Classical CDs
Classical CDs
by Ian Dando
BAROQUE, Gabriela Montero (EMI). This young Venezuelan improviser is a find. Small wonder Marta Argerich called her “ecstatic”. Compared with Jacques Loussier’s stylised jazz suavity, Gabriela Montera’s piano playing is unpredictable and therefore an exciting listen. She transforms the four-note motive from Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus into a habanera. Forget Handel, Vivaldi and Bach. Instead, enjoy the startling transformations. She is never wayward. She develops one small motif rather than embellishing the whole piece, giving her improvising style cogent tautness. Her Bach Prelude version gyrates a web of complex contrapuntal texture through many key centres. That is immensely difficult top-drawer improvisation. Her finger clarity in the scalic prestos of Vivaldi’s Summer and Winter is as remarkable as her variety of touch. She’s got it all.
MENDELSSOHN STRING QUARTETS 1, 4 and 6, New Zealand String Quartet (Naxos). What a rocket start. The dramatic urgency leaps out at you from the very opening. Here’s a performance with fire. How astute of the New Zealand String Quartet to kick off this projected complete series of three CDs with the last quartet in F minor Op 80. They see the Beethoven influence immediately: their fiery chords in the finale and their throbbing swells of nuance in the opening movement invest the work with that volatility of Beethoven. With these three quartet performances, the NZSQ stamps its credentials unequivocally as international class. A strong buy.
LISZT AND WAGNER PIANO WORKS, Terence Dennis (Manu). Normally known as one of the country’s most elegant song accompanists, this Dunedin pianist now lashes into the chordal difficulties of the expansive Wagner/Liszt Fantasy on Rienzi with full-blown bravura. Liszt’s remaining pieces connected with Wagner’s death are of introspective severity played with taste. The finest listen is La Lugubra Gondola No 1. For me, most of the Wagner ones are well-crafted works that lack personality. But if you are a lover of the little-known Wagner piano music, Terence Dennis’ refined performances will deeply satisfy you.
DUE CELLI: MUSIC FOR TWO CELLOS, Natalia Pavlutskaya and Alexander Ivashkin (Manu). You’d expect works for two cellos to be rather heavy and overbearing. Quite the opposite with these two cellists well known to New Zealanders. Their elegance and neatly sprung rhythms are well suited to these light classics by Boccherini, Boismortier and Mozart, Vivaldi’s Concerto for two cellos and strings, Pergolesi’s two-cello Sinfonia (Stravinsky pinched its presto for his Pulcinella) and Schnittke’s Moz-Art, entertaining for its light-hearted deconstruction and montage of Mozart miniatures.
