Latest releases reviewed

FIDDLER TAM, THE MUSIC OF THOMAS ERSKINE, 6TH EARL OF KELLIE
Mhairi Lawson (soprano), Concerto Caledonia/David McGuinness (harpsichord)
Linn Records CKD 240
****

How many people, I wonder, could name a Scottish composer before James MacMillan? And how many could stretch back beyond the 19th century to Thomas Erskine (1732-81), the Sixth Earl of Kellie, or Kelly. Kelly studied composition under Johann Stamitz in Mannheim. Charles Burney credited him with a theoretical and practical grasp of music to match "the greatest professors of his time", not to mention "a strength of hand on the violin, and a genius for composition, with which few professors are gifted". Now Linn Records have brought out the first CD entirely devoted to his work, a selection of sometimes adventurously idiosyncratic orchestral pieces, two rather gauche songs and some chamber music, including two trio sonatas. The performances of the period-instruments Concerto Caledonia are sharp and sprightly. www.linnrecords.com

FRENCH PIANO QUARTETS
Quatuor Kandinsky
Virgin Classics 482 0612 (2 CDs)
****

For a lot of music lovers the French piano quartet begins and ends with the two works Gabriel Fauré completed between 1879 and 1886. This enterprising Virgin collection, recorded in the early 1990s, offers four works, two preceding and two postdating the Fauré. Alexis de Castillon (1838-73), a friend of Saint-Saëns who came under the influence of César Franck, adhered to German instrumental models at a time when opera was all the rage in France. The originality of his Piano Quartet in G minor is out of keeping with its obscurity, as is that of the elaborately textured, unfinished Piano Quartet of Guillaume Lekeu (1870-94), one of the great might-have-beens of French music. The Quatuor Kandinsky play with the same persuasive intensity they bring to the better-known quartets by Saint-Saëns and Chausson. www.virginclassics.com

TCHAIKOVSKY: STRING QUARTETS 2&3
Brodsky Quartet
Brodsky Records BRD 3500
***

In common with many other performers, the Brodsky Quartet have set up their own label, and their first issues are a disc of crossover collaborations and this Tchaikovsky coupling. The Andante cantabile of the First apart, Tchaikovsky's music for string quartet is seen as problematic. The Second (1874) and Third (1876) Quartets, both of which pre-date the Fourth Symphony, are big in scale (nearly 40 minutes apiece on this disc), grand in manner, orchestral in conception. They are difficult to hold together persuasively in performance, and the skills of the Brodskys, whose colouring is often luscious and whose aspirations of the grandest, don't quite bring off the feat. The moment wins out over the larger picture, and the works feel altogether too long. www.brodskyquartet.co.uk

BRAHMS: SYMPHONY NO 1; TRAGIC OVERTURE; ACADEMIC FESTIVAL OVERTURE
London Philharmonic Orchestra/Marin Alsop
Naxos 8.557428 (CD), 6.110077 (SACD)
***

The market for Brahms symphony recordings is now so crowded that few individuals can have sampled its full extent. In the new order of the 21st century record industry, the Naxos label is re-entering the fray at bargain-basement price, but with a top-ranking orchestra, the London Philharmonic. Marin Alsop, one of the label's conducting stars, has mostly been featured in contemporary and 20th-century repertoire. Her Brahms, however, contains no shocks. The delivery is sober, the earnestness of the enterprise underlined by the taking of the exposition repeat in the First Symphony's opening movement. Better performances find both a tense gravitas and resolution of detail in the symphony and Tragic Overture that's missing here. The Academic Festival Overture is the piece that takes most successful flight. www.naxos.com