Classical

Piotr Anderszewski
Brahms: Late Piano Music, Opp. 116-119
Warner Classics 5021732988096 (downloads to 96kHz/24-bit resolution)

Albums from the Polish pianist, never frequent, have slowed to a trickle. The last was an exquisite selection from Book 2 of Bach’s WTC, five years ago. Here again, addressing the late piano music of Brahms, Anderszewski pushes back against a completist mindset, offering 12 of the 20 pieces, arranged out of numerical sequence. And really that’s the only fault on show; who would not want more after hearing the otherworldly hush of Op.119 No.1? Anderszewski evokes Brahms the sober polyphonist of the late motets; elsewhere he brings Tristan-like intensity to deceptively titled ‘Intermezzos’ such as Opp.116/2 and 118/2. Connections between the pieces multiply, as his fingers tease out every strand of meaning. PQ

Sound Quality: 95%

Tamsin Waley-Cohen, Huw Watkins
‘Reflection’ – Knussen, Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Watkins
Signum SIGCD968 (downloads to 96kHz/24-bit resolution)

The title track is also the shortest piece: one of Oliver Knussen’s final pieces before his death. A restless opening recitative is French-accented, teasing and wistful. The piano enters as a companion in a dream, punctuating the violinist’s sentences, sometimes taking her down new paths of thought. The mood is frail but the line firmly drawn, recalling Ravel. Watkins paints with a broader brush in his own Violin Sonata, letting in more warmth as well as light. Both musicians play for and into the mix a winning approach to the spectres haunting Prokofiev’s First Sonata, hardly less fitting for the sharply etched fragments of Stravinsky’s Duo Concertante. PQ

Sound Quality: 90%

Kitty Whately, Julius Drake
Through The Centuries: Songs Of Madeleine Dring
Chandos CHAN 20390 (downloads to 96kHz/24-bit resolution)

The Garboesque cover portrait, the early studies with Herbert Howells, the later success as a film and TV composer: none of these snippets get us closer to what made Madeleine Dring (1923-1977) such a distinctive songwriter. Perhaps the RAM training surfaces in the hey-nonny-nos of a Shakespeare setting; elsewhere Poulenc comes to mind for a melodic gift closely aligned to the feeling of the text, and a reluctance to dwell for long: quick waters running deep. Given some of the earnest but dross work exhumed these days, Dring’s revival is long overdue. Kitty Whately has the measure of light and serious songs alike, sensitively backed by Julius Drake piano. PQ

Sound Quality: 85%

Lemieux, Staples, Les Siècles/Roth
Mahler: Das Lied Von Der Erde
Harmonia mundi HMM902740 (downloads to 96kHz/24-bit res)

Les Siècles play at full strength on this first-ever ‘period-instrument’ recording of Mahler’s song-symphony. Rather than lending a patina of antiquity, the pure-tone strings and bright, chattering, acidulous winds underline the fashionably oriental harmony and the proximity between Das Lied (1909) and Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire (1912). Roth plays up expressionist contrasts in tempi and dynamics, taking no prisoners in the opening ‘Trinklied’ – balanced to allow Staples to sing rather than shout the text. Lemieux leaves long, noble arches to Baker and Ferrier; her ‘Farewell’ is much more visceral, often more hushed too, despite fishy balancing. PQ

Sound Quality: 80%