Category: Recording

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Recording

Lully: Cadmus & Hermione

CD cover Lully Cadmus et Hermione Dumestre.jpg

Le Poème Harmonique – Ensemble Aedes, Vincent Dumestre
122:18 (2 CDs and a libretto in a cardboard wallet)
Château de Versailles Spectacles CVS037

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This was Lully’s first tragédie-en-musique. The libretto and, indeed, the new genre caused a certain amount of outrage among traditional dramatists but the mould had been broken and a new one created. This ‘studio-style’ recording was made in the opera house at Versailles which facilitates some doubling-up of the smaller parts, though this is of no great consequence. The artists are supported by a lavish booklet (essays in French, English and German, libretto in only French and English), though there are some minor typographical errors).

The solo singing is all very good, with well-paced recitative and well-defined emotions. I was less comfortable with the chorus, where the top line is not always as coherent as one might wish. But it is the instrumental contribution that I find disappointing, though others may think it wonderful. As is his habit, this conductor cannot resist fiddling with the instrumentation. The wind scoring is over-elaborated, and I doubt that Lully ever heard recorders at this pitch, let alone used them; I feel that the continuo is over-scored; and I also doubt the need for the percussion contributions.

When so much is so good it is a shame that these irritations occur. Cadmus is a fine work, and does not need this dressing-up.

David Hansell

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Recording

S. L. Weiss: Pièces de Luth

Diego Salamanca plays lute music by Weiss

Diego Salamanca lute
77:24
Seulétoile SE 01

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Diego Salamanca’s charming CD opens with the well-known Ouverture in B flat (SC4) of Sylvius Leopold Weiss (1687-1750). This piece survives in the two major sources of Weiss’s music: the London manuscript, Lbl Add. MS 30387, and the Dresden manuscript, Sächsische Landesbibliothek, MS Mus. 2841-V-1. The British Library has made their manuscript freely available online, and all the music Salamanca takes from it is transcribed into staff notation by Ruggero Chiesa in his Weiss anthology, Intavolatura di Liuto published back in 1968.
 
The Ouverture begins with a bright, optimistic chord of B flat major, and progresses with slow-moving chords interspersed with little bursts of single-line melody notes, ending with a cadence in the dominant (F major). There follows a brisk Allegro, which has the same rhythmic idea throughout – each new voice enters with three repeated up-beat quavers. Presumably to draw attention to a new entry of the theme, Salamanca often (mercifully not always) hesitates a moment before those repeated notes, yet there is no need for him to do so. The music is composed in a way which allows each new entry to be clearly heard, and those little hesitations interrupt the flow, albeit only a little. The piece ends with a short Largo, which has just six chords – each played three times and followed by a single-note semiquaver – followed by a descending passage of semiquavers leading to the hemiola of the final cadence.
 
From the Dresden manuscript Salamanca plays Weiss’s Sonata in G minor (SC51). This sonata lacks a prelude and a sarabande, so Salamanca adds Prelude (SC25) which precedes the Sonata in the manuscript. The Prelude consists of broken chords over a slow-moving bass, which Salamanca plays with suitable gravitas. There is a surprising moment where the music pauses in the middle for a full four seconds before continuing. He also includes the lovely Sarabande (SC49) in B flat (the relative major of G minor), which has some unexpected moments including touches of chromaticism. He picks a lively tempo for the Courante, Bourrée, and Polonaise. I like the clarity of his playing, and the way he gives phrases direction. The long, slow Allemande is especially delightful. The Sonata ends with an impressive, fast, gigue-like Presto.
 
There follows Fantaisie in C minor (SC 9) taken from the London Weiss manuscript. The first section has no bar-lines in the original, and consists entirely of quavers over a slow-moving bass. There is a pleasing amount of give and take from Salamanca as it builds up intensity, arriving at a lengthy dominant – 60 quavers in all over a pedal bass – and cadencing into the second section. This section does have bar-lines, has a stricter tempo, and is more fugal in character. There is a note in the manuscript at the end of the piece: ”Weis 1719 a Prague”.
 
The CD ends with Weiss’s Sonata in G major (SC22) from the London manuscript. The opening Prelude begins with eight chords, all with G in the bass, and with the four notes of each chord notated one on top of the other. In this performance each chord is broken into eight semiquavers, and Salamanca varies the order in which he arpeggiates them. There follows a passage in D major with a rising bass line and with c’# heard seven times as a lower auxiliary to d’; but when a chord of A major is firmly established, c’ naturals suddenly kick in, the bass works its way downwards, and the piece ends with a two-octave scale of G major. The scene is set for the Toccata and Fugue. The fugue is quite long, moving mainly in quick crotchets, with some interesting modulations to related keys. It is interspersed with short sequential passages in quavers where scrunchy dissonances are satisfyingly resolved. The excitement winds down at the end with a brief Adagio. The last movement is a bustling Allegro, where Weiss makes good use of the low 12th and 13th courses. He is given the credit for having these added to the 11-course lute round about 1719.
 
Salamanca’s lute has 13 courses, and was made by Maurice Ottiger. The treble notes are strong, but the bass are a little on the quiet side, which may be due more to the recording engineer than to the maker or player. The recording was made in the Donjon de Vez in Oise, France, which Salamanca says has an excellent acoustic for lutes. A few of the paintings from the Donjon’s modern art exhibition brighten the pages of the liner note booklet.
 
Stewart McCoy
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Recording

Tiranno

CD cover Kate Lindsey Tiranno

Kate Lindsey, [Nardus Williams soprano, Andrew Staples tenor], Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen
75:34
Alpha Classics Alpha 736

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The tyranny of the title is that of the infamous Emperor Nero, coincidentally the subject (as I write) of a new exhibition at the British Museum that seeks to redress at least some of the infamy associated with his name. Unsurprisingly there is little redemptive in this collection featuring extracts from Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea and a group of cantatas from the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the most famous of which is the youthful Handel’s superbly freewheeling drama Agrippina condotta a morire, the confused and tormented words of Nero’s mother following her condemnation to death by her son. The locus topos of two cantatas by Alessandro Scarlatti could not be more different, Il Nerone finding the emperor in full tyrannical flow, ordering the death of his mother, his wife Ottavia and his old teacher Seneca, while his own death is the subject of La morte di Nerone, claimed as a first recording and obviously an early work since its arias are brief strophic verses rather than the usual da capo structures of the mature cantatas. Finally, and placed with little apparent sense of irony after the extreme sensuality of ‘Pur ti miro!’ (the final duet of Poppea), comes La Poppea by the little-known Bolognese composer Bartolomeo Monari (1662-97), a cantata recounting the lurid death of the pregnant Poppea following reputedly being kicked in the stomach by her husband. The work itself, incorporating both narrative and the words of the dying Poppea herself does not match the grim scenario, being relatively tame and concluding with a moralizing aria on the transience of beauty, a favourite trope of the period.

It goes without saying there is scope for highly dramatic interpretation in much of this music, dealing as so much of it does with extreme emotion. American mezzo Kate Lindsey has seemingly built a considerable reputation as a dramatic actress in a wide operatic range and employs it to the full here. Sadly it’s thoroughly 21st-century drama, at times, especially in the Handel, reducing the music to something like a modern psycho-drama, replete with overwrought self-indulgence and a vulgar use of portamento and other mannerisms, that quite forgets the ease and naturalness that the singing masters of the period expected. Ironically, it comes in the company of poor diction, one of Lindsey’s besetting sins and a particularly serious one in this repertoire. This is especially true of plain recitative, where the approach is too cantato and the tempo at times too slow.

Otherwise, my feelings on Lindsey’s singing are somewhat mixed. Were the programme to be judged on the basis of the opening Scarlatti cantata (Il Nerone), it would almost surely be dismissed by me out of hand, for the vibrato here is wide and near consistent, the interpretation highly mannered. Curiously, however, in more restrained moments and particularly when employing a lovely mezza voce in the middle range there is markedly less vibrato in evidence. Indeed a break in the voice at times gives the disconcerting impression that we are hearing two quite different voices.

The anachronistic character of these performances suggests they are unlikely to have great appeal to specialist readers of EMR. The Monteverdi and Monari are certainly better in this respect, though Ottavia’s  ‘Addio Roma!’ brings a fresh outburst of frenetically undisciplined singing. Lindsey is effectively supported in the Poppea extracts, especially by Nardus Williams in ‘Pur ti miro!’,  rather less so by the continuo players of Arcangelo, whose thrumming theorbist is a near-constant irritant.       

Brian Robins

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Recording

Bach: Sonatas for viola da gamba & harpsichord

CD cover Bach Sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord Robert Smith Francesco Corti

Robert Smith viola da gamba, Francesco Corti harpsichord
62:51
resonus RES10278

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This is a beautiful CD, and I recommend it wholeheartedly. Both performers are wonderful players and seem instinctively at home playing together. Smith’s poise, fluency and eloquence are matched by Corti’s impeccable sense of timing, where nothing is rushed but everything sparkles: they must have enjoyed making this recording immensely: listening to it repeatedly will not only be endlessly invigorating but forever reinforcing the cardinal skill of how to attend to each other. Smith plays a gamba by Pierre Bohr after Colichon and Corti a copy of a Mietke by Christoph Kern.

A bit of a mystery surrounds the gamba sonatas: once thought to date to that fertile period for chamber music in Cöthen, they now seem to be later, and perhaps part of Bach’s endless reinvention of his compositions in a variety of forms. In spite of what we know of the household’s music-making, so few trio sonatas seem to survive: was the double concerto in D minor for two violins originally a trio sonata for two violins and continuo? And were the Trio Sonatas for organ never played at home on a variety of melodic instruments? The opening movement of Sonata IV (BWV 528) had a previous life as the sinfonia for oboe d’amore and gamba that opened the second part of BWV 76 that dates from 1723. Bach was clearly a pioneer in trio sonatas where a single instrument is paired with the two hands of a Klavier, and the G major gamba sonata exists in an earlier form for two traversi and continuo. In these three sonatas, almost every style seems to get an airing, and while the fast movements reveal the players’ skills, the slow movements show just how far they can enter into each other’s emotional space.

Some of the sense of the unexpected is given to this CD by an additional sonata for gamba and harpsichord by Christopher Schaffrath (c.1710-1763). This three-movement sonata is in the lighter gallant style and provides a contrast to the Bach sonatas; but an even greater contrast is provided by Robert Smith’s own Dido’s Torment – a five-minute charged improvisatory solo, reminding us of the gamba’s history in the hands of Marin Marais and others as a favoured instrument for solo, late-night meditative playing.

But it is their Bach that is so memorable: no-one should be without it.

David Stancliffe

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Recording

Odile Edouard: En attendant J. Sebastian Bach

Floral design

Quatre cordes en vibration
La collection de l’oreille
les éditions de la matrice.m
https://www.sonarmein.bzh/en-attendant-johann-sebastian-bach.html

One of the effects of the enforced isolation of lockdown is that we have had the opportunity to reflect on how we have got to where we are. Amid the rash of autobiographical outpourings, musicians like the rest of us have been assessing where they are. Deprived of the normal context of music-making with others, solo recordings have multiplied. 

Odile Edouard has been an experienced and passionate teacher of HIP violin at the celebrated Conservatoire in Lyon since she was 24, and this CD of music for solo violin is her response to the deprivation of playing with others during the lockdown. The CD and its accompanying autobiographical booklet open a window on her passion for her instrument and the music she presents chronicles her pilgrimage via many different composers and widely varying styles in the century before Johann Sebastian’s Ciaccona that concludes the programme. We are introduced to Thomas Baltzar, Nicola Matteis, Heinrich Franz von Biber and Johann Paul von Westhoff played on a violin by Marieke Bodart after Stainer, and her bows are described as well – each one being listed beside the piece. For the later composers – including Vilsmayr, Pisendel and Telemann – she moves to her Klotz, made in Mittenwald in 1757. A third violin that we might have heard was stuck with the luthier during the lockdown.

The playing is elegant, committed and rhapsodic, and the storyline is intriguing. But whether this kind of reflective musing is what you are looking for in a CD that will be a long-time companion on your shelves is not a question I can answer.

I was glad to have heard it, and I suspect it might be inspiring for a young enthusiast, waiting to be captivated as Odile was when she was 14. If you have a grandchild or godchild or just know a wistful would-be young star violinist, give it a try. It might change their lives.

David Stancliffe

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Recording

Bach | Mendelssohn: The organ sonatas

CD cover Bach Mendelssohn Organ Sonatas


Hans-Eberhard Roß (Goll Organ of St Martin, Memmingen)
141:27 (2 CDs in a card triptych)
audite 23.447

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Teaching online has become a new art form, and the experienced teacher Hans-Eberhard Roß has hit on the idea of pairing the six Bach Trio Sonatas (BWV 525-530) with the six Mendelssohn Sonatas as a ‘kind of organ school’, interlacing Bach with Mendelssohn sonata by sonata and using the Goll organ in St Martin, Memmingen in June 2020 to demonstrate them.

The Goll organ was built in 1998 and the website www.audite.de gives some of Roß’ further notes on each movement of the Mendelssohn; only the basic specification of this four-manual organ is given in the liner notes. The organ feels as though it was conceived for the 19th-century French symphonic tradition, but Roß assures us that it is equally good for Mendelssohn and Bach.

He uses plenty of upperwork in the outer movements of the Bach sonatas and the generous acoustic in which the organ speaks does not detract from the clarity of his playing. Solo reeds are used to contrast with the flutes in the slow movements and, a chorus reed is even used for the LH of the Allegro in Sonata 2 in C minor, where, after an exceptionally well-registered and eloquent Largo, the 8’ pedal booms unpleasantly. In the Mendelssohn sonatas, it is the overall sound of the fortes that I find the organ lets him down. Here his brisk tempi, the bright trompette tone and the rich mixtures combine to make it feel a long way from Mendelssohn’s Berlin or the London for which his sonatas were conceived. English organs of the 1840s did not sound remotely like this, and Roß seems determined to display all this modern organ’s registrational possibilities as if to prove how much can be done to bring out the voices of the music before him – indeed in a note on the Audite website he specifically refers to the possibility of a large organ equipped with registrational aids being able to do just that: personally, I find it a distraction. It is like playing the 48 on a piano, where you can ‘bring out’ the returning fugue subject in case your hearers can’t spot it.

So although we can applaud the teacher’s desire to set the Bach and Mendelssohn sonatas side by side, I do not find the use of this instrument or the style of playing very convincing for either. Nor, in spite of his obvious skill and his pedagogical zeal, do I learn much from this pairing; except of course to have Mendelssohn’s debt to JSB underlined at every turn. The pedal solos, the complex fugal writing, even the sustained Bachian arpeggios in the Allegro assai vivace that concludes the First sonata (so reminiscent of the passagework that opens Komm, Heiliger Geist BWV 651) bring Mendelssohn’s debt to Bach vividly before us. This is a welcome reminder: but I doubt if that is what many readers of the EMR are looking for.

David Stancliffe

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Recording

Isaac: Missa Wohlauff gut Gsell von hinnen

CD Cover Isaac Missa Wohlauff gut Gsell von hinnen

Cinquecento Renaissance Vokal
hyperion CDA68337
78:03

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In any history of music, or any listing of the greatest composers of a particular time, certain names can be expected always to turn up. Alongside Josquin, there is usually a nod, or a gesture more animated, in the direction of Isaac. The likes of Josquin have flourishing academic industries committed to perpetuating their fame, but just as some rediscovered composers have to be added to this pantheon, so The Usual Suspects need to have their music scrutinised periodically to confirm that it really is as good as it is cracked up to be, in the light of continuing musical rediscoveries, and is not just reeled out as being rated among the best uncritically because it always has been. This is the value of a recording such as the one currently under review. Now that we are increasingly aware of just how many outstanding composers there were around the time of Josquin and in his wake, does an established star such as Isaac still deserve his elevated status?

The evidence of this disc is a stentorian affirmative. It is an extraordinarily good recording, as much for the quality of the music as for its performance. It is Cinquecento’s best recording since Palestrina’s second book of Lamentations (Hyperion CDA68284) and one cannot praise it more highly than that. They have made recordings of music by truly excellent, undeservedly neglected composers, besides some established fixtures, but sometimes a composer elbows his way out from among those who are even that good, and confirms that here is someone who is simply world class. That is what happens on this disc. Every track is outstanding, and Isaac is manifestly on a par with the greatest – you name them, he is their equal, from Machaut to Byrd via Josquin and, as we have seen, Palestrina. And he is aided by Cinquecento in blistering form. They can be monochromatic and pedestrian, but here they hit their straps, their interpretations fully complementing the quality of Isaac’s music. Besides the Mass, the programme includes six motets (one possibly by Obrecht rather than Isaac) and Josquin’s setting of the song on which Isaac bases his Mass.

First, to the Mass. As David J. Burn explains in his excellent notes, it is based upon a song that survives with both German and French texts. This is why Josquin’s setting in four parts with the French text Comment peult avoir joye? – itself a minor masterpiece – is included. Isaac’s Mass is in six parts, but a high proportion of its many sections are for reduced voices. He takes every aspect of the song and seems to present it in every way possible to a composer of his time. His judgment in varying the numbers voices, and reintroducing all six, is faultless, and Cinquecento duly respond faultlessly. Their voices resonate sonorously yet whether singing down to three parts or up to the full six, whether low in their register or high, whether loud or soft, every line is clearly audible, and its relationship to its fellows is perfectly balanced, while retaining the momentum essential to sustaining the rhetorical and narrative flow. Such is the quality of Isaac’s music and of Cinquecento’s execution that, for this listener, their excellence seems to grow with repeated hearings. So many passages clamour for notice; one in particular for this reviewer is the third and final Agnus in which Isaac’s effortless canonic contortions bring about breath-taking suspensions, while he allows the outline of his chosen tune to conduct the Mass to a sublime and satisfying conclusion.

In their different ways the motets, all in four or five parts, are just as fine. They range from the majestic O decus ecclesia in five parts, running to over twelve minutes – just before midway through the second part there is a divinely contrived descending sequence, subsequently repeated in outline ascending as well as descending again, the nature of which will be familiar to listeners acquainted with masses by composers as late as Rogier and Monteverdi – to the comparably minute Parce Domine at less than two minutes. Sonorities, melodies, harmonies, textures, narrative flow and rhythmic vitality are all products of the creative mind of a genius. These are served by Cinquecento with their best singing on disc, not only for the standard of their actual singing, but also for their interpretations, never bland, never exaggerated, always sensitive to Isaac’s settings of his texts. As the notes explain, the final work Judaea et Jerusalem might be by Obrecht. This seems quite possible to this listener, but even if it is by Obrecht, it sits well in this company, being the work of a composer whose stature is comparable to that of Isaac.

Admirers of Cinquecento will find themselves rewarded as never before by this recording. Admirers of Isaac who do not know this music, especially the mass, will find their admiration confirmed and perhaps even expanded. Explorers unacquainted with Isaac will discover a new musical territory replete with riches.

Richard Turbet

Categories
Book Recording

Bernardina: Une vie secrète à la Pietà

Cover of Bernardina Une vie secrète à la Pietà

A novel (in French) by Arièle Butaux with a historical postlude by Olivier Fourés, and a CD of Venetian music
Collectif Cordis & Organo
64:00
Seuletoile SE 03

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Described as a ‘Livre-disque’, this is a short story set in Vivaldi’s ospedale in1741. There are supporting essays about this institution, its activities and the main characters in the story (all in French only), and tucked away at the back is a CD of chamber and keyboard music that includes attractive pieces by less well-known figures such as Gasparini and Laurenti, as well as Vivaldi and Albinoni. Where to shelve the package may be an issue for some, as it is significantly larger than a standard CD case but significantly smaller than any book I currently have within reach.

The recording was made in a Swiss church that boasts a 1786 organ and we hear this both as a soloist and used for the continuo – sometimes without a melodic instrument on the bass line. (In fact, we hear all three players together only in the opening and closing works.) This is a welcome and effective sonority, not least because the organ sound is so much richer than the ‘continuo boxes’ we usually encounter. The cello sonata by Benedetto Marcello, with organ only, is lovely and a further cello sonata (Vivaldi) with harpsichord only is also effective.

One small presentational issue clouds what is overwhelmingly a sunny musical picture. Here and there the gaps between movements and/or works feel slightly uncomfortable in their length. In a live context, this matter cannot always be artist-led, of course, but on CD .  .?

I will leave comment on the literary merits of the story to those more qualified, but I certainly enjoyed its musical complement.

David Hansell

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Recording

Jesu meine Freude

CD cover Jesu meine Freude MDG Gold

Ensemble BachWerkVokal, Gordon Safari
65:35
MDG Gold 923 2207-6

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The neat concept behind this recording is both fascinating and attractive, drawing together works inspired that take their cue from the famous hymn, and observing how it ripples through time and the various composer’s works, thus delivering a stylistic overview. The CD is book-ended with Telemann’s offering from his “French Cycle” (the 1714/15 Neumeister variant)* and the wonderfully crafted setting by Johnn Ludwig Krebs. In between, we have the translucent motets of Johann Friedrich Doles and Johann Sebastian Bach, for four and five voices respectively. Within the limited accompaniment of these motets, we get some subtle variations, which feel just right, and the vocal lines are intimate and radiant, pert and clipped at the right time. The Doles variant of this famous Johann Frank hymn applies some slick touches of drama that stand out and impress. The Bach version (BWV227) is filtered through his great musical mind for some more conventional motet writing, and then delivers the goods with clever contrapuntal vocal threads, never losing sight of the hymn itself. One word of warning, though: no translation into English of these works, so swim well those who can – no life-jackets are supplied!

The opening Telemann cantata (TVWV 1:966) offers many attractions in its nine movements: the opening aria, Geht ihr heissen Seufzer… Klopfet… features four recorders “knocking” with soprano Electra Lochhead in full flow, hits the mark, and captivates. Before the final chorale, there is further descriptive writing in another stand-out aria: Schlage bald, gewünschte Stunde, with a mesmeric bell-motif. Listening blind, many might easily mistake the fine setting by Krebs (KWV110) for a lost JSB piece. It is tightly and neatly woven music with two sprightly oboes capturing the radiant hymnal theme. It is fascinating to hear the Krebs variant take on Schlage bald, geliebte Stunde!, here sung with great skill by the agile soprano Zsófia Szabó. Indeed, the singing from BachWerkVokal Salzburg throughout the disc is a rare delight, picking out the finery and drama, especially in the exposed intimacy of the motets.

This gathering of noteworthy works based on Johann Frank’s hymn displays various forms and styles in a way that cleverly reveals the development of musical styles over time. It is an innovative concept that the group under Gordon Safari has previously applied to “Singet dem Herrn”. A successful CD wrapped in MDG’s golden sound, it is also the first recording of the Telemann work, possibly also of the Doles and Krebs.

David Bellinger

* The complete recording of Telemann’s French Cycle will start on cpo in the Autumn.

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Recording

Schubert: Piano Trio No. 2, Arpeggione Sonata

CD cover Schubert Piano Trio no 2 Arpeggione sonata Hobarth Rudin Häkkinen

Erich Höbarth violin, Alexander Rudin arpeggione/cello and Aapo Häkkinen Graf fortepiano
79:55
Naxos 8.573884

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Arguably the main talking point here is Schubert’s Arpeggione Sonata in A minor, D 821 played on the instrument for which it was written in 1824. The arpeggione, a kind of bowed guitar with frets and six strings, had been invented only around a year earlier by one of the principal Viennese luthiers, Johann Georg Stauffer. It would enjoy a brief existence, its only noted performer being Vincenz Schuster, a guitarist who was a regular performer at the domestic concerts given by Schubert and his friends. Today the work is usually played on the cello, or, less frequently the viola, but given the greater compass of the arpeggione, it requires transposition and has been adapted for all manner of instruments, not to mention turned into a concerto. Schubert scholars tend to be rather snooty about it, but it is an affable, engaging and substantial piece in three movements, a playful Allegro moderato with a development section that builds a fair degree of tension, a song-like Adagio with some typically felicitous modulations and a good-humoured final Allegretto that sets out as an animated dialogue between the two instruments.

The performance is excellent. The arpeggione sounds (at least here) a little like a cross between a cello and a viol, but the upper register has a distinctive wiry sonority. It blends well with the fortepiano, a Viennese instrument built by Conrad Graf in 1827, the year of the E flat Piano Trio, and just a year before Schubert’s death. It would have been good to have been given more detail on it, for it is an instrument of exceptional tonal beauty, with a silvery top register capable of the most delicate scalic passagework and arpeggiations, but also a strong, firmly rounded bass, as the Finnish harpsichordist and fortepianist Aapo Häkkinen demonstrates throughout both works.

The Piano Trio No 2 in E flat, D 929, is of course one of the great products of Schubert’s last year, a massive four-movement work rich in all that is valued in the composer. The strong opening announcement of the Allegro sets out the stall with striking effect. This, Schubert seems to be saying, is going to be something impressive and of expansive breadth. Yet he is quickly into more lyrical territory with the cello’s statement and the movement will ebb and flow between moments of dramatic tension and flowing lyricism, all splendidly captured here by Erich Höbarth, Alexander Rudin and Häkkinen. Listen, for example, to the beguiling lyrical warmth of the secondary idea. A similarly treasurable moment comes at the same point in the succeeding Andante con moto, and again shortly afterwards with the keyboard’s arpeggiations, a passage marked con Pedale, appassionato, where Häkkinen conjures pure magic from the Graf. But throughout these are performances of the highest calibre, performances that given the bargain Naxos price tag should be snapped up without delay.

Brian Robins