CLASSICAL NOTES BY NICK BOSTON

Cheryl Frances-Hoad The Whole Earth Dances (Champs Hill CHRCD152).

I’ve been following composer Cheryl Frances-Hoad’s (b.1980) work for a while now, and it was a great delight to explore her latest disc of chamber works, entitled The Whole Earth Dances. The title work was commissioned by The Schubert Ensemble, inspired by walking in her local park, but also by the importance of taking notice of nature in a time when it is under such threat. Full of long sustained string chords, with delicate piano commentary in places, the movement alternates between lively, spiky ‘thistles’ and gentler, unfurling ‘ferns’. And there is hope in the positively consonant, sudden C major ending.

There’s so much on this disc for varied chamber forces, and many different performers, it’s hard to do justice here to it all. There is lyricism as well as dancing canons and rhythmic complexity in Cloud Movements for clarinet, violin and piano, and in The Prophecy, anguish is taken to a new level in an incredibly virtuosic piece, and Rebecca Gilliver (cello) and Sophia Rahman (piano) give an outstanding performance. Towards the end, the cello cries out with a strange vibrating screech, and then an unsettling calm is reached at the end, with occasional stabs from the piano punctuating an exhausted cello solo.

Then for something completely different – Game On, a work for piano and Commodore 64 computer. Here, Frances-Hoad takes sounds from a 1987 puzzle game, X0R, and uses these to create a fascinating soundworld, exploring game theory, robots taking over the world, and ultimately, destruction of humanity – so not a cheery piece! There is a chilling sense of panic here, despite the slightly comic origins of a 1980s gaming computer. The collection ends with a work for string quartet, My Day in Hell, inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy. Here, the angular melodic material, downward slides and richly dissonant chords definitely create a sense of being trapped in circles within circles.

I’m always struck in Frances-Hoad’s music by how, despite some common devices, such as the contrast between slow, long chords and spikier rhythmic movement, with great use of pregnant pauses, the atmospheres evoked are incredibly varied and individual to each piece. I’ve focused on the music itself here, but all the performers deserve praise here – there is some challenging music, and all the players do great justice to Frances- Hoad’s fascinating and often virtuosic demands.

Joël Marosi & Esther Walker Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn (First Hand Records FHR81).

Joël Marosi (cello) and Esther Walker (piano) have brought together all the works for cello and piano composed by brother and sister Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) and Fanny Mendelssohn (1805- 1847).

Many of the pieces were written with their cellist younger brother, Paul. Felix’s first sonata has a real youthful urgency in the opening movement. Walker manages to produce a bright tone despite the driving repeated chords and thick textures of the piano part, and Marosi brings out the yearning as well as a virtuosic display to finish.

He really gets the chance to sing out in the second movement’s lyrical central section, and both players produce the requisite drama in the finale, and manage the piece’s quiet ending, with delicate lyricism from the cello over a gently rippling piano. The Variations Concertantes draw on a humble, hymn-like tune, and encompass eight variations, and the two players here exploit their moments well, although there could be a little more tempo differentiation between the faster variations. Turning to sister Fanny, we have a Fantasia, with a beautifully romantic melody presented first on the piano, with the cello emerging from a low accompaniment to take over the melody.

There is plenty of opportunity for Marosi to sing here, particularly in the slower arioso section. Similarly, in her capriccio, lyrical melodies are passed between the instruments, with the piano leading off on a faster central section, with emphatic fanfare-like statements from the cello. Once again, the movement winds down to a quiet finish. We return to Felix for the remainder of the recording, with his Sonata No. 2.

The two players bound into the opening movement, with its striding cello theme and joyful energy and drive throughout. In the finale, Walker and Marosi never let up with the driving rhythmic energy, right to the dramatic explosive climax, before the dynamics drop down, leaving quiet, rippling exchanges to end.

Louis Lortie Louis Lortie plays Chopin: Vol 6 (Chandos CHAN20117).

In Louis Lortie’s sixth volume of Chopin works, we have the Hommage à Mozart Op. 2, the two Op. 49 Polonaises and the Fantasie Op. 49, interspersed with sixteen of the Mazurkas.

Lortie’s Mazurkas are full of character, with great attention to articulation and dynamics. For example, from the Op. 6 set, he gives the first a wonderful halting lilt, and its falling chromatic progressions have a silky darkness. In the Op. 24 set, there’s a lyrical, more waltzlike affair to begin with, and the third has pauses in almost every phrase, which Lortie shapes and times with delicate poise.

The Hommage à Mozart opens with a lengthy rhapsodic introduction, with hints of Mozart’s theme, Là ci darem la mano, and Lortie delivers this with suitable grandeur and virtuosic command, followed by a brilliant set of variations, which Lortie dashes off with impressive ease. He exploits the dark drama of the operatic adagio variation to the full, with an electric alla polacca to finish. The two Polonaises, Op. 49, especially the first, the Military, are by nature emphatic and weighty, but this can be easily overdone in the first, rendering it a shouty affair. Here, Lortie certainly provides weight, but with precise articulation and full use of the range of dynamics he avoids the bombast.

The second is full of brooding darkness, and Lortie brings this out, as well as the wistful melancholy of the lyrical central section. Fantasie Op. 49 concludes the disc, with its funereal march launching an explosion of improvisatory explorations.

Lortie is definitely let loose here, although despite the extremes of virtuosity, that sense of subtle changing moods is never lost.

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