Classical CDs Weekly: Brahms, Gál, Holliger, Schumann

Brahms composed trios throughout his life - these well-loved pieces contrast with the much rarer works of Hans Gal and the oboist Heinz Holliger, here exposed in his parallel career as a composer.

Brahms Piano Trios, Horn Trio, Clarinet Trio Soloists of Villa Musica (Covellio Classics)

Brahms’s B Major Piano Trio was originally composed in 1859 but was drastically revised and republished in 1889. Writing to his publisher about the later version, the one generally played today, Brahms felt that “although the old version is bad, I do not maintain that the new one is good!” It’s a fascinating mixture of early and late styles – more expansive than mature Brahms, though transition passages and developments feel like the work of an older, wiser composer. More consistent is the Second, C Major Trio – tautly assembled in the outer movements with a brilliant, Hungarian-inflected Andante. The Third Trio is a good example of Brahms in grumpier, gruffer mode; it’s the tersest, most compact of the set.

They’re given here in reassuringly direct, unfussy performances by an ensemble associated with the Villa Musica Foundation, a state-funded German body providing chamber music tuition for gifted students. Estonian pianist Kalle Randalu is calmly responsive, matched by Nicholas Chumachenco and Martin Osertag on violin and cello, the three playing with no hint of flashiness or ego. We also get a lovely performance of the early Horn Trio, in which the soloist is the British virtuoso Frank Lloyd – one-time member of the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble and now resident in Germany. His darker, bolder sound makes the work feel more autumnal than Sarah Willis’s more youthful, lyrical reading.

The highlight for me is the inclusion of the sublime 1891 Clarinet Trio – perfect, "late" music – world-weary, melodically rich and quietly ecstatic, despite the music's minor key. Ulf Rodenhäuser, one-time principal clarinet of the Berlin Philharmonic, is a warm, velvet-toned soloist.

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 Hans Gál – Symphony no 3, Schumann – Symphony no 3 Orchestra of the Swan/Kenneth Woods (Avie)

Avie continue their Hans Gál symphony revival with another disc pairing his music with an established Austro-German work. Born in Austria in 1890, Gál enjoyed a successful compositional and academic career in Germany before fleeing to Britain in 1939, eventually obtaining a post at Edinburgh University. His Third Symphony was completed in 1952 and has lain dormant for 55 years. Hopelessly anachronistic, it glances wistfully back at the world which Gál had left behind; the music of an exotic emigré marooned in rainy post-war Edinburgh.

Gál’s impassioned, well-crafted late romanticism is readily accessible and quietly moving - there’s a lot to enjoy here. He’s good at subtle transitions – the way that the delicious opening melody segues into the first movement’s more agitated fast section, and its brilliant, ghostly close. Only the Finale left me baffled, with a stentorian opening quickly yielding to a triumphant ending which feels a little too easily achieved. It’s nicely played by Stratford-upon-Avon’s Orchestra of the Swan under Kenneth Woods, who are up against stiffer, famous-name competition in Schumann’s Rhenish Symphony.

In this brilliant, exuberant work, Woods takes full advantage of his orchestra’s modest size, choosing swift speeds and enjoying well-articulated string playing. The Scherzo has an appealing village band feel, and Wood’s trombones in the stark contrapuntal fourth movement are faultless. The same material’s major key reprise in the last movement is a great moment, prefiguring the brassy chorales heard at the end of Brahms’s First and Mahler’s Fifth. It’s a good performance. Gál may be a hard sell, but his listener-friendly, bittersweet music deserves an outing, and the Schumann symphony is an attractive bonus.

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Heinz Holliger: Induuchlen (ECM)

More extraordinary sounds from the septagenarian Swiss oboe virtuoso, here heard in his parallel career as a composer. The mind boggles at how anyone can possess the aural imagination to summon up sounds such as those heard on this disc. This is not easy listening, but neither is it especially difficult. Holliger’s sounds always feels like music, and he has a brilliant aptitude for understanding what individual instruments can do best. You hear this in the brief set of Toronto-Exercises which open the disc – four tiny, brittle studies for a quintet dominated by breathy, percussive flute sounds. The CD closes with 2002’s Ma’mounia, a 12-minute mini-percussion concerto, with soloist Matthias Würch gamely pitting flexatone and a range of other exotic timbres against a tiny chamber ensemble.

The ensemble includes Oliver Darbellay, whose playing on the natural horn features in the most striking work on the CD, Holliger’s song cycle Induuchlen, a setting for horn and countertenor of poetry by the Swiss writer Albert Streich, whose texts were composed in Swiss dialect (alas, untranslated in ECM’s otherwise exemplary notes). Darbellay sings, hums and breathes through his instrument, and countertenor Kai Wessel is forced to descend deep into his lower register. The horn’s valveless harmonics have a unique, otherwordly feel – the same weirdness that Britten tapped into in the prologue to his Serenade. The inclusion of a 1958 tape of Streich reading his poetry is a nice touch. The other big work is  Holliger’s Puneigä, a 10-movement cycle using poems by Anna Maria Bacher, again using a Swiss dialect. Soprano Sylvia Nopper sings over a shimmering, fragmentary septet accompaniment to disquieting effect. Holliger conducts the Swiss Chamber soloists, and makes the whole thing sound as logical and effortless as the baroque repertoire in which he excels as a player.

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