Manche CDs sind wie Lebkuchen. Man sollte sie frühzeitig vor Heiligabend...

Wem das nicht genug ist, dem sei das Mandelring Quartett (Sebastian Schmidt,...

Als vor rund 40 Jahren die ersten Zinkenisten in den Ensembles für Renaissance- und Barockmusik auftauchten, war die Verblüffung ob des Klanges ihrer Instrumente groß. Allerdings mehr gepaart mit Respekt und Staunen, als mit Freude, denn die intonatorische Sauberkeit war recht mangelhaft, und das Spiel offenbar extrem heikel. Das hat sich seither radikal geändert. "Les Cornets Noirs" zeigen auf ihrer neuen CD, aufgenommen in der Schweizer Klosterkirche Muri mit ihren vielen Orgelemporen, wie phantastisch sie ihre Zinken beherrschen und mit den Instrumenten ihrer Kolleginnen und Kollegen mischen können.

Music lovers who have been following Audite's ongoing and rewarding survey of Eduard Franck's music will hardly need second bidding to investigate this latest volume of his orchestral works nor are they likely to be disappointed with its contents. All the works here apparently date from the 1840s and stand firmly in the Early Romantic tradition. The influence of his friend and one-time teacher, Mendelssohn, is apparent but some pieces – the Symphonic Fantasy, op.16, for example – show his own distinctive lyrical personality beginning to come to the fore.

The programme opens with his breezy, brightly scored 'Roman Carnival' overture, a choice of subject matter that apparently engendered some raised eyebrows among German critics given Berlioz's own recent overture on the same subject: "Bold, if not novel, is the idea, after Berlioz, of wanting to immortalise the Roman Carnival once again..." wrote one. Franck could hardly be further in temperament or, indeed, in originality from the French composer but at a century and a half's distance from the artistic debates of Franck's time such comparisons hardly matter and the work strikes me as a real delight when listened to on its own terms.

The centrepiece of this collection is the half-hour long 'Symphonic Fantasy', effectively a symphony without a slow movement – perhaps Franck was inspired to this modest structural innovation by Schumann's 'Overture, Scherzo and Finale', though his own work is conceived on a broader scale and replaces the scherzo with a minuet, albeit a sometimes energetic one. The absence of a slow movement makes sense when one listens to the opening movement, which is marked 'Allegro moderato' and contains extended 'andante' passages; the mood is really not far removed from Franck's A major symphony, lyrical and beautifully (though not ostentatiously) scored – there is some lovely writing for the woodwind throughout and a delectable passage for solo violin in the opening movement. A vivacious finale concludes proceedings in high spirits, the sparkling and fizzing strings bolstered by some weighty brass underpinning – another, brief violin solo returns against tremolando strings to provide a poetic and (surprisingly) quiet coda. Anyone who regrets the loss of two of the composer's four symphonies will, I think, find some ample compensation here.

Of the remaining two works, the one movement 'Konzertstück' for violin and orchestra is a conventional but charming piece of its kind – in its concluding 'Allegro' section the mood is rather lighter than in his violin concertos, the solo part more concerned with virtuoso display than lyricism or Romantic atmosphere but it makes its points well and there are no longeurs. The concert overture, op. 12, like the overture that opened the disc, also drew some adverse comments from the critics, here on account of the composer's reintroduction of its `Adagio' opening material near the work's conclusion – it's an enjoyable piece that strikingly pits the woodwind against the full orchestra during its `Presto' sections but perhaps, if I am honest, not quite as cohesive as the `Roman Carnival' overture overall. It certainly makes for enjoyable listening, however, though I think I would have placed it before the `Symphonic Fantasy' simply because the finale of that work is rather more striking in terms of material and structure and would have closed the programme in a more noteworthy way.

In a departure from the previous issues of Franck's orchestral works, Ola Rudner replaces Hans-Peter Franck as conductor and the Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen provide the orchestral playing – there is, however, no loss of quality or artistry and the performers seem just as much in tune to the composer's idiom as their predecessors had been. Christine Edinger, a staunch advocate of Franck's music on disc and in the concert hall, brings a good deal of warmth and style to the solo violin part in the Konzertstück. Sound quality, as with all Audite original recordings I have heard, is very good.

If you aren't already familiar with the works of Eduard Franck and you are looking for Romantic era music that storms the heavens or plumbs great emotional depths, I'd hazard that this disc might not be for you; but if you respond to music with a distinctive lyrical voice of its own, a conservative rather than radical Early Romantic sensibility and impeccable craftsmanship then you will find all those qualities in abundance here. This is a series of releases that seems to me to go from strength to strength and this latest issue has proved to be a real joy to listen to.

Warmly recommended.

On the strength of an enthusiastic BBC Radio 3 review by the much respected Nicholas Anderson, I lashed out and bought this 'Audite' boxed set: 9 CDs (29 Cantatas in all) for around £ 50 (Audite 21.415). If you're interested in this repertoire – or, indeed, in the post-war development of "Early Music" performance – you'll find this set a real eyeopener, I think.

I did already have a few 'historic' Bach Cantata recordings, including some fascinating (if incomplete) performances recorded in Leipzig's Thomaskirche under the direction of Karl Straube in 1931 (the year when I was born!) The style may sound a bit quaint to us, now, but it affords an interesting glimpse into the past. I also have some recordings made by the Thomanerchor in the early 1950s under its post-war Kantor, Günther Ramin, but they too seem of Iittle more than historical interest today. So – it was a big surprise to put on these newly-issued Berlin CDs, remastered from tapes which date from around 1950, and to discover how "modern" and thoroughly enjoyable many of the performances sound.

Following Berlin's almost total destruction at the end of the war, its radio stations had to start from scratch. RIAS stands for 'Radio in the American Sector'; the RIAS-Symphonie Orchester was formed in 1946, the RIAS-Kammerchor two years later. From 1946 onwards, Karl Ristenpart started directing regular Sunday broadcasts of Bach Cantatas, using a chamber orchestra drawn from the RSO. Recordings of his very earliest performances no longer exist, but from the end of 1949 until the Project ran out of steam in 1952, we have tapes of 29 Cantata performances, now superbly transferred to CD in this boxed set.

The overall quality of performance is truly remarkable, with some first-class vocal soloists, outstanding amongst whom are Helmut Krebs (as good and incisive as any Bach tenor I know) and a young baritone then just making his mark: Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. In 1950, when the majority of these recordings were made, he would have been just 25. In May 2012, of course, we were all saddened to learn of his death at the age of 86. To hear him in the superb opening aria of Cantata 88 (Siehe, ich will viel Fischer aussenden) is an absolute delight, and the orchestral accompaniment is of admirable quality, too. In Cantata 52 (Falsche Welt, dir trau ich nicht), soprano Agnes Giebel is very stylish, the high horns sounding fine in the opening Sinfonia (borrowed from Brandenburg I). But the real hero of the hour is unquestionably Karl Ristenpart himself; he has a happy knack of finding, nine times out of ten, what Bach calls the tempo giusto.

There are some infelicities, of course. Most of the female soloists (Giebel apart) do favour the use of a fairly heavy vibrato – that was the accepted style at that time. The choir is enthusiastic, but not very subtle – it's at its best in high-energy numbers like the opening chorus of Wachet auf, which fairly dances along in a most enjoyable way; occasionally, though, it goes well over the top (try Cantata 176: Es ist ein trotzig und verzagt Ding – the text does suggest desperation and obstinacy, but the oft-repeated word tro-o-o-o-o-otzig still sounds pretty laughable). The four-part Chorales are sung with great gusto, but JSB will [may CB] have expected his congregation to join in, so he probably wouldn't have been too dismayed by that.

The keyboard continuo instrument used is a harpsichord, whose tone-quality does sometimes remind one of Sir Thomas Beecham's unkind description: 'two skeletons copulating on a tin roof'! Fortunately, it's kept well back from the microphones. No 'shortened' continuo accompaniment, of course – the cello is often left sustaining very long notes on its own, as was normal up until the 1960s or thereabouts. But, overall, the instrumentalists are extremely good – for example, some superb violin obligati, a terrific first trumpeter, some lovely flute-playing in Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele and delightful recorders in Brich dem Hungrigen dein Brot. The oboes do sound a bit under-nourished (as they often did, in those pre-Helmut-Winschermann days) but that's a small price to pay for some revelatory recordings from a vanished era. Strongly recommended

Das Mandelring Quartett aus Deutschland ist in den vergangenen Jahren vor allem durch seine Gesamtaufnahme der Quartette von Schostakowitsch bekannt geworden. Nun machen sich die Musiker an eine Gesamtaufnahme der Kammermusik für Streicher von Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy – und die erste CD mit den drei frühen Streichquartetten zeigt nicht nur das unglaubliche Können dieses Frühbegabten, sondern auch ein exzellentes Interpretationsniveau.

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Eine...