James Inverne’s pick of this month’s outstanding new discs – hear excerpts on our CD and online

Editor’s Choice

TRACK 1

THIS MONTH’S SPECIAL CD FEATURE

THE REAL RACHMANINOV

Vladimir Ashkenazy (above), one of the world’s supreme Rachmaninov interpreters, attempts to understand what drove him – in discussion with Rob Cowan

You can also hear excerpts from this month’s Editor’s Choice recordings at our music club. Visit

www.gramophone.co.uk

Listening

Room

Also on the CD

TRACK 2

LISZT

Piano Sonata

Boris Berezovsky pf

Mirare

I vividly recall a recording of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto from a few years ago where Boris Berezovsky sounded distinctly routine, even as if a little bored with the piece. There is nothing routine whatsoever about this marvellous Liszt recording, though. Berezovsky displays all the virtuosity and fire that made him famous, together with a real sense that he’s having an absolute whale of a time. Smashing!

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TRACK 3

HUME

‘Passion and Division’

Susanne Heinrich

va da gamba

Hyperion

Susanne Heinrich, you may remember, was the lady who brought us that marvellous (and Gramophone Award- winning) recording of Abel a few years ago. Here at last is her follow-up, an exploration of the music of Tobias Hume, who shared a patron with Shakespeare and annoyed Dowland by championing the viol over the lute. Heinrich herself is on terrific form again.

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Reissue of the month

some 85 years) was an unrivalled centre of cello excellence. Well, that Paris is recalled here with 20 CDs of Tortelier’s recordings. At super-budget price, it will be a must for many. The selection has many

Arnold Whittall surveys the best recordings of Berg’s Violin Concerto

COLLECTIONPAGE 60

PLUS Enter our Competition. Can you tell who is singing happy 87th birthday to Gramophone? Win a dozen discs.

4 GRAMOPHONE MAY 2010

So many bumper archive sets have scant notes, it’s good to find a predictably knowledgeable and interesting essay here from Tully Potter. He sets the scene by suggesting that the Paris of Casals and Tortelier (an era stretching

high-points, not least Saint- Saëns’s First Piano Trio alongside Maria de la Pau and Tortelier junior. Good too to be reminded that he was the champion of the Elgar Concerto, at least until his student Jacqueline du Pré took it on.

REVIEW ON PAGE 114

TRACK 4

SOR

Early Works

William Carter gtr

Linn

That William Carter is one of the most intelligent as well as gifted of guitarists is amply demonstrated by this new recording. To play the early solo music of Fernando Sor, he not only plays with the fingertips (rather than the nails), he plays on a guitar that has been built in the 19th-century style. The result is a sound world filled with colours. As ever, Carter is a sensitive, refined and moving interpreter.

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TRACK 5

PROKOFIEV

Piano Concertos Nos 2 & 3

Freddy Kempf pf Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra / Andrew Litton

BIS

A masterful Prokofievian pair here from Freddy Kempf, who couples the Second and Third concertos and in so doing beats Evgeny Kissin at his own game. Yet this is a thoughtful reading – no hammering away for hammering away’s sake for him – and one in which the orchestra under the excellent Andrew Litton play a full part.

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DVD & Blu-ray of the month

debate by Wagnerians. Judging from this excellent Tristan they can still hit enviable form when they want to. In Robert Dean Smith and

The state of Bayreuth’s cultural health, seemingly indivisible from the power- politics that have dogged it in recent years, is a constant source of greatly enjoyed

Iréne Theorin they have as fine a pair of Wagner leads (in these straitened times) as we have. Both excel here, underpinned by Peter Schneider’s propulsive conducting. But perhaps most cause for celebration is a production full of ideas that make you think. That really is a return to form.

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