or a septet is neithe...

The moody, monochrome seascape on the cover, and the foreign title (without any direct relation to the music) signal to the prospective CD buyer that Serious Art awaits them therein. The essay in the 30-page booket by Tatjana Frumkis, given in German & English, is, moreover, a highbrow affair, quoting Pushkin, Hölderlin & Mandelstam. Sure enough, Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov's music isn't exactly a barrel of laughs, though some of it is undoubtedly very beautiful. The first piece on the disc is a 'Sonata for Violoncello and Piano' dating from 1983. For its twenty-two minute duration it alternates between fragmentary melodies and more harshly astringent passages, petering out to near-silence toward the end. Anja Lechner and Silke Avenhaus are the cellist and pianist. Next up, Silvestrov's 'String Quartet no. 1', composed in 1974. It begins with slow and quiet harmonies, but, while it continues in a mostly low & slow manner, conventional ...

Ignaz Moscheles and Johann Nepomuk Hummel were among the most notable virtuoso pianists and composers from the generation between Beethoven's and that of Chopin, Liszt & Schumann. This 2006 CD showcases a cello sonata by each of them, performed by Jiři Barta on the cello with Hamish Milne at the piano. Hummel's op. 104 Sonata in A major was composed in the mid 1820s. John Warrack's booklet notes characterise it as "less a piece for virtuosos than for musical companions, amiable and graceful." Moscheles' op. 121 Sonata in E major dates from rather later, ca. 1850, by which time the composer might have been considered a vaguely unfashionable elder statesman. The work was dedicated to Schumann, who had long been a fan of Moscheles'. This later Sonata is also tuneful, but has more substance & drama than Hummel's. It's in four movements, with the middle two, a perky Scherzo and a 'Dumka'-style 'Ballade' being my favourites. Filli...

Johann Sch o bert (not to be confused with Franz Sch u bert) was a composer and virtuoso keyboardist active in Paris in the 1760s. He is best remembered - when remembered at all - for his remarkable & lamentable demise: "Schobert went mushroom picking with his family [...] near Paris. He tried to have a local chef prepare them, but was told they were poisonous. After unsuccessfully trying again at a restaurant at Bois de Boulogne, and being incorrectly told by a doctor acquaintance of his that the mushrooms were edible, he decided to use them to make a soup at home. Schobert, his wife, all but one of their children, and his doctor friend died." The third quarter of the 18th century was roughly the period when the newfangled "piano forte" was supplanting the harpsichord as the default keyboard instrument. As with many new technologies, a variety of piano designs proliferated early in the instrument's history, before standardisation set in. One of the var...

Gabrel Fauré (like Martinů, mentioned recently ) is among the composers whose works I came to appreciate during my classical download binge of 2014/15. I became particularly fond of his two Piano Quartets and the first Piano Quintet. The second Quintet, and the works of ths composer's old age in general (the String Quartet, the Piano Trio, etc.) strike me as a little florid and over-ripe by comparison. Having said that, it's been a while since I heard it: who knows, another airing may yet change my mind. The version I have of the quintets is this 2009 Naxos CD performed by the Fine Arts Quartet joined by pianist Cristina Ortiz.  The first Quintet apparently had a very long gestation period, with some tentative first drafts made in 1887, but not completed until 1896, and not publicly performed until 1906. For all that, the piece has a seemingly spontaneous and natural flow which belies its difficult birth. The Adagio second movement is particularly lovely.

For my money, Antonín Dvořák's 'String Quintet No. 2 in G major' (Op. 77) is among the best of his lesser-known works. It was composed in 1875, a few years before the 'Slavonic Dances' became his first major hit, launching him into the compositional big-time. It wasn't published until 1888, by which time his international reputation was well-established. Unusually for a late-19th-century quintet, it's scored for two violins, viola, cello, and double bass. It's performed here by the Dvořák Quartet augmented by bassist František Pošta. I have it on a 1967 Supraphon LP: a re-issue of a recording first released five years earlier, so Discogs informs me. I think it may have been one of the several classical albums I've bought from the Oxfam shop in Thornbury. Originally in five movements, it was published without a slow 'Intermezzo' that would have been its second. The current second movement ('Scherzo. Allegro vivace') is probably the mos...

In my original blogging days, I would occasionally run giveaways to offload unwanted books or CDs to whomever claimed them. Sometimes the recipients would offer to send me something in return. It was in this way that, ca. 2007, a Catalan correspondent sent me Influencías: a CD of perfomances by the Barcelona-based Cuarteto Casals. The CD begins with Maurice Ravel's renowned string quartet: I hadn't known the piece before receiving this disc, but I was sold on it by this fresh & bright performance. Next is a quartet called 'Vistes al Mar' by the Catalan composer Eduardo Toldrá. Its evocative maritime movements are prefaced by recitations of poems by Joan Maragall, a Catalan author whose works directly inspired the piece. Lastly there's an arrangement of Joaquín Turina's atmospheric 'Oración del Torero', originally composed for a lute quartet. I'm on the fence about the cover photo: it's a well-composed picture & not a bad idea, but with 2...

When I moved to Karlskrona in late 2000, a junk-shop near my first apartment there had a large stock of records that I'd sometimes idly browse through. In the course of my visits it occurred to me I wouldn't mind getting myself a record player and a stash of old vinyl, and in due course it happened (the following year) that I found a cheap '70s-style turntable plus speakers and headphones and brought them home along with a first few albums. Among the records they had was a classical disc with a rather off-putting picture of the composer Franz Berwald staring sternly from its cover. After I'd bought a variety of other classical LPs from the same place, I thought I'd try actually listening to this one, to see whether its contents matched the cover. I was delighted to find they did not: the two quintets on the album were both charming, vibrant & melodic works, with the closing part of the Quintet No. 2's Allegro Vivace 2nd movement being a particular highlight...

Ferdinand Ries is just one among the many talented and once-renowned composers whose legacy has been overlooked due to its being overshadowed by that of his near-contemporary Beethoven. In his case there was a strong connection between the two men: both came from Bonn, and Ries's father was one of LvB's early teachers. This link must have helped him secure a place as one of the great man's very few students, and, later, as his secretary. After the turmoil of the Napoleonic wars had reached Vienna, Ries set off on the road in an effort to make a name for himself, at length finding fame & fortune during a long stint in London. While there's hardly anyone who would put him on the same level as his former teacher, much of his music is delightful - the Cello Sonatas on the present disc included. These stand up well in comparison with Beethoven's own works for cello & piano, and I personally prefer them. This is one of several CDs on the CPO label featuring Ries...

Naxos' CD packaging nearly always looks more utilitarian than appealing, though there is certainly something to be said for spelling out all the pertinent details in prominent high-contrast text on the cover. This one is a relatively recent aquisition, bought last year from on-line classical specialists Europadisc. On it are Paul Hindemith's second and third string quartets - written in 1918 and '20 respectively - performed by the Amar Quartet, a Zürich-based group whose name comes from the Quartet of which Hindemith himself was a member from 1921. Hindemith was by all accounts an extraordinarlly versatile multi-instrumentalist, and accomplished enough as a violinist and violist that he could have elected to follow a career as a concert soloist had he so desired. As a composer he was likewise versatile in the instrumentation he wrote for. And he wrote a great deal: it's too bad that most of what I've heard of it leaves me cold. I fell for his 'Viola Sonata no. 4...

This CD's title refers not to the year 1700 itself, but to the settecento - the eighteenth century - in general. It brings together instrumental works by eight different composers from the various Italian nations and from different parts of that century. The composers range from the famous (Vivaldi) through the less well-known (Geminiani, Locatelli, Galuppi) to the obscure (Mascitti, Pugnani). With that period not having been a prosperous one in Italy, many of them had travelled or emigrated elsewhere in Europe, introducing a variety of un-Italian influences to their music. Rinaldo Alessandrini's Concerto Italiano here comprises seven musicians, including Alessandrini himself at the harpsichord. The disc is a sequel to a similarly-conceived album 1600 by the same group, which, alas, I haven't heard. Some of the pieces are sonatas which originally would have been intended for small groups; while others (such as Vivaldi's 'Concerto In D major: op.12 no.3') are...

George Onslow was an odd-man-out among 19th-century French composers. Born into wealth and privilege, the grandson of an English Earl, he had no need to follow the operatic gravy train, with string quartets (of which he wrote 36) and string quintets (there are another 32 of those) forming the bulk of his compositional output. The present disc contains his 28th, 29th and 30th quartets, in compelling performances by the Quatuor Diotima. These quartets were written toward the end of a prolifically-creative period for Onslow in the years 1829-35. Viviane Niaux, in her informative booklet notes, ascribes this to the composer's having heard performances of two of Beethoven's late quartets for the first time in 1828, at their Paris première. Like many of his contemporaries, Onslow was at once "fascinated and disconcerted", and, although he considered them "extravagant", they seem to have been powerfully inspirational. A further spur to creativity may have been his ...

Luigi Boccherini wrote in excess of a hundred string quintets, nearly a hundred string quartets, and sixty-odd string trios. Not to mention all his piano trios, piano quintets, flute quintets, guitar quintets and assorted sonatas; nor the dozen cello concertos & thirty symphonies. He wasn't shy about reusing and recycling sections of earlier works in later ones, but even so, he turned out a prodigious quantity of music, which makes its consistently high quality all the more impressive. The present disc includes four of his last string trios, written in Madrid in 1796. The default string trio line-up is violin, viola and cello, but these pieces were composed for two violins and cello, played here by the group La Real Cámera comprising Emilio Moreno and Enrico Gatti (violins) plus Wouter Möller (cello). Moreno is also responsible for the booklet notes in which he characterises trios written for this instrumentation as "a difficult, arid and obsolete form ... a remnant of the...

Glassworks was among the first few dozen CDs I bought while still living in Rome in '97. I'd previously heard a few snippets of Glass's music on TV and on the radio - such as 'Floe' (from this album) and 'Freezing' (one of the Songs from Liquid Days ) - but here was my first proper exposure to it. I was much enamoured of the disc, which prompted me to buy another couple of his albums: the Glassmasters compilation and Music in Twelve Parts , but I found those both contained more music I disliked than I enjoyed. My feelings about Glass have been mixed ever since: I've bought a good deal of his output over the years, ultimately discarding two or three albums for every one retained. Then again, those keepers are cherished favourites. I gave away my Glassworks CD too, though not because I'd taken any kind of dislike for it, rather because a friend was a fan and I'd impulsively made a gift of it to her. I thought the backup I'd made on minidisc ...