Viena Octet

The three works on this album were all written by Max Bruch at the end of his life, after World War I, when he was more than 80 years old. They were not published until after his death in 1920, and then they were forgotten due to Nazi bans on Bruch's music because of his supposed Jewish ancestry, wartime manuscript loss, and the self-serving actions of modernist gatekeepers. In the world they depict, the Great War might as well never have happened, but perhaps that is part of the point.

This disc, recorded in 2001, revisits an earlier recording made by the same group for ASV. This newer recording immediately impresses by its particularly faithful recording quality with the bass end of the instruments firmly placed but without undue prominence. This avoids any suggestion of bass heaviness leading to resonance or booming and allows the whole ensemble to benefit from a proper aural foundation. This sort of recorded accuracy is not as easy to achieve or as common to experience as one might hope so it deserves a special mention.

Western listeners may well assume that the composers represented on this Polish release are of the sort who are well-known in their native country but neglected elsewhere; in fact, one learns that they are obscure even in Poland itself, which makes this a major rediscovery on the part of the Fryderyk Chopin Institute in Warsaw. Both these works were written in the 1830s, by which time Chopin had had time to become a major celebrity, but neither attempts to replicate his achievement (he didn't write much chamber music anyway).

Aside from skill, soul, and wonderful melodies, the wind chamber music of Carl Reinecke has nothing to offer the listener. And as this splendid 1992 recording re-released by Naxos in 2008 shows, that is more than enough. Performed by members of the Boston Symphony, Reinecke's Wind Octet, Op. 216, and Wind Sextet, Op. 271, are light and airy works with bouncy rhythms, buoyant tempos, warm harmonies, memorable tunes, and an enviable grasp of form and proportion. Used to playing under a conductor, the Boston Symphony musicians' poised and attentive performances prove they are entirely capable of producing balanced interpretations on their own.

'Too Hot For Words' blends the tight-knit swing of the Metropolitan Jazz Octet with the unerring musicianship of Dee Alexander to mark the 60th anniversary of Billie Holiday's departure from the planet, mixing Holiday classics with some of Lady Day's lesser- known repertoire. The arrangements sparkle, and Alexander shines as bright as ever. But at no point does she attempt to mimic Holiday. (What would be the point of that)? And the arrangements don't try to imitate the little 'orchestras' that accompanied Holiday's greatest recordings. (No point in that either.) These new settings respect the songs, but reframe them for our era. The album becomes a sort of telescoping time capsule: sterling musicians of the 21st century, building upon an octet sound crafted 50 years earlier, revitalizing songs that Holiday began recording in the 1930s.

"Eight cellos in a circle. The audience can sit around the octet, or even inside the circle. The cellists start to play, and the resulting music spirals around like a moving object. 8 is part of a series of works that started with Timber for six percussionists playing amplified simantras, and includes Rushes for seven bassoonists and Amplified for four electric guitarists. Each of these works is meant to induce a quasi-meditative, almost ecstatic state, in the listener as well as the performer."

They mean well, their hearts are in it, and they clearly have the chops. But ultimately, the Prazák Quartet's and Kocian Quartet's recording of Mendelssohn's ineffably evanescent String Octet doesn't quite make the grade. Because for all their good intentions, the Prazák and Kocian quartets' performance does not quite capture the work's ineffable evanescence, its sense of youthful impetuosity and masterful lucidity or its feeling for achingly lovely melodies and strongly effective rhythms.