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RECORDINGS OF THE YEAR October We get a real sense of give and take, Isserlis and Várjon giving Chopin’s lines a pliable quality that brings them to life Harriet Smith listens to revelatory Chopin and Schubert from Steven Isserlis and Dénes Várjon, and admires the beauty and passion they bring to this great music Chopin . Schubert . Franchomme Chopin Cello Sonata, Op 65. Introduction and Polonaise brillante, Op 3. Nie ma czego trzeba, Op 74 No 13 (arr Isserlis) Franchomme Nocturne, Op 15 No 1 Schubert Arpeggione Sonata, D821. Nacht und Träume, D827 (arr Isserlis) Steven Isserlis vc Dénes Várjon pf Hyperion F CDA68227 (77’ • DDD) Can it really be 10 years since Steven Isserlis and Dénes Várjon proved a wonderfully innate partnership with their disc of Schumann cello music (5/09)? This new disc is every bit as impressive, perhaps even more so. The very first thing we hear is the beautiful 1851 Érard, as Várjon launches into Chopin’s Introduction and Polonaise brillante (the pitch a tad lower than modern-day concert tuning). The two players bring to the Introduction a sense of freedom – consoling one moment, delicate the next, and then altogether more mournful – and the composer’s high-lying filigree in the keyboard has an effortless fluidity. The Polonaise struts its stuff without ever sounding effortful, with Isserlis’s pizzicatos really pinging through the texture. Passagework that, in some hands, can seem like mere stuffing is here never less than scintillating. Gautier Capuçon and Martha Argerich are, true to form, more extreme in this work, the polonaise rhythms exuberant, perhaps too much so, with Capuçon favouring a more full-on vibrato. Isserlis always plans his programmes painstakingly, and here makes a case for Auguste Franchomme – cellist, composer and faithful friend of Chopin’s – whose C minor Nocturne is an elegant affair, melodically charming if not harmonically particularly striking. But you couldn’t imagine it being better played and it certainly doesn’t outstay its welcome. This forms a neat link from Chopin in brillante mode to his last published masterpiece, the Cello Sonata. I have to confess that I’ve sometimes felt that this can sound meandering with its first-movement repeat (a sensation I had with Alban Gerhardt and Steven Osborne, also on Hyperion, who at times sound uncharacteristically unconvincing in this work). But not here: one of the discoveries Isserlis mentions in PHO T O G R A P H Y P E R R Y I M O N S : 24 GRAMOPHONE RECORDINGS OF THE YEAR 2018 Click on a CD cover to buy/stream from gramophone.co.uk
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October Editor’s Choices RECORDINGS OF THE YEAR BARTÓK Violin Concerto No 1 ENESCU Octet Vilde Frang vn Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra / Mikko Franck Warner Classics Vilde Frang adds to her already impressive discography; along with her superb colleagues she offers a memorable Enescu Octet, and a fine Bartók coupling. HAYDN Cello Concertos SCHOENBERG Verklärte Nacht Alisa Weilerstein vc Trondheim Soloists Pentatone The inspired Alisa Weilerstein pulls off an unusual and illuminating pairing – but then as someone who has paired Elgar and Carter concertos, what do you expect? VAUGHAN WILLIAMS A Sea Symphony Sols; BBC Symphony Chorus and Orchestra / Martyn Brabbins Hyperion Critic Andrew Achenbach couldn’t praise more highly the intelligence and control with which Martyn Brabbins approaches this work, caught in excellent sound. PADEREWSKI Piano Works Kevin Kenner pf Fryderyk Chopin Institute ‘A piano disc … to treasure’ writes Jeremy Nicholas of this recital, one successfully steeped in Kevin Kenner’s long acquaintance with the music, and recorded on the composer’s own instrument. JANSON The Wind Blows – Choral Works Norwegian Soloists’ Choir / Grete Pedersen BIS A fascinating presentation of the music of the contemporary Norwegian composer Alfred Janson, given compelling advocacy by the Norwegian Soloists’ Choir. KASTALSKY Memory Eternal The Clarion Choir / Steven Fox Naxos ‘The rehabilitation of a major work’ writes Ivan Moody; this is music powerfully rooted in the Russian sound world, sung with passion, and beautifully recorded. MONTEVERDI Vespro della Beata Vergine Collegium Vocale Gent / Philippe Herreweghe PHI A superb performance of Monteverdi’s Vespers – three decades after Herreweghe’s first – which feels fresh and bursting with delightfully collaborative musicianship. STRAVINSKY Perséphone Sols; Finnish National Opera Orchestra / Esa‑Pekka Salonen Pentatone Esa-Pekka Salonen’s grasp of Stravinsky’s score and control of the musical forces lends this recording a gripping sense of drama and drive. ‘MELANCHOLIA’ Les Cris de Paris / Geoffroy Jourdain Harmonia Mundi Les Cris de Paris offer a very exciting choral sound – individual voices balanced with moments of dramatic blend – as they delve into the darkness and introspection of a 16-/17th-century programme. the notes – his usual mix of quiet erudition, enthusiasm and self‑deprecating humour – is that the tempo for this movement shouldn’t be Allegro moderato but Maestoso, which gives it a quite different mood. We get a real sense of give and take from the off, Isserlis and Várjon giving Chopin’s lines a pliable quality that brings them to life, while the beautiful second subject is given time to breathe, to rapturous effect, the two players taking the dynamics right down. Throughout, the Érard is the ideal vehicle for conveying the airiness of Chopin’s filigree passagework, while the two musicians relish the moments of stillness in Chopin’s more inward writing. The Scherzo dances with a rare sense of ease, Isserlis surmounting the shifts in register effortlessly and the climaxes never becoming overblown even when Várjon is playing at full pelt. The slow movement has the intensity that du Pré and Barenboim bring to it, which is rather lacking in the hands of Gerhardt and Osborne, yet it never feels overstated, Isserlis letting the plangency of the cello’s phrases speak for themselves, and while the tempo is unhurried the sense of forward motion is unerring. The finale is another place where the choice of piano makes a great difference to the overall effect – on a modern instrument it’s all too easy for the piano to overwhelm. But here Várjon can play out, which he does to joyous effect. Their Schubert Arpeggione is similarly thoughtful and full of details that so often pass by unnoticed. Isserlis talks in the notes of the work’s ‘immense, if understated, sadness’ and that is beautifully brought to life here, from the aching introduction onwards. The cellist and pianist of Trio Dali impressed me in this work a while back, similarly yearning yet also capturing the sonata’s moments of geniality. The slow movement on this new account perfectly balances rapture, simplicity and beauty, the dynamic shadings used to potent effect. gramophone.co.uk Click on a CD cover to buy/stream from The finale, too, is not simply the consoling affair it can be, but full of poignant asides. As a bonus we get two song transcriptions in Isserlis’s own arrangements; Chopin’s Op 74 No 13 conjures a mood of great tragedy within its brief span, while Schubert’s ‘Nacht und Träume’ has a beseeching quality that is simply irresistible. Hyperion’s engineers have given the two players a fine recording, detailed and immediate. Even among Isserlis’s many fine discs, this one stands out. And if you still need convincing that the Chopin Cello Sonata is a total masterpiece, this is the recording to do it. Chopin Cello Sonata – selected comparisons: du Pré, Barenboim (2/73R) (EMI/WARN)   586233-2 or 091934-2 Gerhardt, Osborne (11/08) (HYPE) CDA67624 Chopin Introduction and Polonaise – selected comparison: G Capuçon, Argerich (EMI/WARN) 607367-2 Schubert Arpeggione Sonata – selected comparisons: La Marca, Savary (10/11) (FUGA) FUG584 GRAMOPHONE RECORDINGS OF THE YEAR 2018 25

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RECORDINGS OF THE YEAR

October

We get a real sense of give and take, Isserlis and Várjon giving Chopin’s lines a pliable quality that brings them to life

Harriet Smith listens to revelatory Chopin and Schubert from Steven Isserlis and Dénes Várjon, and admires the beauty and passion they bring to this great music

Chopin . Schubert . Franchomme Chopin Cello Sonata, Op 65. Introduction and Polonaise brillante, Op 3. Nie ma czego trzeba, Op 74 No 13 (arr Isserlis) Franchomme Nocturne, Op 15 No 1 Schubert Arpeggione Sonata, D821. Nacht und Träume, D827 (arr Isserlis) Steven Isserlis vc Dénes Várjon pf Hyperion F CDA68227 (77’ • DDD) Can it really be 10 years since Steven Isserlis and Dénes Várjon proved a wonderfully innate partnership with their disc of Schumann cello music (5/09)? This new disc is every bit as impressive, perhaps even more so.

The very first thing we hear is the beautiful 1851 Érard, as Várjon launches into Chopin’s Introduction and Polonaise brillante (the pitch a tad lower than modern-day concert tuning). The two players bring to the Introduction a sense of freedom – consoling one moment, delicate the next, and then altogether more mournful – and the composer’s high-lying filigree in the keyboard has an effortless fluidity. The Polonaise struts its stuff without ever sounding effortful, with Isserlis’s pizzicatos really pinging through the texture. Passagework that, in some hands, can seem like mere stuffing is here never less than scintillating. Gautier Capuçon and Martha Argerich are, true to form, more extreme in this work, the polonaise rhythms exuberant, perhaps too much so, with Capuçon favouring a more full-on vibrato.

Isserlis always plans his programmes painstakingly, and here makes a case for Auguste Franchomme – cellist, composer and faithful friend of Chopin’s – whose C minor Nocturne is an elegant affair, melodically charming if not harmonically particularly striking. But you couldn’t imagine it being better played and it certainly doesn’t outstay its welcome.

This forms a neat link from Chopin in brillante mode to his last published masterpiece, the Cello Sonata. I have to confess that I’ve sometimes felt that this can sound meandering with its first-movement repeat (a sensation I had with Alban Gerhardt and Steven Osborne, also on Hyperion, who at times sound uncharacteristically unconvincing in this work). But not here: one of the discoveries Isserlis mentions in PHO T O G R A P H Y

P E R R Y

I M O N

S

:

24 GRAMOPHONE RECORDINGS OF THE YEAR 2018

Click on a CD cover to buy/stream from gramophone.co.uk

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