Here's a double-barrelled surprise: gripping new music for violin and piano and a performing style that revisits a sweet-scented immediacy more typical of previous generations.

Here's a double-barrelled surprise: gripping new music for violin and piano and a performing style that revisits a sweet-scented immediacy more typical of previous generations. Maria Bachmann, a pupil of Ivan Galamian and the late Szymon Goldberg, has a bright, winsome tone and a heartwarming interpretative manner. The works that particularly suit her are Corigliano's 1963 Violin Sonata and the two pieces that were written with her in mind, Albert Glinsky's Toccata-Scherzo and Paul Moravec's Sonata. Of the latter two, the Glinsky is the more memorable—a sort of Sarasate for the 1990s, its lyrical centre-piece flanked by brilliant outer sections. The Moravec is busy and pleasant, but even Bachmann's dextrous advocacy can't quite mask its stylistic anonymity. The Corigliano, on the other hand, harbours the kind of juicy 'tunes' that modern players search for in vain but hardly ever find in contemporary music. The Lento is strikingly memorable, whereas elsewhere Corigliano demands all the tricks of the fiddler's trade—harmonics, pizzicatos, sal pondcello and so on, all couched in an appealing musical context that might best be described as Stravinsky-cum-Samuel Barber.

Turning then to Fratres and comparing Bachmann with Gidon Kremer (ECM), I was interested to note how Bachmann arpeggiates pizzicato chords, a gesture totally in keeping with her warmer, less spidery approach. Ksemer's rougher-edged but rather more ethereal reading still gets my vote, but Bachmann provides an engagingly demonstrative alternative. Messiaen himself said of his "Praise to the Immortality of Jesus" that it "specifically addresses the second aspect of Jesus, namely His human aspect, the Word that has become flesh, resurrected immortal to give Him life." And it's as well to bear that in mind when listening to Bachmann's unusually sensuous performance, an affectionate, this-worldly option to the more withdrawn manner of, say, Luben Yordanoff (with Barenboim on DG).

Bachmann receives sympathetic support from Jon Klibonoff and both are nicely recorded. I thoroughly enjoyed this recital, and I sincerely hope that there's another on the way. But if and when it arrives, I do hope that RCA drop their tiresome idea of fold-up annotation: within a day or so, my copy was already beginning to look like an old shopping list. Booklets are far better. Incidentally, why photograph the immensely personable Maria Bachmann entangled in net curtains?

-- Robert Cowan, Gramophone [12/1993]