Reissues and new recordings.
LISA BATIASHVILI: ECHOES OF TIME, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Hélène Grimaud (piano), Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor), (Deutsche Grammophon/Universal). At the heart of this stunning recording of music by 
(ex-) Soviet composers is Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto (shelved until Stalin was safely in the ground), and at the heart of that is its impressive Passacaglia. Here as everywhere, Batiashvili’s tone is superb and her interpretation convincingly severe. Also present: arrangements of charmers – the Rachmaninov Vocalise and Shostakovich Lyric Waltz, and two works by Estonian and Georgian émigrés Arvo Pärt (Spiegel im Spiegel) and Giya Kancheli (V & V) adding spiritual minimalism to the mix. Fascinating package; fantastic execution.
STRAUSS: EIN HELDENLEBEN, VIER LETZTE LIEDER, Dorothea Röschmann (soprano), Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Yannick Nézet-Séguin (conductor). (BIS/Ode). Perspective comes with time. Some used to agonise over what possible business works – as utterly 19th-century and unironically beautiful as Strauss’s Four Last Songs – had being written as late as 1948. Now we are just grateful to have them. Röschmann’s reading is all about clarity, which is perhaps a gesture at modernity. The symphonic poem A Hero’s Life comes from the other, pre-1900 end of Strauss’s long career, taking its cue from Beethoven’s Eroica symphony mixed with a hefty amount of self-glorification. The Rotterdam Philharmonic is capable but a little too untidy to enthuse over.
ANTHONY RITCHIE, OCTOPUS, CHAMBER MUSIC, (Atoll/Ode). Otago-based Anthony Ritchie’s well-honed musical language is readily communicative not only because it is expressionistically tonal, but also often pictorial. Alongside the second quartet is the eponymous Octopus, its octet essentially a chamber orchestra (Donald Armstrong’s Amici), with colourfully orchestral textures depicting an aquatic world, whilst A Survivor from Rekohu showcases talented flautist Alexa Still in an extended lament for the Moriori, backed by evocative, windswept tape. Rites of Passage, featuring bassoonist Preman Tilson, seems to chart a musical rather than personal development in its gradual departure from stylistic homage to Stravinsky.
ALEXANDER BORODIN: CHAMBER MUSIC (Vol 1), String Quartet no 2, Cello Sonata, Piano Quintet, Pražák Quartet, Michal Kaňka (cello), Jaromír Klepáč (piano) (Praga/Ode). It takes a supreme effort of will to hear the slow movement from Borodin’s second quartet and not think of Kismet, but it’s worth it. Eighteenth- and 19th-century chamber music is so dominated by the Austro-German tradition that one forgets how interesting examples are from outside it. Borodin’s exemplifies crowd-pleasing Russian melodiousness, but also some curiosities, not least the early piano quintet whose first movement is a palimpsest of Bach’s C Minor Prelude. This reissue from the long-established and rather traditional Pražák Quartet is a welcome reminder.