En garde! Cardinal Richelieu is plotting against Queen Anne. Musketeers Athos, Porthos and Aramis, together with the spirited D'Artagnan have vowed to protect France at all costs. Meanwhile the young D'Artagnan is falling madly in love with the Queen's Lady in Waiting, Constance. David Nixon's ballet, The Three Musketeers is a great combination of action packed sword fights, comedy, fun and some beautiful romantic duets between the Queen and her secret lover, the Duke of Buckingham and D'Artagnan and Constance. Set to a sweeping score of music by the late British composer Sir Malcolm Arnold, Northern Ballet Theatre's swashbuckling production brings together stunning sets, amazing costumes, thrilling sword fights and traditional ballet in an evening that the whole family can enjoy.

Viola da Samba is a project creating a bridge between Renaissance and Brazilian popular music. The pure, light sounds of early music instruments blend with the vivacious rhythms and rich harmonies of samba and bossa nova. The subtle timbres and the versatile sounds of the clavichord together with the viola da gamba match perfectly with the spirit of Brazilian music, revealing the connection between the elements (scales, rhythms and temperaments) of popular and early music. The natural gut strings of the viol create a pure and organic sound. This offers a new experience for the world of jazz and bossa. Altogether, Nadine's Balbeisi's delicate and refined voice, Jean Kleeb's mastery of playing bossa chords on the clavichord and Fernando Marin's skillful bowing of the viola da gamba create a perfect musical symbiosis.

This disc is a feast. Mozart and Brahms wrote good four- hand music. But with Schubert it becomes virtually a new medium, of fabulous richness of texture - social music for the domestic market yet rising to transcendent heights. The excellent Tong-Hasegawa duo have chosen a finely contrasted programme ... Sunday Times Mag

Richard Saxel has always been interested in the links between art and music, and conceived this recording along the lines of a Cubist painting, considering nocturns and night music from multiple angles, but having the intention to create a complete picture through the album as a whole. There are contrasting areas of light and darkness, achieved by grouping pieces together according to different themes or criteria; sometimes by the composers’ nationality, sometimes by the key or intensity of the music, and still further groupings with particular themes. Thus there are pieces where suggestions of the nightmarish supernatural are never far away, a group in which depictions of the natural world are explicit, and by contrast another suggesting the edginess of the urban night. Avoiding a chronological survey, nearly two hundred years’ worth of music is represented from the earliest example by John Field to works composed in this millennium. The works by Lowell Liebermann, Antonio Bibalo, Dave Brubeck and Leonid Desyatnikov serve as reminders that the nocturne has developed considerably from the earliest model of a pretty Romantic piece with a repeated left hand figure supporting a decorated right hand melody, and yet has retained the intense distillation of emotion.

BRAHMS Horn Trio in E?. Piano Trio No. 3 in c. Clarinet Trio in a • Gould Pn Trio; David Pyat (hn); Robert Plane (cl) • QUARTZ 2042 (73:56)


It probably would have made more sense for a contributor other than me to offer a second opinion on this release, for it’s clearly an émigré from the three-disc set containing these same performances, plus those of Brahms’s other trio works, I reviewed in Fanfare 33:2. I wasn’t enthralled with the Gould’s renderings of the three standard piano trios, but the readings of the horn and clarinet trios struck me as the best of the lot. Quartz has thus cherry-picked the original set for the two most desirable items and filled out the disc with the shortest of Brahms’s numbered piano trios.


I see by the listings that the Piano Trios Nos. 1 and 2 have also been culled from the original three-disc collection and are available on another stand-alone disc. Between that one and this one, the two casualties are the A-Major Trio, which is of questionable authenticity anyway, and the original version of the B-Major Trio (No. 1). Perhaps Quartz will make those two works available on a third separate disc as well, though, if you ask me, I think the original version of the B-Major Trio should be banned for the sake of Brahms’s reputation. So, if one wants the five canonical trio works, acquiring them on two CDs instead of three is the more economical way to go; that is, assuming the Gould Piano Trio is to your liking.


Assuredly, there were things I liked about the performances—the sound of Alice Neary’s richly vibrant cello, Benjamin Frith’s plush piano tone, and Lucy Gould’s violin topping them with a touch of cream; and I was pleased to report that the ensemble observed the lengthy first-movement exposition repeat in the B-Major Trio. But there were also some things I didn’t care for—Gould’s splaying of chords across strings and tempos that seemed a bit pressed to me. As noted, however, I was very taken with Pyat and Plane in the horn and clarinet trios, respectively.


For the piano trios, I still lean toward Nicholas Angelich and the Capuçon brothers on Virgin Classics, but from the Gould’s original set, Quartz has given us the three best performances on a single disc that offers a less costly option than the three-disc set and, in my opinion, is definitely worth the investment, assuming, of course, you didn’t acquire the original compilation when it was first released.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

On this release, Marcelo Bratke continues his journey through the complete Villa-Lobos solo piano works. This release features volumes 4 and 5, and includes such Villa-Lobos’s Guia Practico Albums 1-11. During a decade of extraordinary accomplishments and performances, Marcelo Bratke, one of Brazil’s preeminent pianists, has performed at some of the world’s most renowned venues, including Carnegie Hall, the Salzburg Festival, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Wigmore Hall, and the Konzerthaus in Berlin. In recent years, he has become increasingly focused on how the arts can engage in politics and help contribute to improvements in society. “The Villa-Lobos pieces played by Mr. Bratke at the start were best of all, offering hints of wildness, yet with elegant construction, subtle rhythmic dislocations and shining piano colors… Mr. Bratke is a fine and flexible pianist, perfectly happy either to play Bach or to plunge into the popular music he set next to it.” (The New York Times)

Debut album for Quartz from this young, vibrant trio described in the press as an ensemble "with strong temperament and communicative sensitivity."

HAYDN Piano Sonatas: in D, Hob 37; in e, Hob 34; in b, Hob 32; in Eb, Hob 52; Andante with Variations, Hob 6 • Alexander Kobrin (pn) • QUARTZ 28888 (72: 44)


This is an often delightful release, pleasingly and realistically recorded. Liner notes are short, but to the point and informative. The four sonatas are carefully chosen, and the decision to place the famous F-Minor Variations at the close is a fine one. The actual playing order of the sonatas is D Major; E Minor; B Minor; Eb-Major.


The D-Major Sonata (published 1780) introduces the listener to Kobrin’s fine articulation; his reading of the first movement is sprightly and engaging. Kobrin has no objections to playing against the basic tempo at times, each time returning exactly to his tempo primo. Affection is the keyword here, something which also shines through the central Largo e sostenuto , where the music finds surprisingly dark regions. Kobrin is daringly slow, perhaps to emphasize contrast with the finale (which, in order to confirm this, starts almost too innocently).


The E Minor (1781/82) and the B Minor (1776) provide a central panel of minor mode fodder. The B Minor is the more enigmatic of the two, and is where Kobrin is most successful, hitting the heart of Haydn’s created world dead center, although perhaps he misses the humor of the finale by a fraction. Kobrin’s finger fluency in the finale of the B Minor is remarkable.


The grand Eb-Sonata is the one most people know, I suspect. It has been recorded by a roster of great pianists. Of the extensive list on ArkivMusic, it is Brendel’s late Philips one that takes the honors. But the list omits the admittedly hard to find and probably deleted twofer on Ivory Classics by Nadia Reisenberg, raved about by my colleague Bernard Jacobson in Fanfare 22:3. Reisenberg and Kobrin share an expressive esthetic that has no problems referring to romantic models, but it is Reisenberg that is the most convincing. She also has more tonal variety and, in the final analysis, a closer connection with Haydn. Her accents, for example, have bite but do not thump at you in the way Kobrin’s can; and perhaps Kobrin is overly sober in the first movement. While Reisenberg offers perfectly shaded turns to minor key areas, Kobrin offers instead a notably well-thought through reading which, in comparison, lacks distinction. Yet in the central Adagio he excels. His achievement here is that he does not try to make this into a Beethovenian statement, although it is easy to hear links to the various slow movements of Beethoven’s sonatas of Opp. 2 and 10. Kobrin’s finale is not quite up to par. Phrase endings sound a bit careful, and articulation is good but not perfect.


Finally, the great set of Variations in F Minor. Brendel again springs to mind in connection with this piece; perhaps also Ingrid Haebler (Philips). This piece, in fact, proves to be the climax proper of Kobrin’s Haydn recital. Starting from a properly quiet opening, it becomes clear that Kobrin sees this piece as attempting to set out a whole expressive sphere in which the delicacy can be deliberately undermined. The close dissolves brilliantly into nothingness. Well worth hearing.


FANFARE: Colin Clarke

Wallfisch: Escape Velocity

A recital of solo cello work recorded by one of the most exciting young cellists of today. Boris Andrianov's previous recording for Quartz Music (QTZ 2053, Shostakovich and Rachmaninov Cello Sonatas) received a Gramophone Editor's Choice.

'a nicely produced recording which...has been beautifully thought out and realised by both artists...Inoue's rendition of the Chaconne from the D minor Violin Partita is magisterial, clarifying the piece's short- and long-term structures to a high degree in an intellectually satisfying performance to which I have already returned many times.' THE STRAD

An excellent value box set (3 CDs) featuring new recordings of Brahms' complete symphonies as well as three of his best-known orchestral works. Performed here by the internationally celebrated Stuttgart Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of the ever popular Owain Arwel Hughes.

The world premiere recording of Andrei Eshpai's specially commissioned arrangement of Bach's much-loved Goldberg Variations performed by one of the world's most notable young wind ensembles.

Includes work(s) for piano 4 hands by Claude Debussy. Soloists: Waka Hasegawa, Joseph Tong.

An outstanding album featuring the internationally celebrated saxophone virtuoso, Rob Buckland. Towards The Light features original compositions by Andy Scott, Takashi Yoshimatsu, Nikki Iles and Roy Powell as well as transcriptions of pieces by the great jazz pianist Chick Corea and the composer Graham Fitkin. As Rob says in his sleeve notes: 'There are no styles of music anymore; there is simply music'.