Classical

The latest releases reviewed

BRAHMS: PIANO QUINTET; STRING QUARTET IN A MINOR OP 51 NO 2 Stephen Hough (piano), Takács String Quartet Hyperion CDA 67551 ****

The Brahms who gave the world his Piano Quintet in 1864 and his first two string quartets nine years later, was not the portly, bearded figure familiar from photographs taken late in life. He was still clean-shaven and retained something of a boyish look.

Stephen Hough and the Takács Quartet take a more sinewy approach than is usual in these two works. The strings don't strive after the orchestral sonorities that some ensembles seek out in the quintet, and the lightness of manner is even more pronounced in the Quartet in A minor.

Some people may regret that the reduced sense of competitiveness in the quintet. But the playing still packs a punch, and the sense of interior illumination that's achieved is a clear bonus.

www.hyperion-records.co.uk - MICHAEL DERVAN

SHOSTAKOVICH: SYMPHONY NO 10; GLANERT: THEATRUM BESTIARUM WDR Sinfonieorchester Kön / Semyon Bychkov Avie AV 2137 ***

This latest instalment in Semyon Bychkov's ongoing Shostakovich symphony cycle on Avie brings a glamourous-sounding account of the Tenth Symphony.

The conductor's big-hearted, romantic treatment is supported by rich orchestral sound. But he underplays the music's sense of conflict, and frequently runs the danger of sounding placid at one extreme, and inflated at the other.

This is one of those performances which makes the piece sound much longer than it need be. The adventurous coupling, Detlev Glanert's 22-minute Theatrum Bestiarum of 2005, a dark and wild series of songs and dances dedicated to Shostakovich, is like the music for some blackly madcap animated film straining at the bounds of exaggeration. www.avierecords.com - MICHAEL DERVAN

BAD NEWS FROM THE DESERT Rolf Borch (clarinet), Norwegian Army Band Bergen/Peter Szilvay Aurora ACD 5083 ***

The climax of James Clapperton's Songs and Dances of Death was inspired by the Scherzo of Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony, and the Solomon Volkov-derived interpretation of it as a black Stalin-portrait.

The object of Clapperton's ire, however, is Margaret Thatcher. Knut Vaage's Breaking Another Wall delights in bringing the tonal resources of the 21st century composer to the world of the military band.

The most rewarding of the pieces is Jon Øivind Ness's Bad News from the Desert (Deep Pain of the Dung Beetle), for clarinet and band.

This is at once an expression of political Arab solidarity and "a serious, virtuoso concert piece which now and then succumbs to amusing digressions".

Military band music as you've probably never heard it before. www.aurorarecords.no -  MICHAEL DERVAN

© 2007 The Irish Times