In Mozarts Violinkonzert Nr. 5 [...] exzelliert Schneiderhan in kantablen Geigenwonnen, und gleichzeitig musiziert er [...] seinen Mozart schlank und sehr agil. Solche Vorzüge bewähren sich auch im ersten Violinkonzert von Henze [...] das hier [...] eine rundum beeindruckende, stimmige Interpretation erfährt.

This disc came as a disappointment after my extremely positive feelings about the earlier volumes in the Cremona Quartet's Beethoven series. I still find what they do is interesting and suggestive, but in the case of the B flat Quartet Op. 130 – the one which Beethoven himself found most moving, and which I normally do even though it isn't necessarily the greatest – I was puzzled.

First, however, they are well up to their usual standard in the exhilarating performance of the A major Quartet Op. 18 No. 5, with its wonderfully peremptory opening and its general air of a youthful genius in confident possession of his unique powers. The notes suggest a strong influence from Mozart's A major Quartet, but it is Haydn who springs immediately to mind with his perpetual surprises, many of them mischievous. The slow movement is especially enjoyable, with a routine theme followed by ever more inventive variations.

Unfortunately the Cremonas decided to play Op. 130 without the Grosse Fuge, the original finale much later described by Stravinsky as 'perpetually contemporary'. Its first audience found it incomprehensible and Beethoven wrote the substitute finale, which we hear here – the original finale is on Volume 3. To me the first five movements seem to demand it. What we do have is some unpleasantly bulging playing in the brief second movement and exaggerated lurchings in the fourth. Most disappointing and surprising of all is the prosaically played Cavatina, Beethoven's most intimate music, played considerably too fast and it would seem deliberately unexpressive. The edginess of the recording does not help. I have listened several times and I'm bewildered.

Live performances from the 1950s and '60s that mark out Schneiderhan as a first-rate Mozartian and a valued champion of contemporary music in a fizzing account of the Henze Concerto.

Forrester besaß einen echten Alt von ungewöhnlicher Fülle und Expansionsfähigkeit, den sie mit nahezu perfekter Technik zu führen wusste. [...] Forresters lebhafter, mitreißender Vortrag und ihre Begabung, mit der Stimme zu «malen» – unterstützt durch Hertha Klusts pointierte Begleitung – machen die Miniaturen [...] zu kleinen Preziosen.

Though a contemporary reported Muffat had written three settings of the Mass, only the “In Labore Requies” Mass survives, in a manuscript now in Budapest. It is among the most festive Central-European Masses with trumpets, and while it lacks the spectacular size of the Salzburg Mass attributed to Biber (Mar/Apr 2000 & Jan/Feb 2010), it is very much a model of its style on only a slightly smaller scale, with only two four-voice choirs of solists and ripieno singers, cornetts and trombones, a choir of five trumpets and timpani, and strings, with continuo ensembles.

The first recording of Muffat’s Mass that I know was led by Konrad Junghänel (May/June 1999, see BIBER), who used only eight voices divided into two four-voiced choirs, along with single instruments on each part. The small ensemble also allowed him to take relatively fast tempos. More recently Gunar Letzbor released a recording of this mass (2014, Pan 10301), also without ripieni vocalists, though he may have occasionally divided the four boy sopranos (two for each choir) and two altos from the St Florian Boychoir (for Choir 2). Letzbor’s tempos are more stately than Junghänel and allow some of the rich details of Muffat’s writing to be appreciated, though he sometimes overemphasizes the rhythm.

Strobl is the first to actually combine the four plus four vocal soloists with eight ripieno singers for each choir, adding significant weight and contrast to Muffat’s constantly shifting textures and sonorities. But there are two small ways that this recording misses the mark. With the larger number of vocalists, the string ensemble, with just single players on each part, lacks the presence it has in the two earlier recordings, though it balances well with the soloists. And my nit to pick is that Strobl doesn’t have a bassoon for the continuo, as called for in the score. Of the three versions, Letzbor makes the most of Muffat’s use of muted trumpets (“trombe sordine”) and dampened timpani (“timpani tecta”) in the Credo at the mentions of Christ’s burial, the judgement of the living and the dead, and the resurrection of the dead.

While Letzbor recorded just the mass, Junghänel’s recording included Heinrich Biber’s Litanie de Sancto Josepho and the same composer’s Sonata ‘Sancti Polycarpi’ for eight trumpets, timpani, and continuo. Both Junghänel and Strobl include two sonatas by Antonio Bertali (Sonata a 13 and ‘Sancti Placidi’), both scored for cornetts, trombones, trumpets, and strings. Junghänel again has distinctly faster tempos and omits a final repeat in ‘Sancti Placidi’ that Strobl includes. In addition, Strobl’s recording includes two sonatas for strings by Biber (VI a 5 & VIII a 5) and Schmelzer’s Sonata XII a 7 for two trumpets, 2 cornetts, 3 trombones, and continuo.

The instrumentalists in all three recordings are excellent, especially in the incredibly virtuosic and stratospheric parts for the cornetts; and the vocalists are well-chosen, though I will admit to a slight preference for the sound of Letzbor’s boys. Only the booklet for Junghänel’s recording includes texts; most of us are familiar with the text of the Mass. All three include informative background notes; Junghänel and Strobl include essays by the editor of the Mass, Ernst Hintermaier, and Letzbor wrote his own. I enjoy all three recordings, but Strobl has a slight edge by more closely matching the indications in the score.

I reviewed Franziska Pietsch and Detlev Eisinger’s recording of Grieg’s violin sonatas in the January issue. I enjoyed them, and I found Pietsch especially affecting at lower dynamic levels. I have always been impressed by musicians who can hold the listener’s attention without having to resort to loud playing and bold, heroic gestures—though there’s certainly nothing wrong with those when they are called for. She again offers her sensitive phrasing at low dynamics here but also much, much more.

Pietsch was born into a musical family in East Germany at Halle (near Leipzig) in 1969. She studied with special state support until 1984, when her father escaped to the West. She suffered reprisals from the state until she was able to move to West Germany with her mother and younger sister in 1986. She continued her studies in the West with celebrated teachers like Ulf Hoelscher and Dorothy DeLay.

The booklet notes point out that she has an affinity for Prokofieff, and I can only add after listening to this that she has it in spades. I hear this in Sonata 1. She is completely inside this music, which is reputed to be a monument to the victims of Stalin’s purges. I know of only two other performances of this masterpiece that I can place in the same league as this one: Kai Gluesteen and Catherine Odronneau (May/June 2004) and David Oistrakh and Sviatoslav Richter (Jan/Feb 1999).

Although I can think of two other recordings of Sonata 1 that I can place in the same league as this one, I cannot say the same for Pietsch and Eisinger’s performance of Sonata 2. It is in a class by itself. Arranged from Prokofieff’s Flute Sonata, it is a very beautiful work, though it has always stood in the shadow of its illustrious companion. Pietsch plays it as if it is the greatest violin sonata ever written. She finds contrasts of light and shade that others miss, and her very expressive nuances are timed to split-second perfection. One of the most notable things about this reading is that she and her partner make more of the tempo changes indicated in the score than any other duo I’ve heard. As in her Grieg recording, her playing at low dynamic levels is unusually expressive.

I have heard the Five Melodies many times before, usually included with recordings of the sonatas. I had never paid much attention to them until now. Pietsch plays these works as if she is playing five masterpieces. She makes you hang on every note. It’s as though I had never heard these works before. As in the sonatas, the playing is so expressive that it is impossible not to be riveted to the music.

I have loved the sonatas since I was a boy and first heard them on Itzhak Perlman and Vladimir Ashkenazy’s RCA recording. Those are very fine performances, but I couldn’t say that their reading of either work is one of the absolutely best available. I can say that about this recording though. Pietsch and Eisinger’s reading of Sonata 1 is among the very best available, and their reading of Sonata 2 is easily the best that I know. Add to these remarkable performances of the sonatas the also remarkable performance of the Five Melodies, and you have one of the greatest recordings of this or any music that I have ever heard.

Eisinger plays a brand of piano that I had never heard of before, Steingraeber and Sons, which was founded in 1820 in Germany and is found in Bayreuth. It sounds very good. Pietsch plays a violin made by Carlo Antonio Testore in Milan in 1751. Some millionaire should give her a Stradivarius or a Guarnerius. She deserves one.

There are two finds on this release: violist Roland Glassl and composer Justus Weinreich. Glassl has immaculate intonation, a flawless technique, and a full, firm tone. Weinreich (1858–1927) was a court musician at Karlsruhe, but aside from that not much is known about him. His three suites are modeled on an 18th-Century dances. The shadow of Bach looms over this music. I wouldn’t say that these compositions are as masterly as Reger’s suites, but they are refreshingly different.

More along the lines of Reger is the Suite by Adolf Busch (1891–1952). It is simpler than Reger, but not as obvious an homage to the baroque as Weinreich’s suites. This is an interesting collection of rare music for solo viola and the finest recordings of the Reger solo viola suites that I know. Roland Glassl plays a viola made by his father in 2002.

These monaural recordings of 26 German Christmas carols are taken from archives of German radio broadcasts from 1950-64. Year after year, distinguished singers were engaged to perform on radio, and leading composers and church musicians produced arrangements. The notes describe how families would gather around the radio in post-war Germany to listen to these Christmas broadcasts when commercial recordings were hard to obtain. Some of the carols sound like folk tunes; others are Lutheran chorales.

Accompaniment is by various musical forces, and the performances are mostly of good quality. (One exception may be Maria Reith’s scooping and sliding between notes.) It is a pleasure to hear Rita Streich’s crystalline voice and Fischer-Dieskau’s young and winsome voice and the recordings of other distinguished singers, but the music will probably appeal mostly to people who lived in Germany in those years.

Notes but no texts.

This is a particularly interesting broadcast concert, recorded 7 September 1946 with an ad hoc orchestra which the Vienna-bound Walter Legge had just been recording. Kletzki (1900–73) had spent the war years in Switzerland and must have got on well with the ensemble, for the musicians, if a little ragged sometimes, play their hearts out. His extreme interpretations sound remarkably unlike EMI productions—except perhaps their Furtwanglers. There is something to be said for provincial performances—one thinks of all the “bad” Homeric manuscripts from out of the way places now being diligently examined for traces of an earlier Homer than what came down through Athens. Kletzki and his Swiss musicians play in a manner which might be described not only as pre-war but pre-electric, with outrageously fluctuating tempos, rubato, massive dramatic contrasts, and eccentric phrasing.

This would be all for naught if the results were not musical, but I find these highly-charged performances persuasive, particularly the Brahms symphony. Subtle they are not, but if you enjoy unfiltered, late-romantic, expressionist modernism you will find it here, captured with a thrilling dynamic range not obtainable when this mode of performance was still in vogue. One thinks of over-the-top Russian 78s—it may be that the conductor, who had been in the Soviet Union before migrating to Switzerland, was inspired by Golovanov as well as by Furtwangler (who had once played his compositions in Berlin). It must have been a great release for Paul Kletzki to be able to travel in the West after all those difficult years, but this late outburst of Nikisch-Mahler sensibility is a worthy memorial of what he left behind. The production is first-rate.

Mit großem Schwung lässt sich dieses subtil aufeinander abgestimmte und reagierende Ensemble auf das Stück ein. [...] Das Opus ist ein Ausbund an bewegender Unruhe und Virtuosität, an zupackender Kraft und Lust am Kontrapunktischen. Und wieder präsentieren sich die vier Streicher des Quartetto di Cremona technisch absolut perfekt und dabei auch irrwitzig temperamentvoll.