PIANO QUINTET IN G MINOR - STRING QUARTET NO.1

Not too many years ago Max Bruch was close to being a "one-hit wonder" in the classical music lists, that hit being his G minor violin concerto. There were a couple of shorter pieces, notably the Kol Nidrei, but there was little available evidence to judge the opinion of some familiar observers that Bruch was as great a composer as his contemporary Johannes Brahms.


With the CD era came an expansion of recorded repertoire, and now Bruch's three symphonies, more concertos, and several other large-scale works are available. None I've heard shows that he was near Brahms' equal, but they have solid workmanship, good melodies, considerable imagination, and other virtues that result in worthwhile music. However, what likely kept Bruch from the highest compositional magnitude is his music's pervasive comfortable Victorian bourgeois outlook.


A look at Bruch's catalog reveals an emphasis on choral music, including that form so beloved of Victorians, the oratorio. Lay of the Bell (as its title is rendered in the flowery English translation of Edward Bulwer Lytton used in CPO's detailed program book) is not religious, but it is moralistic. Schiller's text was a mainstay of German sentiment during the 19th century. Casting a bell in a foundry is an allegory for raising a child to be a good person, presumed to be the path to ensuring personal prosperity and a well-ordered society. This sentiment foundered on the shoals of World War I and went under entirely during the Nazi era.

So this 100-minute-long choral and orchestral piece comes with a strike against it: It's a bit hard to read the text (particularly in the overheated language of Bulwer Lytton, he most famed for "It was a dark and stormy night...") without sniggering, the while Bruch's music plows on with undiminished earnestness. However, heard without first reading program notes or text, it becomes a very interesting, entertaining work, and it remains so on subsequent listening. There is some stodginess in the music, but it doesn't drag despite the pompous text. The large form is shaped well, so that the unexpected presence of the Christmas tune "Silent Night" at the work's end (unexplained by the notes or the text) evokes a satisfying frisson.

The performers approach the work as worthy of admiration, and they prove that it is. Fine melodies, along with an intriguing harmonic language marrying Brahmsian solidity with Wagnerian love of suspensions and other devices to keep harmonies unpredictable, make the music interesting. The four soloists are a fine group, singing with lyrical tones rather than the barking sound often heard in middle-European oratorio performances. Jac van Steen and his orchestra and chorus work well together, and the live audience is well behaved. The sound is a bit opaque, but not to a troublesome degree.

This is a big piece, obviously intended by the composer to be an Important Work. Ein Deutsches Requiem it ain't, but in this recording it provides a welcome insight into a composer who evidently has a lot of good unknown music still mouldering on library shelves.
--Joseph Stevenson, ClassicsToday.com

Trio Soleil consists of Denmark’s foremost pianist Elisabeth Westenholz, the principal clarinetist of the Danish National Radio Symphony orchestra Niels Thomsen and Tim Frederiksen who is the newly appointed professor (in viola) at the Royal Danish Academy Of Music in Copenhagen.

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Cho-Liang Lin; Chicago Symphony Orchestra/Leonard Slatkin. CBS MK 42315 [with Scottish Fantasy; also available with Mendelssohn: Concerto in E minor, and various encore pieces (CBS MDK 44902)] (recorded 1986). Lin’s is a straightforward, expressive reading of the concerto, distinguished by extraordinarily beautiful playing. Bruch was a melodist of the first rank, and the soloist emphasizes that aspect of the music in his warmly phrased account. Leonard Slatkin and the Chicago Symphony provide outstanding support, and the performance is captured in a recording of ideal depth and spaciousness. Two versions of the account are now available; the choice for most buyers is the mid-price recoupling that pairs the Bruch with Mendelssohn’s Concerto in E minor and encore pieces by Kreisler and Sarasate. – Ted Libbey, author of The NPR Guide to Building a Classical CD Collection.

Import Hybrid-SACD pressing.

THE COMPLETE WORKS FOR VIOLONC

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

Throughout his 82-year life, Max Bruch remained true to the musical ideals of his youth, formed by Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann and German folk songs. As a result, the same composer who in the 1880’s was regarded as Brahms’ equal, by the time of his death in 1920 was considered an anachronistic irrelevance. Nowadays, however, few would deny that his production includes numerous works of exquisite sonority, beautiful melodiousness and admirable formal cohesion: a glorious irrelevance indeed. His Violin Concerto No. 1 was a spectacular success from its first performance in 1868, and soon won over audiences both in Germany and abroad. In fact, it became so popular that Bruch in later years became increasingly worried about being considered a ‘one-hit wonder’. It is thus a staple of all violin soloists that Vadim Gluzman here takes on, after his recordings of the concertos by Tchaikovsky (‘without doubt one of the work's finest recordings in recent years’, BBC Music Magazine), Barber (‘one of the most beautiful and characterful recordings of this work’, klassik-heute.de) and Korngold (‘Gluzman’s playing lends the work a new vitality and cohesion’, Classica). Supported by the eminent Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and its music director Andrew Litton, Gluzman couples the work with a rarity, a violin version of the Romance in F major, Op.85, composed by Bruch for viola and orchestra almost 35 years after the violin concerto. The composer also made an arrangement for violin and piano, and it is this violin part which Gluzman performs to the original orchestral score. Closing the programme is the String Quintet in A minor in which Gluzman is joined by four eminent string players: Sandis Šteinbergs, Maxim Rysanov, Ilze Klava and Reinis Birznieks. Composed in 1918, the Quintet certainly offers no indication of being the exact contemporary of modernist works such as Stravinsky’s Histoire d’un soldat; on the other hand its almost youthful energy, dramatic instinct and playful exuberance equally belies the fact that it was composed by a man in his eightieth year.

My French colleague Christophe Huss called a few days ago and said "You've got to try the new Bruch Concerto disc on Naxos. It's really excellent." Now Christophe really does know his stuff, and even his Bruch, which is saying a lot. Tovey thought Bruch was a genius, especially for his choral works, but then he said the same thing about Parry, so even great writers on music have their weak spots. Still, there's no denying that in writing for violin and orchestra Bruch was in his element, and the neglect of these two works is rather remarkable.

The Second concerto always has impressed me as being every bit as good as the First. Like its more famous predecessor, it avoids that Romantic Achilles' heel, the sonata-form first movement. Here a voluptuous and melodically stunning Adagio leads to a brief, dramatic recitative and a lively finale. The Third concerto isn't quite so lucky--sonata form rears its ugly head in the very long first movement--but violinist Maxim Fedotov and conductor Dmitry Yablonsky take Bruch's "energico" directive at face value and all comes out well. Certainly, Bruch had no issues with finales (almost as big a problem as opening movements), and that of the Third concerto is particularly winning, and marvelously scored.

Fedotov plays both works splendidly. He has that gutsy, vibrant tone characteristic of so many Russian string players, which means that he's able to relax into the lyrical music without ever turning coy. In the finale of the Third, especially, his double-stopping is a joy, his passage work pretty immaculate, and he projects both concertos with real virtuoso relish. Yablonsky and the orchestra accompany with similar enthusiasm, and the sonics are extremely natural and well balanced. You might be tempted to overlook this release--but don't. Thank you, Christophe!

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

COMPLETE STRING QUARTETS

When Heifetz chose Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy, reportedly his favorite concerto, for his legendary appearance on TV, he had already recorded it twice; the later recording, with Malcolm Sargent and the New Symphony Orchestra of London, has sometimes been recommended as representing him at his best. Although the Fantasy hasn’t received the attention that the First Concerto had garnered even in Bruch’s own lifetime (sometimes to his chagrin), its popularity seems to run ahead of the Second Concerto (which Heifetz also championed) and to outdistance by far the nearly orphaned Third, a chip of Spohr-like granite that remains the province of the few. Maxim Fedotov doesn’t challenge Heifetz’s proprietorship—or perhaps even Michael Rabin’s suave mastery, or even Kyung-Wha Chung’s passionate electricity; if his relaxed meandering in the opening movement and his weighty deliberation in the following Allegro don’t suggest fierce warlords (the Russian Philharmonic comes closer in the final movement, an Allegro guerriero), he plays with a rich, glowing tone that recalls Oistrakh’s, although perhaps not veiled with that master’s mystery, and his portamentos occasionally suggest an antique (if updated and sanitized) expressive manner well suited to this sentimental, though not maudlin, work. How did Pablo Sarasate, to whom Bruch dedicated it, play this concerto? He concocted his own confection from Scottish airs, so he must have had some familiarity with, and interest in, the folk idiom. The engineers haven’t shone the spotlight on Fedotov in the way Heifetz’s and Oistrakh’s did.

Bruch also dedicated his Serenade to Sarasate; and, though the Spaniard didn’t give its premiere, it bears the impress of his personality. If the Third Concerto seems a relative orphan, this work has remained almost unknown; but Salvatore Accardo included it in his collection of Bruch’s works for violin and orchestra with Kurt Masur and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra (originally on Philips 9500 590 and re-released on CD as Philips 289 462 167-2). While Accardo’s reading explored the work’s nostalgic sensibility, Fedotov’s takes a more muscular approach to its tangy, concerto-like virtuosity—Bruch had, after all, intended this work as a concerto-like serenade (he repeatedly wrote movements and works that he expected would turn out to be his Fourth Concerto—without losing touch with its brooding sensitivity. His tempos seem relatively leisurely in the opening movement and upon its return at the Serenade’s end (in an effective valedictory gesture, Yablonsky and the orchestra insinuate the Serenade’s returning opening materials with poignant subtlety and close with a serenely hushed cadence), as well as in the episodic passages of the fast movements; but he struts briskly, too, as in the second movement’s march. Perhaps decisively, though, he doesn’t seem quite so comfortable in the long second movement as Accardo did, and he wanders without a strong sense of direction—though with richly textured symphonic support—in the sprawling third.

Those hoping to explore Bruch œuvre at first cautiously, then with more abandon, should find the Fantasy and the Serenade a well-ordered program. Recommended as a digitally recorded alternative to Accardo’s readings.

Robert Maxham, FANFARE

Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Bruch Maxim Rysanov Maxim Rysanov Plays Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Bruch

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Max Bruch bequeathed three violin concertos to posterity - but only one of them continues to be present in today's concert halls. The composer himself regarded his op. 58 in D minor as much more finely composed than the popular G minor concerto. This benchmark recording by Andreas Krecher and the Wuppertal Symphony Orchestra disappeared from the catalogue many years ago, but now the D minor concerto is being re-released in an attractive double box featuring orchestral works by Bruch. Along with it's rarities repertoire, the phenomenal acoustic dimensions of the historic Wuppertal Stadthalle and MDG's legendary natural sound make this double album a musical feast for the ears. "Schon Ellen," a heroic ballad to a text by Emanuel Geibel, was one of the most frequently sung choral works during the nineteenth century. Even though Bruch had no qualms about transferring the action from the Indian colony to the Scottish highlands, the dramatic appeal is absolutely irresistible. The 'Swedish Dances' are a genuine discovery. Bruch unfolds an overpowering widescreen spectacle with a Nordic atmosphere in the two suites; with highly imaginative instrumentations and musical magic he evokes magnificent soundscapes. Bruch's Symphony No. 2 rounds off this program of rarities. In it Schmalfuss presents the Wuppertal Symphony Orchestra as an ensemble that produces a big sound and outstandingly captures the slightly melancholy tone of Bruch's music.

The Loreley is one of the most famous figures of the romantic era, and even today the massive rock in the Rhine is notorious for threatening the river’s skippers with shipwreck. The legendary female figure with her seductive beauty today no longer haunts the river, but her story continues to resonate in the imagination. In 1861, when he was a mere twenty years old, Max Bruch, a Rhinelander born in Cologne, devoted an opera to the Loreley, a work based on a libretto by the great Emanuel Geibel himself. This opera in four acts is only rarely performed and until now has never been recorded on album. The Munich Radio Orchestra will now change this state of affairs: in a concert performance initiated by cpo the orchestra presented the work under the conductor Stefan Blunier, who was the General Music Director of the City of Bonn – that is, in the vicinity of the Loreley – when the recording was produced. The marvelous Michaela Kaune interpreted the title role in a top-quality performance, and Thomas Mohr was her male counterpart. Bruch set the Loreley story, in which everything, both in ambience and action, constituting a “Grand Romantic Opera” (thus the work’s subtitle) is present, in a highly romantic musical language. It is not without reason that Hans Pfitzner lent his support to this forgotten gem throughout his life.

A musical portrait of the German Romantic composer: Bruch placed great emphasis on melody and expression, remaining stylistically rather traditional-even as the music around him was changing dramatically. In addition to orchestral works, he also composed choral and chamber music.

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"Sir Malcom Sargent generally plays the purely orchestral passages more swiftly than when he is accompanying Heifetz. This introduces an element of drama that is missing in performances that reduce the music to a syrupy wallow in slow romantic schmaltz...Despite the relatively rapid tempos, the music never sounds rushed. [T]his is the finest recording of Bruch’s masterpiece ever made in terms of both performance and sound."

-- Arthur Lintgen, Fanfare [7/2006]

"Except for the human voice itself, probably no instrument of music so intimately reflects the individuality of the musician as the violin. So this record gives us, in addition to the fabled Heifetz technical wizardry, the Heifetz personality. That personality is encountered here in its maturity—and in the A major Concerto perhaps something slightly beyond that. Throughout the D major, however, the justly famous powers of intonation are exhibited at their nearly supernatural best."

-- Gramophone [9/1972] Reviewing Mozart Concertos

Max Bruch was eighty years old when, in 1918, he decided to return to the chamber music genre he had frequented in his early years. Stimulated by the violin virtuoso Willy Hess, he composed two string quintets and an octet, monuments to beauty and harmony, at the end of a tumultuous personal life and in the midst of a western world on the brink of collapse. After an album devoted to Beethoven’s chamber music, the Chamber Players of the WDR Sinfonieorchester now tackle one of the last chapters of German Romantic music, with pieces that constitute Bruch’s swansong.

Founded at the Musik Akademie der Stadt Basel, Switzerland, Philon Trio is a chamber ensemble consisting of David Dias da Silva on clarinet, Adam Newman on viola, and Camilla Köhnken on piano. It’s in the context of a residency at Canada’s Banff Center for Arts and Creativity in Alberta that they recorded the excellent work 8 Pieces, Op. 83 by the German composer Max Bruch. Bruch was 72 in 1910 when he composed Acht Stucke Op. 83 for his son, Max Felix, already a professional clarinetist. Written in a late but conservative Romantic style, far removed from the language of Bruch’s contemporaries Stravinsky, Bartók, and Schoenberg, this work is deep, intense, passionate and intimate.

100 years ago the composer Max Bruch died. His remarkably long life of 82 years covered a period in contemporary history that was determined by scientific progress and comprehensive industrialization, developments that also found expression in art. Shortly after the turn of the century the scandals concerning the compositions by Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg were already rocking the musical world, however, Bruch met the tide of events as stoically as a rock: conservative, patriotic and above all unconditionally beholden to Romanticism in music. The present program was recorded during a Max Bruch Jubilee Concert in Halle and focused besides the famous Suite on Russian Themes also on the rarely performed Concerto for 2 pianos and orchestra.

REVIEWS:

This fine disc presents two Bruch rarities, composed towards the end of his life, both of which started out in other guises. The five-movement Suite on Russian Themes is an adaptation (with new material added) of his Songs and Dances Op. 79, originally for violin and piano. It is remarkable (even for a composer in his mid-60s) that music of such Mendelssohnian deftness and sparkle could have emerged during the first decade of the last century. But putting aside issues of chronology, those who delight in the charming rusticity of, say, the Scottish Fantasy, should find these well-crafted miniatures enchanting.

-- BBC Music Magazine

Max Bruch has never made things easy for fond listeners or performers of music; his contemporaries found him hard to handle, and so have later generations. The reason behind this has nothing to do with the superlative, worldwide renown of the first of his violin concertos, or with his musical language, which had already fallen out of fashion when he died exactly a hundred years ago. Instead, Bruch himself much too quickly and all too often lost his faith in his “musical progeny” because he did not have the patience to let them mature in peace and to secure a place in the broader public consciousness. This applies to the opera Die Loreley, which offers a rewarding listening experience, as well as to his three symphonies composed between 1868 and 1882 and originally intended as a series of works forming a trilogy. However, Max Bruch set aside the third part in order to focus on dramatic and choral symphonic projects. He first wanted to write his second opera, Hermione after The Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare, and Odysseus, his first secular oratorio. As things turned out, the spectacular long-term success of these musical pictures from antiquity meant that his original symphonic project was relegated to the back burner. However, once we experience the three sister works in their originally planned context, as the present new production enables us to do, the tide turns in their favor. The revealing path from the heroic idea underlying the first symphony, which, by the way, we are presenting for the first time in its original five-movement version, over the tragic stance of the second symphony, to the “Rhine idyll” of the third symphony leads us to the realization that this triad deserves much more credit than its meager performance figures would make us believe.

This Chandos re-issue of Max Bruch’s Violin Concertos Nos. 2 and 3, recorded in 1998 by Lydia Mordkovitch (1944-2014) with Richard Hickox and the LSO is released in tribute to the late Russian-British violinist. • In the Violin Concerto No. 2, “Hickox draws radiant sounds from the LSO, and Ms. Mordkovitch ... plays with rapt dedication [and] breathtaking beauty…” (Guardian) • The third Violin Concerto’s robust, heroic opening concertante movement precedes a slow movement reminiscent of the same in the famous First Concerto and a rondo Finale dominated by a strongly rhythmic perpetuum mobile.

Over the course of his life Max Bruch often made uncomplimentary remarks about the piano as an instrument – even though he himself was an outstanding and successful pianist. On the whole it was not until his later years that increasing occupation with the piano could be observed in his compositions. His late chamber music with the piano and the Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra may be understood as a return to this instrument. The selection of piano works recorded here by the pianist Christof Keymer demonstrates beyond any doubt Bruch’s mastery in the compositional treatment of the piano and its special resources. Here we find a cosmos of romantic emotional worlds that in Bruch’s hands produce original, unique tones. This very personal treatment of piano sound, melodic invention, and melodic leading shows us Bruch as a great composer personality. The transcriptions almost incidentally reveal his great command of the tonal transformation of the originals, while many virtuoso elements in turn have a signature that is very much Bruch’s own. All the piano works have in common Bruch’s love of melody, which was his creed as a composer.

On this critically-acclaimed recording, Arabella Steinbacher brings together Bruch’s world famous First Violin Concerto with Chausson’s lush Poème and Korngold’s Violin Concerto, which is gradually gaining ground as a twentieth-century masterpiece. Steinbacher is joined by the Orquestra Gulbenkian under the baton of Lawrence Foster, with whom she has developed a congenial musical partnership over the years. BBC Music Magazine commented that “there is no doubting Steinbacher’s refulgent sound or the flair of her delivery” while MusicWeb International praised “the tingling climax of this Chausson.”

After a temporary absence, this album now returns to the physical market in an affordable Stereo re-issue. Arabella Steinbacher is a multiple award-winner with an extensive Pentatone discography spanning more than a decade. Lawrence Foster and the Orquestra Gulbenkian are also longstanding partners of the label.

Excerpt from review of the original SACD version of this release:

There is no doubting Steinbacher's refulgent sound or the flair of her delivery.

-- BBC Music Magazine

Previous Brilliant Classics albums by this Dutch string orchestra, based in The Hague, have focused on late-Romantic ‘American Pioneers’ (96086) and composers in early 20th-century Paris (95734). Under their founder-director Dick van Gasteren, they now turn to the rich history of Rhineland music from the high-point of its immortalisation in operatic culture as the bedrock of Wagner’s Ring cycle. Das Rheingold itself is present by implication in the cycle of Wesendonck-Lieder which Wagner composed on the shore of Lake Zurich, initially as sketches for Tristan und Isolde, which he had embarked upon as a venture to drum up interest and capital for the larger project of the Ring. Inspired by his intimate association with as well as the poetry of Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of a wealthy silk merchant who was underwriting the composer’s sojourn in Zurich, Wagner then developed the songs into a self-contained cycle which throbs with transfigured desire much like the opera. The cycle is sung here by the mezzo-soprano Karin Strobos, whose career was launched by singing Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier at the Netherlands Opera under Sir Simon Rattle. She also sings the album’s notable rarity: a setting of Heine’s Loreley text, which describes the mythical creatures who lure unsuspecting Rhenish sailors to their doom like Greek Sirens. Originally composed as a male-voice partsong by Friedrich Silcher (1798-1860), the song has been transcribed by Dick van Gasteren for Strobos and La Ciconia. Complementing the songs are two unfamiliar but attractive examples of late-Romantic German string music: the Serenade Op.242 by Carl Reinecke, and the Concerto for String Orchestra by Max Bruch. Neither work enjoys more than a toehold on the record catalogue, and this engagingly vivid new recording makes the most persuasive case for them.

REVIEW:

Somehow this quartet of pieces brought to my mind the old wedding saw of “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.” For “something old” there is this Serenade of Carl Reinecke (1824–1910). Although I certainly recognize his name, I cannot recollect ever having heard any of his music before now, but this thoroughly delightful six-movement work shows that his oeuvre warrants further investigation.

For “something new” we have a work by Max Bruch (1838–1920) — the string octet he wrote in 1920, only a few months before his death. In the score, Bruch indicated that the piece was also suitable for performance by a full string orchestra, and upon publication of that version his publisher Simrock attached the title “Concerto.” While the octet has enjoyed no less than six previous recordings in its original form, this is the first one for full orchestra, and thus makes a welcome addition to the Bruch discography.

“Something borrowed” comes in the guise of Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder, in a 2006 reduction for string orchestra by Gerhard Heydt. Frankly, I’m not certain what the point of this exercise is; certainly Wagner is hardly in need of reorchestration, and a good degree of tonal color is lost in subtracting woodwinds and brass. Mezzo-soprano Karin Strobos has a reasonably attractive and well produced but not exceptional voice; she sings with sincerity, but not the degree of subtle inflection these texts and settings require. This was by no means unpleasant to listen to, but there is no strong incentive to return to it.

Finally, for “something blue,” Strobos sings a setting by Friedrich Silcher (1798–1860) of Heinrich Heine’s famous poem of the original Rhine Maiden, whose beautiful appearance and singing lure ships and sailors to destruction. Silcher’s Lied is a bit peculiar in that it’s a lilting, waltz-like ditty, devoid of any darker undertones. Here Strobos and the ensemble are in their proper element.

The Ciconia Consort is further identified as being a nom de guerre for The Hague String Orchestra. Dick van Gasteren directs the players with a sure hand. The recorded sound is warm, with a certain degree of plush resonance. The booklet provides brief notes and song texts in German without translations. Although I would have preferred a full disc of lesser-known German string serenades, this definitely makes for enjoyable listening; cordially recommended.

-- Fanfare (James A. Altena)

Experience the rich and vibrant sounds of Europe's Romantic tradition with our latest CD featuring music by four talented composers. Discover the little-known talent of Sigurd Lie, a highly skilled violinist and composer from Norway who studied with leading teachers in Leipzig and Berlin. Immerse yourself in the enchanting folk tale inspiration of Lie's "Huldra aa'n Elland" for violin and orchestra and be captivated by the playful and seductive solo violin performed by the renowned violinist Ragnhild Hemsing. Follow in the footsteps of Lie's compatriot, Johan Svendsen, a famous violinist and composer who studied in Leipzig and Paris and is best remembered for his Romance for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 26. Svendsen's work was admired by Belgian violinist and composer Eugène Ysaÿe and was reprinted 65 times. This CD is a must-have for any lover of the Romantic era, the diverse sounds of Norway and Europe, and the virtuosic performances of Hemsing.

As core members of the ensemble Wigmore Soloists, Michael Collins, Isabelle van Keulen and Michael McHale present four works for clarinet trio composed over a period of some 130 years. Mozart’s Kegelstatt Trio was long believed to have been composed during a game of bowling. The writing is reminiscent of a conversation between three friends in which contrasts are not excluded: we hear affection, divergences and even disagreements. This atmosphere of friendly, playful, and sometimes very intimate exchange also pervades Schumann’s Märchenerzählungen (Fairy Tales). While its spirited conviviality might give the impression that this work was the product of idyllic times, it was actually composed during Schumann’s last full year of sanity before his final mental collapse in 1854. There is a similar atmosphere of warm intimacy in Max Bruch’s Eight Pieces, written in 1910. Four of them are presented here, giving not a single hint of the approaching First World War. Based on a Russian folk tale, Stravinsky’s stage work L’Histoire du Soldat may be less good-natured than the preceding works. But the music is wonderfully entertaining, borrowing from various genres, including jazz. The composer’s trio version consist of five movements and has deservedly become his most frequently performed chamber composition.

REVIEW:

As expected, the performances are excellent. The Mozart is wonderfully lyrical; the Stravinsky crackles with energy; and the Schumann and the Bruch have the intensity and heartfelt phrasing the composers require. Collins leads with his clear and resonant timbre, dazzling fingers and articulation, and superb musicianship; and McHale lends splendid tone, touch, technique, and sensitivity. Van Keulen demonstrates terrific versatility all through, from warm contralto utterances to spunky fiddle playing, though sometimes her viola lines are a little thin and scrappy. Even so, the profound devotion to each score makes this album very worthwhile.

-- American Record Guide