Category Archives: On record

On Record – The Piatti Quartet – Naresh Sohal: String Quartets (Toccata Classics)

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Piatti Quartet [Michael Trainor, Emily Holland (violins), Miguel Sobrinho (viola),
Jessie Ann Richardson (cello)]

Naresh Sohal
String Quartet no.1 ‘Chiaroscuro II’ (1976)
String Quartet no. 3 (2008)
String Quartet no.4 (2009)
String Quartet no. 5 (2010)

Toccata Classics TOCC0754 [74’33”]
Producer / Engineer Raphaël Mouterde

Recorded 17-19 April 2024 at St Silas’ Church, Kentish Town, London

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Toccata Classics continues its exploration of Naresh Sohal (1939-2018) with this release of four of his string quartets, admirably rendered by the Piatti Quartet to make an illuminating overview of Sohal’s musical language from across the greater part of his composing career.

What’s the music like?

Although he attracted most attention in his lifetime for his often expansive orchestral works, Sohal wrote widely for chamber media and not least string quartet. This medium brought his intended amalgam of Indian and European facets into acute focus though, typical of one who from the start approached the Western Tradition head on, there is nothing anecdotal let alone tokenistic about Sohal’s idiom which, as these quartets amply confirm, is unified stylistically and remains consistent as it heads toward the formal and expressive clarity of his final pieces.

At the time of his first quartet, Chiaroscuro II (its predecessor for brass quintet is on Heritage HTGCD122-3 – review to follow), Sohal was exploring an overtly avant-garde idiom evident through diverse and starkly contrasted techniques given focus by climactic cadenzas on cello then first violin – prior to its final evanescing into silence. Likewise in a single movement of 15 minutes, the Third Quartet could not be more different in aesthetic. Initially heard against an insistent drone from second violin and viola, its ideas emerge as demonstrable variants on what went before such that its animated central section then its inward continuation are made part of an indivisible process. This only makes those over-emphatic closing chords the more jarring, as though the work’s ultimate resolution had to be stated rather than just insinuated.

The remaining works, both with three movements and each lasting around 20 minutes, might be thought even closer to tradition yet, as so often with Sohal, matters are never this concrete. Thus the Fourth Quartet’s initial movement alternates its impetuous and ruminative themes to purposeful effect, then its central Moderato balances eloquence and introspection with a poise as makes this the likely highlight of the album; the final Allegro channelling motifs previously heard towards its satisfying denouement. The Fifth Quartet manipulates form and expression even more deftly, the Allegretto’s incisive yet never unyielding rhythmic verve duly matched by the Adagio’s melodic richness or the final Allegro’s contrapuntal dexterity on the way to a decisive close. Both of these pieces abound in quartet writing as unaffected as it is masterful.

Does it all work?

Indeed it does. Whether conceived as a single span or separate movements, the musical range of these pieces is a constant source of fascination. Even more surprising is that the Fourth and Fifth Quartets are only now receiving their first hearing, but it would be hard to imagine more committed advocacy than from the Piatti Quartet, which has taken this music to its collective heart. Hopefully these pieces will now find greater exposure in recital, as the importance of Sohal’s legacy becomes evident and its relevance to the present more widely acknowledged.

Is it recommended?

Indeed it is. Sound is almost ideal, while Utsyo Charraborty’s overview is complemented by a biographical note from Suddhaseel Sen and Janet Swinney. Hopefully the Second Quartet and the brief Awakening (soprano and string quartet) feature on a further release from this source.

Listen / Buy

You can hear excerpts from the album and explore purchase options at the Toccata Classics website. Click on the names to read more about the Piatti Quartet, and Naresh Sohal

Published post no.2,835 – Monday 23 March 2026

On Record – Daniela Braun, Anna Carewe & Irmela Roelcke – Anatol Vieru: Piano and Chamber Music (Toccata Classics)

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Daniela Braun (violin), Anna Carewe (cello), Irmela Roelcke (piano)

Anatol Vieru
Versete Op.116 (1989)
Piano Sonata no.2 Op.140 (1994)
Piano Trio (1997)

Toccata Classics TOCC0762 [65’09”]
Producer Justus Beyer Engineers Philipp Wisser, Oliver Dannert

Recorded 14-17 June 2024 at Deutschlandfunk Kammermusiksaal, Cologne

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Toccata Classics issues a volume of late chamber works by Romanian composer Anatol Vieru (1926-98), authoritatively realized by three Berlin-based musicians and so confirming him as a major figure during what was a period of intensive creativity for Romanian musical culture.

What’s the music like?

Along with contemporaries Pascal Bentoiu and Stefan Nicolescu, Vieru was a leading light in the post-war era. A successful academic and administrative career went hand in hand with an increasingly forward-looking approach to composition, making for a substantial and diverse output of almost 150 opuses. Only a fraction has been recorded, but performances of various works (including nearly all his seven symphonies) have been released while other pieces can be accessed via YouTube. This album duly collates three chamber works from his last years.

Most substantial is a Piano Trio from the year before his death. As in all three of these works, Vieru eschews tempo indications for metronome markings (something his older contemporary Mieczysław Weinberg favoured in numerous late chamber pieces), while the hybrid nature of its four movements blurs formal divisions so that a motivic continuity audibly extends across the whole entity. Its expressive ambit likewise projects qualities drawn from Classical or even Baroque models decisively into the present, thus offsetting any possibility of this being music with ‘neo-’ connotations. Trenchant and incisive over much of its course, a more yielding and inward aspect increasingly comes to the fore such that the finale concludes in a mood of keen understatement – not so much avoiding a decisive close as rendering one entirely superfluous.

If the other pieces seem less unequivocal in outlook, they are hardly less refractory in content. Indeed, Versete evidently consists of two-dozen ‘‘microstructures’’ as might equally be called vignettes in their brevity and starkness of gesture; any merging toward a cumulative structure effectively determined by the interpreters. Its three movements may suggest the Second Piano Sonata as favouring a more Classical conception, but this is belied by its opening movement’s formal fluidity, its interlude-like successor’s tensile expression, then a finale which pointedly deconstructs its main motifs as to result in the most distilled of resolutions. Many composers adopt a ‘less is more’ strategy in their later music, but Vieru remains unusual in carrying this through to a logical outcome from where any further development cannot easily be imagined.

Does it all work?

Indeed it does. Vieru’s later music derives from an intricate yet never abstruse compositional strategy – succinctly outlined here by Dan Dediu – which ensures formal unity as surely as it promotes expressive variety. If the Piano Trio is the most absorbing work, the remaining two pieces are never less than distinctive and likewise benefit from the unstinting commitment of these players – Irmela Roelchea writing about her involvement with this music in the booklet. Musicians everywhere should hopefully be encouraged to explore such pieces for themselves.

Is it recommended?

Yes it is. The sound has no lack of clarity and definition, if seeming a shade brittle in louder passages, while the booklet also features an overview of the composer by Martin Anderson. Hitherto unrecorded, Vieru’s eight string quartets would seem to be a worthwhile next step.

Listen / Buy

You can hear excerpts from the album and explore purchase options at the Toccata Classics website. Click on the names to read more about the performers – violinist Daniela Braun, cellist Anna Carewe and pianist Irmela Roalcke – and composer Anatol Vieru

Published post no.2,833 – Saturday 21 March 2026

On Record – Tippett Quartet – Noah Max: String Quartets (Toccata Classics)

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Tippett Quartet [John Mills, Jeremy Isaac (violins), Lydia Lowndes-Northcott (viola), Božidar Vukotić (cello)], Michael Morpurgo, narrator (‘The Man Who Planted Trees)

Noah Max
String Quartet no.1 Op.25 ‘The Man Who Planted Trees’ (2020)
String Quartet no.2 Op.37 (2021-22)
String Quartet no.3 Op.41 (2022)
String Quartet no.4 Op. 45 (2022-23)

Toccata Classics TOCC0749 [68’46”]
Producer Andrew Keener Engineer Oscar Torres

Recorded 16 August 2023 at St Silas Church, Kentish Town, London (‘The Man Who Planyed Trees’), 29-31 January 2024 at SJE Arts, Oxford

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Toccata Classics issues a second volume of music by Noah Max – devoted to his four string quartets which emerged at pace during the early years of this decade, and rendered here with conviction by the Tippett Quartet as part of its ongoing commitment to contemporary music.

What’s the music like?

As is emphasized in Martin Anderson’s introductory note, Max is nothing if not versatile for a creative figure still in his late twenties. Other than composition, he has been equally active as a cellist and conductor while also being a poet, film-maker and visual artist. Listeners are most likely to have encountered his music via the chamber opera A Child in Striped Pyjamas, after the novel by John Boyne, which premiered to considerable acclaim in London just over three years back and is an acknowledged influence on what he has composed subsequently.

Not just inspired by Jean Giono’s fable The Man Who Planted Trees, Max’s First Quartet also incorporates this text – eloquently narrated by Michael Morpurgo – across its three movements that chart a course from speculative uncertainty, via rapt inwardness, to dynamic resolution. It may also have three movements, but the Second Quartet is otherwise its antithesis. The initial subtitle, ‘The Ladder of Escape’ (after Joan Miró), affords real insight into its unfolding from fractured and sometimes fractious indecision, via an impulsiveness which ultimately turns in on itself, to a gradual accumulation of sound that yet leaves its overall formal and expressive trajectory in abeyance. One reason, perhaps, why this piece has been placed out of sequence at the close of the programme, as if in anticipation of a response which has yet to be written.

As the composer himself notes, the Third Quartet is designed around the number ‘three’ that imparts instability to almost every aspect; not least a volatile interplay between its harmonic density and a clearly defined chorale as comes into focus in a visceral if (almost inevitably) self-destructive climax – made the more plangent by down-tuning the lowest string on each instrument such that darkness overcomes the ensemble. Likewise cast in a single movement, the Fourth Quartet draws on aspects of Max’s aforementioned opera – but this is only made concrete by the emergence of Jewish liturgical chant during its anguished final stages. Max further draws attention to a conclusion whose demonstrably provisional manner makes the writing of a ‘fifth quartet’ to conclude this putative trilogy a likely and intriguing prospect.

Does it all work?

Pretty much throughout. What becomes evident, above all, is the ease with which Max moves between differing styles and aesthetics so as to result in an approach beholden to none. While this may seem relevant to the work at hand rather than establishing consistency across these quartets as a whole, it should not be taken as failure of intent but rather as an indication that he is still in the formative stages of a composing career which will doubtless throw up more than its fair share of surprises and circuities before one can speak of a definable ‘Max idiom’.

Is it recommended?

Yes it is – not least as these readings have a conviction expected from the always enterprising Tippett Quartet, along with an almost ideal ‘quartet sound’. Those who have Toccata’s earlier anthology of Max’s chamber music (TOCC0638) need not hesitate to acquire this follow-up.

Listen / Buy

You can hear excerpts from the album and explore purchase options at the Toccata Classics website. Click on the names to read more about the Tippett Quartet, Michael Morpurgo and composer Noah Max

Published post no.2,825 – Friday 13 March 2026

On Record – Geneva Lewis, Clare Hammond, BBC National Orchestra of Wales – Grace Williams: Violin Concerto, Elegy, Sinfonia Concertante (Lyrita)

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Geneva Lewis (violin, Violin Concerto), Clare Hammond (piano, Sinfonia Concertante), BBC National Orchestra of Wales / Jaime Martin (Violin Concerto), Ryan Bancroft (Elegy), Jac van Steen (Sinfonia Concertante)

Grace Williams
Violin Concerto (1949-50)
Elegy (1936, rev. 1940)
Sinfonia Concertante (1941)

Lyrita SRCD447 [59’09”]
Producer Mike Sims Engineers Andrew Smilie, Simon Smith (Violin Concerto)

Broadcast performances at Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff on 12 February 2022 (Elegy) and 22 September 2022 (Sinfonia Concertante); live performance from Royal Albert Hall, London on 8 August 2023 (Violin Concerto)

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Lyrita continues its exploration of Grace Williams with this enticing collection of orchestral works dating from before, during and after the Second World War. All the pieces feature the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, which has championed this composer over nine decades.

What’s the music like?

Earliest here is the Elegy for strings that, evidently overhauled and re-scored after several hearings, falls within an extensive lineage of such miniatures (in length but not expressive scope) by British composers. Scored for muted violins and violas, the initial idea evinces a ruminative austerity such as persists to the main climax; after which, a heartfelt passage for solo strings presages the more conciliatory mood setting in near its end. Ryan Bancroft has the measure of a piece whose emotional depth is out of all proportion to its modest duration.

Although conceived prior to the above, Williams did not commence work on what became her Sinfonia Concertante until the turn of the next decade. With its compact dimensions and intensive integration of piano and orchestra, its title (actually suggested by pianist Michael Mullinar) is well chosen. If the opening Allegro never quite finds the right balance between its impulsive and yielding main themes, the central slow movement is Williams at her most characteristic with its unfolding as terraces of mounting intensity toward a powerful climax which subsides into pensive resignation; the final Alla Marcia duly maintaining its impetus through to a forceful if never hectoring close. Clare Hammond is at her inquiring best in an account as finds Jac van Steen handling some passing issues of balance with real adeptness.

For its part, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales is no less attuned to the very different ethos of the Violin Concerto, which it premiered with soloist Granville Jones almost 75 years back. New Zealand-born Geneva Lewis proves to be a sympathetic advocate – even if the opening Liricamenta surely requires a more purposeful sense of direction for its enfolding inwardness not to risk inertia. Not that her unforced manner and tonal elegance are other than appropriate, as is even more evident in the central Andante with its impressionist eddying of phrases and fastidious timbral shading. Following on attacca, the final Allegro sees the work’s only swift music in which Lewis’s deftness gains from her assured co-ordination with Jaime Martin. Its cadenza is incisively despatched, and the coda more satisfying for its teasing unexpectedness.

Does it all work?

Almost always. The Violin Concerto is a work with which its composer never seems to have been wholly satisfied, but such reservations as there are centre less on its actual content than on the difficulty – at least in its opening movement – of controlling overall momentum such that the music coheres overall. Lewis is by no means unsuccessful, though comparison with earlier performances that are available online suggests other soloists may have gone further in this respect. A reminder, moreover, that Williams’s music does not necessarily ‘play itself’.

Is it recommended?

Indeed. The Cardiff broadcasts benefit from the superb acoustic of Hoddinott Hall, while the Proms account of the Violin Concerto has far more immediacy than ‘on the night’. Typically informed and informative notes by Paul Conway round out what is a mandatory acquisition.

Listen / Buy

You can hear excerpts from the album and explore purchase options at the Lyrita website and the Presto Music website, and click on the names for more information on violinist Geneva Lewis, pianist Clare Hammond, conductors Jaime Martin, Ryan Bancroft and Jac van Steen, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and composer Grace Williams

Published post no.2,808 – Tuesday 24 February 2026

On Record – Julia Kogan, Britten Sinfonia / Steven Lloyd-Gonzalez – Britten: Les Illuminations – en français and in English; Barber (First Hand Records)

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Julia Kogan (soprano), Britten Sinfonia / Steven Lloyd-Gonzalez

Barber Knoxville: Summer of 1915 Op. 24 (1947)
Britten Les Illuminations Op.18 (1939) – French and English versions

First Hand Records FHR150 [60’04’’]
English/French texts and English translation included
Producer Andrew Walton Engineer Debs Spanton

Recorded 8-10 October 2023 at Henry Wood Hall, London

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

First Hand Records releases a recording of Britten’s Les Illuminations with a difference – this reading of its original French version being heard alongside one of a new English translation, and with Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 included as far more than a mere makeweight.

What’s the music like?

Second of Britten’s song-cycles, Les Illuminations sets poems from the eponymous collection by Arthur Rimbaud and was among the earliest works written during his three years in North America. Although most often performed with tenor, this was conceived for soprano and Julia Kogan amply underlines the emotional frisson possible when sung thus. Such is immediately evident from the simmering anticipation of Fanfare, its single-line setting recurring midway as the sensuous Interlude then as impetuous conclusion to the sardonic Parade. Elsewhere, the feverish excitement of Villes, knowing elegance of Antique and rapt longing of Being Beauteous are tangibly rendered – as is the inherent fatalism of Départ which evanesces into sombre repose. If not Britten’s defining vocal work, this is surely among his most engrossing.

All the more surprising, then, it should never have received an English translation – until now. Long established as translator and poet, Timothy Adès has come up with one that is idiomatic and conveys the essence of each setting to often startling degree. That said, these translations read arguably as explications of the poem at hand rather than as linguistic equivalents for the purpose of singing, which is not to deny the conviction that Kogan puts into their realization. Whether or not this establishes itself as a viable alternative is for future exponents to decide.

Cannily interspersed between these performances, Knoxville: Summer of 1915 finds Barber setting extracts from James Agee’s prose-poem as a ‘lyric rhapsody’ that offsets its evoking of idyllic contentment with a bittersweet acknowledgement of what can arise in the light of experience. Interesting to recall Agee was barely a decade older than Rambaud at his death, and that the trajectory of his life moved in something of an opposite direction as regards its unfolding from outward security to inner upheaval. There have been memorable recordings of this work across the decades, and that by Kogan is surely set to join them in terms of the imaginative insight she wrests out of Barber’s setting along with its undoubted vocal allure. Whatever their virtues, few earlier accounts get to the heart of this matter with such acuity.

Does it all work?

Pretty much always and not forgetting the contribution of Britten Sinfonia (whose association with its namesake’s song-cycles goes back to recordings from John-Mark Ainsley some three decades ago) – all directed here with no lack of perception by Steven Lloyd-Gonzalez, whose discography features worthwhile accounts of Shostakovich’s Sixth and Ninth Symphonies for FHR. The balance of voice and orchestra – whether with or without wind instruments – could hardly have been bettered, while Kogan contributes a succinct though revealing booklet note.

Is it recommended?

Indeed. Kogan has previously recorded a collection by Isabelle Aboulker for FHR, and it is to be hoped her association with the label will continue. Certainly there is much in the repertoire of English and French orchestral song to which her distinctive response would be well suited.

Listen / Buy

You can read more about the album at the First Hand Records website, and explore purchase options at the Presto Music website, and click on the names for more information on soprano Julie Kogan, the Britten Sinfonia and conductor Steven Lloyd-Gonzalez

Published post no.2,807 – Monday 23 February 2026