Strings Attached - March 2026
There’s another complete set of the Bach Cello Suites, this time from the New Zealand-based cellist Inbal Megiddo (Atoll Records ACD233 atoll.co.nz/album.php?acd=233).
From the opening notes of the Suite No.1 in G Major, BWV1007 there’s a lovely use of rubato – no strict tempo here, but a rhythmic freedom which her mentor Aldo Parisot rightly says “gives an improvisatory feel to the music.” Beautifully shaped, expressive and sensitive, it sets the tone for all that follows.
Megiddo likens the Suites to an emotional and spiritual journey that mirrors life’s experience, convincingly equating each suite with a progressively later stage of life. Gorgeous tone, faultless intonation, all beautifully recorded – it’s been a long time since I’ve enjoyed listening to these wonderful works this much.
Listen to 'Bach Cello Suites' Now in the Listening Room
Reflection, the new CD from violinist Tamsin Waley-Cohen and her long-standing duo partner pianist/composer Huw Watkins was inspired by Reflection Op.31a, written for the duo in 2016 by British composer Oliver Knussen, who died in July 2018 (Signum Records SIGCD968 signumrecords.com/product/reflection/SIGCD968).
The duo immediately wanted to record it, but it wasn’t until they performed Watkins’ own Violin Sonata in 2020 that Waley-Cohen felt they had found the right accompanying piece; both works are world-premiere recordings. The Watkins sonata is a striking work, written for Waley-Cohen and influenced by the qualities he sees and admires in her playing; despite some climactic passages, it has what the composer calls a prevailing mood of calm introspection.
Also on the CD are Stravinsky’s Duo Concertant, K054 and Prokofiev’s Violin Sonata No.1 in F Minor, Op.80, works by two favourite composers of Waley-Cohen, Watkins and Knussen.
Violinist Jerilyn Jorgensen and pianist Cullan Bryant are the duo on Schubert: The Sonatinas for Piano & Violin (Albany Records TROY2012 albanyrecords.com/catalog/troy2012).
The three Violin Sonatas in D Major D.384, in A Minor D.385 and in G Minor D.408 from 1816 were published posthumously in 1836 as Sonatinas Op.137. In her insightful notes Lidia Chang suggests that the term sonatina was a deliberate marketing choice, indicating a lesser degree of difficulty with the many capable amateur players of the time in mind, a view supported by the fact that the style of the works suggests that they were intended not for the concert hall but for private performance.
Jorgensen and Bryant established a career presenting classical period historical performances, and this CD appears to be in that vein. The violin playing is low-key and understated, with very little consistent vibrato, and the keyboard is presumably a period instrument, the CD having been recorded in Ashburnham MA, home of the Frederick Collection of Historic Pianos, which Bryant has used as an instrumental source since the late 1990s. No confirmation in the notes, however.
If the thought of a Cuban pianist and a French cellist playing and improvising together appeals to you then you really should listen to Nuit Parisienne à la Havane, the new CD from pianist Roberto Fonseca and cellist Vincent Segal (Artwork Records ARTR0016CD store.pias.com/release/559357-vincent-segal-roberto-fonseca-nuit-parisienne-la-havan).
Fonseca – who includes the Buena Vista Social Club among his early activities – and Segal have created an intimate, finely crafted encounter that bridges classical influences, Afro-Cuban traditions and contemporary improvisation. The CD was recorded spontaneously over five days, with no preparation – they “simply sat down and began to play,” balancing carefully composed material with moments of improvisation.
Fonseca admits to being strongly influenced by classical music, especially Bach and Chopin, and the interplay here between classical and jazz piano is captivating and immensely entertaining. Segal’s cello is a joy throughout.
BEYOND WORDS – A Collection of Art Songs for Cello and Piano features cellist Meredith Blecha-Wells and pianist Sun Min Kim in a recital of vocal works reimagined for their instruments, highlighting music’s power to communicate emotion beyond language (Navona NV6788 navonarecords.com/catalog/nv6788).
Two American works are at the heart of the recital: the lovely Aria for Cello and Piano by H. Leslie Adams (1932-2024) and Jennifer Bellor’s three-part Smile and a Sigh – Song of Flight, Echo and Long These Days – originally for soprano, electric guitar and piano, and arranged here by the performers.
Blecha-Wells and Kim are also responsible for all the remaining transcriptions on the disc. The CD opens with eight Rachmaninoff songs, selected from his various Romances Opp.4, 21, 34 and 38, and closes with de Falla’s six-part Suite populaire espagnole.
Blecha-Wells has a warm, smooth tone and a lovely sense of line, with Kim a fine accompanist. Cello and piano sound are both beautifully recorded on an excellent release.
In Beethoven complete string quartet news, the three volumes of The Complete Beethoven String Quartets released by the Calidore String Quartet between February 2023 and January 2025 have now been reissued as a 9CD box set (Signum Classics SIGCD925 signumrecords.com/product/beethoven-cycle-4-complete-box-set/SIGCD925).
From the outset the releases garnered a very positive response, with reviews in this column noting ensemble playing of the highest quality and expecting the resulting box set to be an exceptionally strong option – which, in a highly competitive field, it clearly is.
Out of Vienna – Berg, Webern, Schulhoff, the outstanding debut album on the Alpha Classics label by the Leonkoro Quartet is a fascinating exploration of Viennese music for string quartet in the early 20th century ALPHA1196 leonkoroquartet.com/en/media).
Berg’s 1926 Lyric Suite is an intimate and passionate depiction of his deep love for Hanna Fuchs-Robettin, the sister of Franz Werfel and the wife of an industrialist friend of the composer. Hanna’s annotated copy of the study score from Berg (“May it be a small monument to a great love”) details the use of their initials (B-F and A-Bb in German notation) and personal numerology, as well as significant quotes from other works.
Schulhoff’s Five Pieces for String Quartet from 1923-24 are described as looking at the Baroque genre through surrealist – and sometimes sarcastic and mocking – lenses.
Webern’s Five Movements for String Quartet, Op.5 from 1909 was the first string quartet work to use the free atonal style that Webern had started in his Lieder Op.3 – “a concentration of means that tended towards aphorism.” He told Berg that the work mourned the 1906 loss of his mother. His beautiful Langsamer Satz, an early work from 1905 is essentially a love poem to his future wife.
Concert note: The Leonkoro Quartet perform Haydn, Bosmans and Schubert at Music Toronto on March 5.
Works by Shostakovich and Kaija Saariaho are presented on Terra Memoria, the new CD from the Dudok Quartet Amsterdam (Rubicon Classics RCD 1218 dudokquartet.com/albums/terra-memoria-saariaho-shostakovich).
Shostakovich’s String Quartet No.3 in F Major, Op.73 was highly regarded by the composer, who originally gave each of the five movements a title suggesting an anti-war stance – Blithe ignorance of the future cataclysm; The eternal question: why? and for what?, for instance – before deciding to withdraw them. It remains a powerful personal statement in his unmistakeable style.
The title track is Saariaho’s atmospheric 2007 Terra Memoria for String Quartet, her second work in the genre. It has the dedication “for those departed,” remembering those no longer with us, “Terra” (earth) referring to the material of their complete lives and “memoria” to its transformation in our memories.
Transcriptions of seven of Shostakovich’s 1933 24 Preludes Op.34 complete the disc, with two (numbers 1 and 22) arranged by the Dudok’s violinist Judith van Driel and five (numbers 2, 4, 6, 7 and 12) by their cellist David Faber.
On Elena Ruehr: The Northern Quartets the Quartet ES performs the programmatic set of three string quartets that Ruehr wrote for them following a casual suggestion that she write some new quartets about places she loves (AVIE AV2798 avie-records.com/releases/elena-ruehr-the-northern-quartets).
String Quartet No.9 “Keweenaw” explores the Keweenaw Peninsula on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula where Ruehr grew up. The five movements include A Thimbleberry Ripens in the Sun, A Blizzard and Lake Superior at Night. String Quartet No.10 “Long Pond” evokes the small lake in Cape Cod where Ruehr has spent a lot of time, the quartet opening with Moonrise and ending with a Nor’easter storm.
Iceland was the inspiration for the String Quartet No.11 “Reykjavik” in anticipation of its premiere there, Ruehr admitting to having been inspired by Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Psalms and Barber’s Adagio for Strings when writing it.
The works are all strongly tonal and immediately accessible, creating a distinctive array of soundscapes and fully supporting Ruehr’s remark that you don’t need to know the programmatic elements to enjoy the music.
The string quintet developed alongside the string quartet, but never matched the latter’s prominence in the chamber music world. The new 3-CD set Mozart String Quintets, featuring violinists Oleg Kaskiv and Alexander Grytsayenk, violists Eli Karanfilova and Valentyna Pryshlyak and cellist Pablo de Naverán presents all six of the works Mozart wrote for the genre, with a viola instead of a cello as the fifth instrument (Claves Records CD 50-3127-29 claves.ch/products/mozart-the-string-quintets?srsltid=AfmBOoqfo6k0fgxKgUYsw9OI9DT5AGRFn3Ltpzw-14bjh4tbwIdE1pxu).
Michael Haydn has been credited with creating the form in 1773, the same year that Mozart wrote his String Quintet in B-flat Major, K174 on returning from a trip to Italy. The String Quintets in C Major K515, in G Minor K516 and in C Minor K406/516b (the latter a transcription of an earlier Serenade for Wind octet) date from 1787, the String Quintet in D Major K593 from 1790 and the String Quintet in E-flat Major K614, the last chamber work he completed, from 1791.
There’s bright, joyful playing here that still plumbs the emotional depths of these superb works.
Two remarkable works by teenage composers are featured on Enescu & Mendelssohn Octets, with the Paris-based Quatuor Ébène and the London-based Belcea Quartet continuing a relationship they first began ten years ago (Erato 5021732997296 warnerclassics.com/release/octets-mendelssohn-enescu).
“Phenomenally gifted,” says the release blurb of both composers – if anything, an understatement. It’s still difficult to believe that Mendelssohn’s wonderful Octet in E-flat Major, Op.20 from 1825 was written by a 16-year-old, and George Enescu’s Octet in C Major, Op.7 from 1900, when the 18-year-old composer was living in Paris, inspires equal admiration. It’s an expansive and passionate work that reflects the influences of the time – Strauss, Wagner, Debussy – as well as folk music from the Romanian composer’s homeland.
Both works receive full-blooded performances. There are numerous recordings of the Mendelssohn available, but the addition of the Enescu renders this excellent release even more attractive.
The Brazilian Rafaell Altino has been principal viola with the Odense Symphony Orchestra for 28 years, and they join him in three 21st-century Danish Viola Concertos by Karsten Fundal (b.1966), Christian Winther Christensen (b.1977) and Søren Nils Eichberg (b.1973), all written for him. David Danzmayr conducts the Christensen, Pierre Bleuse the Fundal and Eichberg (Dacapo DAC-DA2044 dacapo-records.dk/en/recordings/fundal-viola-concertos).
Fundal’s 2008 Viola Concerto (Lightened Darkness/Darkened Light/Dwindling Recall) is an engrossing work, brilliantly orchestrated with a full range of textures and sonorities. The three sections grow less dense in texture, with the solo viola gradually disappearing over the final six minutes against a barely audible background of what sounds like falling water.
To call Christensen’s 15-minute composition from 2019 a Viola Concerto seems a misnomer: seven brief sections, mostly mixtures of sounds and effects with barely a hint of orchestration. The release sheet mentions “strings tapped with rods rather than bowed, instruments patted and scraped, and woodwinds blown without reeds. Rarely does anything sound fully or in the foreground.” Make of that what you will.
Eichberg’s 2016 Charybdis (Wirbeirausch ) restores our faith. It’s named for the whirlpool and sea monster in Homer’s Odyssey and was inspired by the force of natural destruction, the viola being “caught in the spiraling vortex of the orchestra.” Brilliant stuff!
Compositions by Edward Elgar, John Ireland and Frank Bridge are featured on English Cello Works, a new Naxos CD with the Danish cellist Andreas Brantelid, the Swedish pianist Bengt Forsberg and the Royal Danish Orchestra under Thomas Søndergård (8.573690
naxos.com/CatalogueDetail/?id=8.573690).
Brantelid digs deep in an expansive and passionate opening to the Elgar in a live recording of a 2021 Copenhagen concert. It’s a terrific performance all through, with lovely phrasing, plenty of nuance and a fine mix of intensity and expressive sensitivity. The orchestral support is equally fine.
Ireland’s Cello Sonata in G Minor from 1928 is fittingly described here as fusing brooding, terse muscularity with lyricism and bravura. Brantelid and Forsberg provide a compelling reading, as they do with Bridge’s Cello Sonata in D Minor, H125, a two-movement work begun in 1913 but not completed until 1917, the trials and tribulations of the First World War which intervened possibly accounting for the differences between the Romantic opening movement and the more melancholic and defiant second.
Elgar wrote Liebesgruß (Love’s Greeting) in 1888 as an engagement present for his piano student Caroline Alice Roberts; it was published by Schott the following year in various arrangements under the title Salut d’amour. The cello and piano version closes an outstanding CD.
The two Shostakovich Cello Concertos were both written in collaboration with Rostropovich, whose artistry inspired the composer to expand the cello’s expressive capabilities with virtuoso technique and profound emotional depth. They are presented on a new Avanti Classic CD in live performances by Alexander Kniazev and the Yokohama Sinfonietta under Kazuki Yamada (AVA 10672 avanticlassic.com/releases/shostakovich-cello-concerto-cd).
Both concertos offer insights into Shostakovich’s relationship with the Soviet regime. Concerto No.1 in E-flat Major, Op.107 from 1959, with its extraordinary solo cello cadenza third movement is from a relatively relaxed period following the 1953 death of Stalin, but it is still somewhat ambivalent and cautious.
Concerto No.2 in G Major, Op.126 from 1966 is darker and more introspective; the composer’s health was deteriorating, and he was under increased scrutiny after reluctantly joining the Communist Party in 1960.
The two concertos were recorded in performance in Philia Hall, Yokohama in January 2015 and February 2018 respectively, and are accurately described as capturing the dark intensity and emotional richness of Shostakovich’s music.
