The classical pieces of the day reviewed by MICHAEL DERVAN

Bach: Solo VIolin Sonatas and Partitas

Alina Ibragimova (violin) (2CDs)

Hyperion 67691/2 *****

Anyone who has heard Alina Ibragimova play Bach’s solo violin music in the flesh – she featured at this year’s West Cork Chamber Music Festival – will need no recommendation to rush out and buy this set. Ibragimova simply takes ownership of this music in ways that no other fiddler I’ve heard can quite rival. She manages to be at once ascetic (hardly a hint of vibrato) and sensual, cogent and dangerous (she sets the occasional impossibly fast tempo), and both fresh and soundly rooted in her vision. Hers is the kind of playing that time after time takes your breath away. And it won’t make you want to listen to all six works right through. The playing has such intensity you’d end up in serious overload. www.tinyurl.com/5jub7c

Scarificium

Cecilia Bartoli (mezzo soprano), il Giardino Armonico/Giovanni Antonini

Decca 478 1522 (also 478 1521, a deluxe edition with extended booklet and bonus CD) ****

Italian mezzo soprano Cecilia Bartoli’s latest disc is devoted to music written for the great castratos, singers who, primarily to meet the decrees of the Catholic Church. They exchanged a transformed manhood for the sake of music, not necessarily by their own choice – a child abuse scandal that ran for centuries. Castratos were famed for their vocal power, agility, wide range and individual timbre. The music Bartoli has chosen, most of it being recorded for the first time, may not be first-rate, but it certainly is attention-grabbing. She tackles it with gripping gusto and the period instruments of Il Giardino Armonico add to the frequently hair-raising excitement. www.deccaclassics.com

Virgin Classics 694 4890 ***

French pianist David Fray is a ruminative, gorgeous-sounding Schubertian. He takes his time, and uses the space he creates to great effect in terms of colouring and voicing. He’s said that he likes “to make music like a conductor, not just as a pianist”. The layered richness of his playing, and the fine control of dynamics are achievements that any conductor would appreciate. The deliberation, however, is not quite as clear a benefit. He doesn’t manage to elevate himself onto the kind of mystical plane that the late, great Sviatoslav Richter could achieve in slowing down Schubert. The beauty, however real and consistent, here tilts in the direction of self-admiration. It’s Fray you are aware of more than Schubert. www.emiclassics.com

Schubert Live, Volume Two

Imogen Cooper (piano) (2 CDs)

Avie AV 2157 ****

Imogen Cooper's Schubert, recorded at concerts in London's Queen Elizabeth Hall last April, at first sounds plain, even workaday, by comparison with Fray. But that impression soon fades. She may not seek out the same exquisite contouring that Fray favours, but her playing has an altogether more natural rise and fall. It breathes as it should, and though it's simpler in technical finish than Fray, it communicates the essential Schubertian line in a clearer way. Cooper shows a much stronger grasp of the bigger pictures. The two players can be compared directly in the Moments Musicaux, with Cooper also offering two great sonatas (in C minor D958, in G D894), the later set of Impromptus, D935, and a set of German Dances, D783. www.avierecords.com