Schoenberg Quintet

Shostakovich's introspective Piano Quintet is one of the composer's supreme achievements. Perhaps it was the subtle nod to Baroque forms as well as the Beethoven-like use of fugue that earned this piece a permanent place in the chamber repertoire. The Nash Ensemble, led by Marcia Crayford and Elizabeth Clayton, shines especially in the playful and colorful Scherzo.

Even though violinist Janine Jansen appears alone in the cover photo of this 2012 Decca release, and her name is featured in large letters, no one should mistake this album as a solo effort. The recordings of Franz Schubert's String Quintet in C major and Arnold Schoenberg's sextet Verklärte Nacht are ensemble performances, and the musicians who play with Jansen form an artistic bond that seems utterly at odds with the star-oriented artwork. Jansen is certainly behind the choice of works, because they were programmed on her critically praised concert at Wigmore Hall.

Under the artistic direction of Nicolas Altstaedt, this multi-award winning series in collaboration with the Lockenhaus Festival continues to bring to light great works of chamber music by composers who are already well known or still awaiting discovery. Schoenberg was in his early seventies when he composed his String Trio op. 45 in 1946, completing it after suffering a terrible heart attack. He told Thomas Mann that the trio reflected his physical and psychological condition of that period. The composer Constantin Regamey, born in Kiev in 1907, is little known. A Swiss of Polish descent, he was also a pianist, music critic and writer, who was appointed lecturer in Indian philology at Warsaw University in 1936. He joined the Polish Resistance in 1942 and it was at this time that he wrote his Quintet for clarinet, bassoon, violin, cello and piano.

The exceptional Italian pianist Pina Napolitano, whose Odradek albumTempo e Tempi was selected asThe Sunday Times 2020 'Best Contemporary Classical Album', returns to Schoenberg, in whose music she specialises. With Michael Zlabinger conducting the musicians of the Wiener Concert-Verein, this release features Schoenberg's Piano Concerto, Op. 42 in a new arrangement for 15 solo instruments by Hugh Collins Rice; the same forces used in Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony No. 1, and similar to those of his 'Song of the Wood Dove' fromGurrelieder, performed here by mezzo-soprano Ida Aldrian.

Deutsche Grammophon has another excellent Schumann Concerto in its catalog, the Pollini/Abbado, with the Berlin Philharmonic, coupled with a good but not great Schoenberg Piano Concerto. Not surprisingly, Pollini is more muscular and evenly balanced in the Schumann, even if he is, as usual, a bit straitlaced. Pires is always the sensitive and probing artist, or so it seems. Here, she is alert from the opening descending chords to the expressive potential in every bar. She puts much more thinking and feeling in her interpretation than Pollini and most others I've heard.

Schnittke - Chamber Music: Piano Quintet etc. - Sarah Leonard, Capricorn, Timothy Mason (1996) {Hyperion CDA66885}
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© 1996 Hyperion Records | CDA66885
Classical / Contemporary Classical / Chamber Music

The chamber works on this recording encompass a variety of instrumental groupings and a range of moods from the humour and lightness of the Serenade to the serious magnificence of the Piano Quintet, a five-movement ‘memorial’ developing the tradition of so great a work as Shostakovich’s single-movement work for this combination. The Three Madrigals set a three-language cycle of miniature poems by Francisco Tanzer, poems which themselves encapsulates much that is distinctively Schnittke through their epigrammatic atmosphere of cryptic completeness.

It is almost exactly a quarter of a century since Pierre Boulez recorded his complete Webern survey. This new collection, apart from being useful for anyone who doesn't want to buy three whole CDs of Webern, offers an interesting insight into how Boulez's way with a composer probably more central to him than any other has changed. For a start he gives him a little more time: most of the pieces here are slightly but significantly slower than they were in 1970. This allows lines to be more subtly moulded, phrases to acquire a touch more poise. This is not to say that Boulez has softened and now phrases Webern as though he were Chopin, but grace and even wit (the second movement of the Quartet) are now noticeable alongside his customary precision. The Ensemble InterContemporain have been playing these pieces constantly since they were first founded, and it shows in the absolute assurance of their performances.

Anticipating the 50th anniversary of Orpheus Chamber Orchestra in 2022, we present their complete recordings on DG. The intriguing sound culture of Orpheus, especially of the string section, is often explained as a result of the cooperative mindset of the orchestra and its artistic process of rehearsing.

Mozart, of course, is probably the archetypal musical prodigy, paraded around Europe, playing, improvising and composing from the ridiculously early age of about four. It used to be thought that Leopold might have done much of his son's early composing, as well as his publicity, but it's clear that even infantile Mozart is streets ahead of his father - witness the latter's supremely facile 'Toy Symphony'. Easier to overlook are the prodigious talents of Franz Schubert. It is astonishing to think that so accomplished a work as 'The Trout' was written when he was a mere 22.