Pavel Haas Quartet in Shostakovich

I have always had a soft spot for Dmitry Shostakovich's music. He is almost alone in 20th century composers in speaking directly to me. I have just been listening to hs 2nd, 7th and 8th string quartets played by the wonderful Pavel Haas Quartet. Terrific, personal music. Wonderful, committed playing. And, as one would expect, a demonstration-class recording by Supraphon, a company that appears to have mastered the art of balancing and recording string quartets. I wish the Pavel Hass Quartet would record more; I have loved them in Schubert, but await with impatience to hear them in Mozart and Haydn.

Georg Friedrich Händel in Italy

There are few of the great composers I would have wanted to meet in person; certainly not Mozart, nor Beethoven. But I would like to have met Georg Friedrich Händel, if only to hear about his travels as he flitted, seemingly effortlessly, between Germany, Italy, France, and England. He must have had some travel tales to relate! His period in Italy when aged only 21 or so would have been particularly interesting. He was in Florence, he was in Rome, he was in Venice, composing music on commission for various members of the nobility as he went. The cantatas and duetti that he composed at that time gave him ample material for exploitation in his later works, particularly his operas.

In a Handel marathon, I listened to eight Glossa CDs, recorded in Italy with all-Italian participants around 2005. The principal singer is Roberta Invernizzi (soprano). The band is La Risonanza, and the director is Fabio Bonizzoni. Around ten hours of listening to Handel's cantatas and duetti; quite a feast. The music varies in quality from excellent routine, to really first class. Sometimes Handel had a talented band of musicians at his disposal; at other times he appears to have been down to a harpsichord and basso continuo (probably also a result of the amount of ducats offered for the commission). Sometimes the band really goes to town: viz the extensive violin solo in the cantata Un'Alma Innamorata of 1707 in Rome that suggests that Arcangelo Corelli was in the band for that performance, as well as playing in the cantata from Rome Il Delirio Amoroso.

My ten hours went by swiftly. There is a lot to be said for having Italians singing Italian texts (also French for French texts, Germans for German texts, etc). The Glossa collection really takes one back to Italy in the period around 1707 (when Handel would have been just 22 years old). I have a vast collection of recordings of Handel's music; and I would not part with a single piece.

Baiba Skride: Britten and Bartok

I have never been a fan of the music of Benjamin Britten, bar a few works. I have just listened to a recording of his double concerto for violin, viola and orchestra (completed from drafts). Except for a few passages in the second and third movements, it seems to me to be music written without passion. It was played (very well) in a recent recording by Baiba Skride, with Ivan Vukcevic (viola) and Marin Alsop conducting the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra. I have only one other recording of the work (Anthony Marwood and Lawrence Power, with Ilan Volkov conducting the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra). Apart from the Bach D minor concerto for two violins, I don't think duo concertos work too well.

How different is Britten's one and only violin concerto, written in 1938-9 and frequently revised. I have many recordings of the piece on my shelves, including violinists such as James Ehnes, Julia Fischer, Augustin Hadelich, Janine Jansen, Simone Lamsma, Arabella Steinbacher, and Frank Peter Zimmermann (the latter with three different recordings). The concerto breathes passion, much like Shostakovich's first violin concerto of a few years later. The Britten concerto has come into its own only recently but, to my mind, it is a better piece of music than the ultra-popular concertos of Mendelssohn and Bruch (G minor).

The Latvian violinist Baiba Skride gives a magnificent performance of the violin concerto, with the same backing as with Britten's double concerto. She brings out all the dark passion of the violin concerto and is technically impeccable. Orchestra, balance and recording quality are all excellent. I recently praised the recording of the work by Kerson Leong. Skride is on the same level.

To complete my Baiba Skride listening, I heard Bartok's two Rhapsodies for violin and orchestra (WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln conducted by Eivind Aadland). Not bad, but not music I will return to often, like most of Bartok's music.

Phillippe Graffin plays Eugène Ysaÿe

Put 100 randomly selected people in a room and ask them about the music of  Eugène Ysaÿe and one can almost guarantee total silence. Ysaÿe (1858-1931) was born in Liège in Belgium and was a wonderful violinist. Like Fritz Kreisler, he wrote extensively for the violin, with many well-loved morceaux for violin and piano. His is not great music, but it's for relaxed listening for those who love the violin and music for violin written by a violinist.

A recent CD from the French violinist Phillippe Graffin gives us two large-scale works for violin and orchestra, and three salon pieces for violin and piano. The Poème Concertant is labelled as a world premier recording. The E minor violin concerto has been pieced together from odds and ends of manuscript. In the orchestral works, the Liverpool Philharmonic plays valiantly, conducted by Jean-Jacques Kantorow.

It's a while since I last heard Philippe Graffin, but he is an excellent violinist and probably one of the very best choices possible for Eugène Ysaÿe's music. The music with orchestra is excellently crafted, but is an exercise in craftmanship rather than a product of emotion and imagination. As might be expected, the violin predominates; Fritz Kreisler was wise to have eschewed trying to compose large-scale works for violin and orchestra. For lovers of violin playing, however, even the concertante works are of interest though, on this CD, I particularly enjoyed the two mazurkas, plus the well-known Rêve d'enfant; the pianist in the three morceaux is Marisa Gupta. Recording quality and balance are excellent.

Alena Baeva and Vadym Kholodenko

The latest new CD to hit my CD player features Alena Baeva, a violinist from Russia and the Moscow Conservatoire, and Vadym Kholodenko, a pianist from the Ukraine. Both are excellent musicians and form a good duo. They play Schubert's Fantaisie D.934, a lovely work of which I already have 19 other recordings. It's a wonderful work for the pianist who has the lion's share of the music, a little less so for the violinist who is often asked to assume the role of an obbligato instrument whilst the pianist has all the tunes. No matter: Baeva and Kholodenko give an excellent performance here.

They go on to play Stravinsky's Divertimento for violin and piano, arranged by Samuel Dushkin. Stravinsky's star has faded since the 1960s; at one time some critic called him "the greatest composer of the twentieth century", but those days have passed. His Divertimento is fine, but it's very much bread-and-butter music, designed to bolster Igor's finances. Baeva and partner give it their best go. Then come Schumann's four Märchenbilder. I revere Schumann for his Lieder, but otherwise he has rarely appealed to me. The Märchenbilder are no great shakes, and it's not surprising they feature little on programmes.

The final Fantasie in this programme so titled is one by Olivier Messiaen. I feared the worst, and my fears were doubly confirmed; the work is seven minutes of tuneless and theme-less note spinning, and why the artists elected to play it here, I cannot think. Maybe it was the only other work they could find with Fantaisie in its title. To be avoided by all lovers of music. The balance and recording of the CD are acceptable. When played via my Spendor loudspeakers -- that always emphasise the bass range -- the piano completely overwhelmed the violin for most of the time in the Schubert Fantaisie. Listened to it again via my Sennheiser wireless headphones, the balance was OK, with the bass less dominant.

Not, then, a "must-have" CD. Thinking of the Messiaen piece: why is it that a century that could boast composers such as Rachmaninov, Sibelius, Debussy, Ravel, Elgar, Britten, Stravinsky, Puccini, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and others, could produce pretty well nobody of note after around 1960? There are many composers of classical music post-1960, but few whose works are ever played more than once.

Bennewitz String Quartet in Dvorak

Having greatly admired the playing and recording of the Bennewitz String Quartet playing Haydn quartets, I decided to invest in the quartet playing Dvorak (10th and 13th string quartets). As a great fan of string quartets, I could not understand why, in my giant collection of recordings, I had only one CD of Dvorak string quartets (recorded in 1984 by the Panocha Quartet). Antonin Dvorak wrote a lot of music, including numerous string quartets, sonatas, trios, symphonies -- and concertos for violin, piano, and cello (of which the cello concerto became famous). His Slavonic Dances are ubiquitous. To my taste, much of his reams of music speaks of a superb musical craftsman, rather than of someone inspired.

Like later Beethoven and Shostakovitch, Dvorak appears at times to have regarded his string quartets as a personal musical sandbox; many passages and harmonies of the 13th quartet, for example, lean more towards the harmonic language of the 20th century, rather than the 19th. The quartet was composed in 1896 -- just on the cusp. The sandbox was not for those who wanted "easy listening". The 10th quartet contains more memorable material; for me, the 13th quartet has its material spread thinly, with a little going a long way.

The Bennewitz Quartet does not disappoint. The quartet's dynamics are again excellent (as in its Haydn CD) and the recording of the Dvorak (SWR Music in Baden-Baden) faithfully reproduces the sound of the four players, though the recording perspective is not up to the high standard of the Czechs when they recorded the Haydn. I hope that the Bennewitz will record more Haydn, plus Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Shostakovitch. I am waiting, chequebook ready. It appears I am a big fan of the Bennewitz Quartet, but not of much of Dvorak's music. Now I have two CDs of Dvorak string quartets on my shelves: that is enough.

Brahms and Mozart with Peter Csaba and Arthur Grumiaux

I have added two more violin recordings to my shelves, both sent by a good friend, and both featuring refurbished sound. Brahms three sonatas for violin and piano are played by Peter Csaba and Jean-François Heisser, recorded around twenty years ago and refurbished by Praga Digital. Mozart's five violin concertos were recorded by Arthur Grumiaux and Colin Davis with the LSO some sixty years ago, with the sound refurbished by Classical Music Reference Recording (CMRR). The sound in both Brahms and Mozart is thoroughly acceptable.

Peter Csaba confirms my admiration for the Czech school of violin playing, and the recording confirms my respect for the Czech recording companies (undoubtedly Supraphon). Csaba and Heisser are an admirable duo and do full justice to Brahms three works in lively interpretations that never drag the music out.

Arthur Grumiaux in Mozart is a natural, with his suave, elegant playing fitting Mozart like a glove. Colin Davis and the LSO give excellent support, with the original fine Philips sound coming over even better in the CMRR re-make. Good to have this evergreen classic recording given another sixty years of life.

Sadly, I find that Brahms is descending in my list of enjoyable composers. The more I immerse myself in the music of the 18th century, the more I appreciate clean lines and textures and the muted nature of any Sturm und Drang. I've never really loved Brahms' four symphonies, and I was dismayed to discover my lack of appreciation in his chamber music such as the three violin and piano sonatas. Just too much Schokolade mit Sahne for my taste. Johannes Brahms and Robert Schumann just seemed to love thick textures.