Dvoark Serenade

This review is actually to mention and comment briefly on competing recordings of Dohnanyi chamber works, primarily the First Piano Quintet, an amazing, melodic, well-crafted work from Dohnányi's student years and his Opus 1. Every movement has its felicities, including the catchy final movement with its 5/4 meter and obligatory fugal ending. There are competing versions of that work recorded by the Gabrieli Quartet with Wolfgang Manz, piano; the Vanbrugh Quartet, with Martin Roscoe, piano; and the Takacs Quartet with András Schiff.

In recent years Miaskovsky has suffered something of a decline in the Soviet Union. Textbooks still honour him as an important influence on the development of Soviet music, a great teacher and so on, but performances and recordings of his music have become increasingly rare. Whether this new CD issue (apparently the first of a series) is a sing of re-awakened interest—a kind of Russian counterpart to the Bax phenomenon in England—isn't easy to tell, but obviously the spirit of the age is favourable to the rediscovery of very late romantic orchestral composers, as is demonstrated by the case of Bax, or Respighi, or even Eduard Tubin.

Pierpoljak, a French reggae star who has become known as the White Rasta, has not always espoused Rastafarism. Far from it, in fact. The singer has followed a fairly tortuous path to fame, with many ups and downs in his personal life, before achieving his current success.