Choral Music of Elgar – Light out of Darkness – SOMM

by Audiophile Audition | Feb 1, 2026 | Classical CD Reviews

Light out of Darkness:  CHORAL MUSIC by ELGAr – Chapel Choir of the Royal Hosptial Chelsea/ Callum Knox, organ / William Vann Director – SOMMCD 0714 (77:29, Complete contents detailed below) (1/16/26) [Distr. by Naxos] ****:

This collection of selected vocal works (rec. 16-18 February 2025) by Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934) reveals the degree of religious piety expressed by the autodidact composer, who studied Catel’s Treatise on Harmony and refined his organ playing for church music in both Worcester’s Anglican Cathedral and with the choir of St George’s Roman Catholic Church, to which Edward Elgar found appointment as organist, 1885-1889. These self-styled “universities” ingrained in Elgar a lasting ecumenical sensibility which, when combined with the repertory he absorbed from 1877 violin lessons with Adolph Pollitzer in London – with its invasion of Italian and German operatic productions – created a composite, eclectic range of musical alternatives in the young composer. 

A significant, organ-based dissonance announces the opening selection, the Chorus “Light out of darkness,” from the cantata (or oratorio, as Elgar preferred) The Light of Life, signifying the divine Mercy wrought by the Crucifixion, herein offered as “remedy” for human frailty. Later on the disc, we have the chorus “Light of the World, we know Thy praise.” The Word has gained ascendancy in all matters of the spirit. Elgar invokes huge, soothing harmonies to invoke that Light that “shines unto the Perfect Day.” 

The Apostles (1903), despite its standing as his most expansive composition, Elgar meant to be much larger, but only his 1906 supplement, The Kingdom, came to fruition. “The Prologue” (chorus) claiming “The spirit of the Lord is upon me,” accumulates by degrees a massive dynamic to assert a Gospel of rebirth girded by plangent organ harmonies. The contrast between soprano/alto and tenor/bass antiphons proves effective. Psalm 51 (in a world premiere recording) proffers an extended confession of weakness and sin, a plaint for forgiveness for a life conceived in Calvinist terms, praying for ultimate absolution. The assumption here is that King David regrets his lust for Bathsheba and his destruction of Uriah. The antique atmosphere Elgar creates, an agonized monody, seems a modern setting of a Gregorian chant.  

“Praise ye the Lord” could grace any Sunday service, regardless of denomination. Set three strophes of eight lines, the music follows a direct course, intoning a pantheistic reconciliation of all in Nature. Great is the Lord (1910-1912), the longest of the compositions collected, substantially addresses Psalm 48, in order to celebrate the 250^th anniversary of the Royal Society. The massive 6-part choir intones motifs one may recall the finale from the Violin Concerto. While beginning D major, the piece modulates to a jarring F# minor, then A-flat major (andante) before the return to the home key.  

Elgar insisted the anthem for baritone and SATB chorus be “gigantic,” proclaiming God’s glory even unto the towers and bulwarks of the earth.  

The Four Part Songs, Op. 53 date from 1907-1908, composed during a sojourn to Rome. Dedicated to Elgar’s American friend Julia Worthington, the second of the songs, taken from Lord Byron’s The Corsair may hint resonantly at emotional depths beyond the literary. “Deep in my soul” opens in E-flat but soon proclaims a kind of bitonality with A major and then E major. Ms. Worthingtom may claim the identity of “the soul” alluded to in the Violin Concerto. “O Wild West Wind” energetically celebrates the ode by John Keats, a declaration the poetic power to embrace (Nobilemente) the opposite ends of creation, at once. Elgar intends that this music be performed “with the greatest animation but without hurry.” Two Choral Songs (1914) take their texts from the poems of Apollon Nikolayevich Maykov (1821-1897), “Love’s Tempest” and “Serenade.”  The first poem allies Nature’s fury with an awakened passion, starting softly then erupting Allegro con fuoco. “Serenade” employs a repeated refrain, “Dreams all too brief, Dreams without grief, Once they are broken, come not again.” The emphasis on unrequited dreams in nervous harmony has echoes in Mahler though the technique may recall Elgar’s familiarity with the part-song style in Brahms.

Go Song of Mine (1909) ranks as Elgar’s finest part-song, based on a text by Cavalcanti (c. 1255-1300) in a translation by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882). Its existential theme bespeaks the grim spirit of the times, moving in modes of B, fitting for the original context “A Dispute with Death.” This music may serve as the equivalent of a pungent scene from director Igmar Bergman. Of the eight remaining entries, The recording of Elgar’s setting of the Stabat Mater is another of the premieres on the disc. Scholarly speculation posits that the setting of the hymn by Pergolesi (1736) may have supplied the “enigma” for his most famous orchestral work. The austere Ecce sacerdos magnus (Behold the Great Priest) enjoys the organ’s lush accompaniment as the upper range of voices exalts his heavenly mission. 

The mighty organ sets off Elgar’s arrangement of God Save the King (1902), arranged at the invitation of the publisher Novello. A soprano invokes the lines of the first verse, soon joined in unison, and the whole bears a true Handelian majesty: a fitting conclusion to a rare, thoughtful assemblage of inspired music by Elgar.

—Gary Lemco

Light out of Darkness – Choral Music by Elgar

The Light of Life, Op. 29:
Chorus: Light out of darkness;
Chorus: Light of the World, we know
Thy praise;
The Apostles, Op. 49:
Prologue;
Psalm 51;
Praise ye the Lord;
Great is the Lord, Op. 67;
4 Part Songs, Op. 53: Nos. 2-3;
2 Choral Songs, Op. 73;
How calmly the evening;
Stabat Mater;
Ecce sacerdos magnus;
O Salutaris Hostia in G;
O Salutaris No. 1 in E-flat;
O Salutaris Hostia No. 2 in E-flat;
God Save  the King (arr. Elgar)

BACH: The 6 English Suites, BWV 806-811 – Francesco Tristano, piano – Naïve

by Audiophile Audition | Jan 28, 2026 | Classical CD Reviews

BACH: The 6 English Suites, BWV 806-811 – Francesco Tristano, piano – NAÏVE V8828 (2 CDs = 53:38; 50:49) (2/27/25) [Distr. by Naxos] *****

Recorded in December 2022, this survey of Bach’s 1715 set of six English Suites by Francesco Tristano (b. 1981) has us consistently captivated by the fiery, vigorous approach requisite to their successful realization. While not so concerned to have his Yamaha CFX instrument sound like a harpsichord, a la Glenn Gould, Tristano enjoys an equally lucid, crystalline articulation that maintains the essential dance impulses that Bach refines with deft, contrapuntal audacity. Tristano’s sonic allure in the Bach sarabandes proves as infectious as his visceral delight in the faster dances, the courantes, bourrées and gigues. Although conceived in Weimar presumably for an English sponsor or audience, Bach’s absorption of the Italian and French models into a brilliantly complex organization dwarfs whatever influences Purcell or Dieupart’s suites may have exerted. Albert Schweitzer concisely sums up Bach’s contribution when he states, “Bach goes still further; he always visualizes the form and gives each of the principal dance forms a definite musical personality. For him the allemande represents vigorous but easy motion; the courante represents a measured haste, in which dignity and elegance go side by side; the sarabande represents a grave and majestic walk; in the gigue, the freest of all forms, the motion is quite fancy-free. He thus raises the suite form to the plane of the highest art, while at the same time he preserves its primitive character as a collection of dance pieces.”

The moments of unbridled energy mount by advanced degrees, given the blazing attacks that mark the “Prelude” from Suite No. 4 in F Major and the two “Bourrées” from Suite No. 2 in A Minor, for me set in stone by Glenn Gould but equally vivid in Tristano’s fluent realization. The “Sarabande” from Suite No. 4 evinces a searching, learned quality, while the two “Menuets” and concluding “Gigue” convey a high, if whimsically buoyant, purpose. The percussive, staccato immediacy of Tristano’s “Prelude’ for the Suite No. 3 in G Minor literally took me by storm, while his unbroken momentum retains the tension of the individual, polyphonic lines, which bear his imprint of added grace notes. The flexible shaping of Bach’s allemandes allows their Italian character to sing, despite their “German” designation. Tristano colors the “Allemande” from Suite No. 1 in A with a music-box sensibility, the close imitation pert and lithe. The pair of “Doubles” testifies to the influence of the French clavecinists on Bach’s keyboard style, and Tristan renders them with refined taste. 

Perhaps the most demanding of the series, No. 5 in E Minor urges a colossal conception, its opening “Prelude” laden with 200 measures of fugal exhilaration. The “Courante” is set as a moto perpetuo, an Italian athletic contest well met by Tristano. The French court makes its appearance in two “Passepieds,” a dance more light in tone than a menuet, the first of which Bach shapes as a rondo. Tristano’s natural virtuosity finds a perfect vehicle the concluding, witty “Gigue,” receiving the “play catch” treatment from the hands. 

The D Minor Suite No. 6 wastes no time establishing its dramatic profundity and emotional largesse. Much of the tablature of the opening “Prelude” and its richly ornamental fugue seems reminiscent of Bach’s organ studies in the form. Tristano extends the regal expressivity of the piece in the ensuing dances, Tristano’s repeated notes cast a relentless, pulverizing effect, so we simply submit to the monumentality of the moment. The succeeding “Allemande” complements the “German” sensibility of the piece, its contrapuntal density offset by Tristano’s clear lines. Much of what remains of this extraordinary work expresses the French taste, with its explosive “Courante” and galanteries in the form of contrasted “Gavottes.” None can deny the expressive power of the D minor “Sarabande,” the very heart of the whole composition. Its Spartan simplicity finds grand contrast in the “Double,” a flowing line in 16^th notes that edify the original line with an effervescent glow. We have been awaiting Tristano’s final “Gigue,” a Force of Nature in itself, the fugal material redolent with the Elixir of Life, brought to thunderous fruition by a musical artist for whom Bach represents a divine mission.

—Gary Lemco

Xiayin Wang plays MacDowell, Vol. 2 – Piano Concerto No. 2, Romanze, Hamlet – Chandos

by Audiophile Audition | Jan 24, 2026 | Classical CD Reviews

MacDowell: Hamlet/Ophelia, Op. 22; Piano Concerto No. 2 in D Minor, Op. 23; Romanze in E Minor for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 35; Suite No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 42 – Xiayin Wang, piano/ Peter Dixon, cello/ BBC Philharmonic Orchestra/ John Wilson – CHANDOS CHAN 20332 (61:08) (10/29/25) [Distr. by Naxos] ****:

The music of American composer Edward MacDowell (1860-1908) remains firmly, albeit occasionally, entrenched in our concert life, mainly due to the attractive power of his Second Piano Concerto of 1886, and the performances of various symphonic poems that testify to the influence of Franz Liszt. This Volume 2 from conductor John Wilson embraces compositions 1884-1893, with an emphasis on those works created during and subsequent to MacDowell’s honeymoon excursion to England with his wife, Marian Giswold Nevins. Collectors continue to cherish recorded performances of the Piano Concerto by Earl Wild and Van Cliburn, while I recall a particularly successful rendition in Atlanta by Leon Bates.  

The program opens with Two Poems for Large Orchestra: Hamlet/Ophelia, conceived in response to a series of Shakespeare productions mounted at the Lyceum Theatre in London, supervised by the acting duo Henry Irving and Ellen Terry. Highly chromatic n texture and favored by some good melodic content, the diptych – in D minor and F major – might owe debts to Liszt’s 1854 Mazeppa for structure and dramatic impulse. The music captures the mood shifts of the two protagonists in Hamlet, their vacillations of manic confidence and deep insecurity, rendered in occasionally tumultuous fashion by MacDowell, who enjoys the effects of terraced dynamics. 

Composed in Wiesbaden, Germany between 1884 and 1886, the D Minor Concerto conforms to the virtuoso concerto style established by Liszt and Saint-Saens, MacDowell’s having incorporated some incidental music for Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing and the character of Benedick into his second movement scherzo, Presto giocoso. Quick tempos had been a calling card for MacDowell’s own keyboard prowess, and Xiayin Wang does not balk at the digital challenges – the crisp, fluent articulations – demanded by the composer and characterized by his wife as “gossamer demons.” Both hectic and impelled by sheer velocity, the music manages to project a distinct color wrought of fierce concentration, occasionally reminding us of the famous Scherzo by Henri Litolff. 

The first movement, scored in eight distinct tempo periods, opens with a misty Larghetto calmato in violins and horns, followed by a potent cadenza from Wang, attesting to her natural ability to perform the Grieg Concerto. Amplification of the opening materials – with violin, flute, horns, cello pizzicatos – involve more dreamlike figurations and sudden bursts of passion, while the main theme gathers an irrevocable momentum and glistening filigree. Intimacy and spectacle compete for dominance, and both impulses win our approval. The texture becomes increasingly massive, a la Liszt or even Wagner, while the keyboard motion insists on brilliant velocities. A sudden hiatus leads to another solo cadenza, more in the manner of a passionate improvisation with added orchestral, aerial and throbbing colors. The lure of intimacy prevails in the last pages, though the sensibility swells in volume and luster momentarily, only to bask in a hard-won resolution.

A degree of cyclic unity marks the last movement, opening as it does quietly, meditatively Largo before the piano explodes Molto allegro, trills aplenty, and then allowing the original, first movement tune a re-entry before three, new ideas supplant it. Rather martial in tone, the movement enjoys a pompous, semi-gypsy swagger of technical confidence and deft coloration. A mid-point serenity descends upon the procession, rife with romantic overtones, the main melody in sweet strings and winds. But this has been the lull before the final storm, gradually becoming more animated and delicately inflamed, until another zealous crash impels us, Presto and then Prestissimo, to a convulsive, resonant coda.

In immediate contrast, we have MacDowell’s homage to Bohemian cello virtuoso David Popper (1843-1913), the Romanze in E Minor of 1887, also written in Wiesbaden. Melancholy in tone, the piece seems to embrace Massenet and later Elgar at once, repetitious in melodic character but nonetheless intimately expressive. The coda, ethereal, melts into a sweet space.

Wilson concludes with a large orchestral work from 1893, the five-movement Suite in A Minor. Notably German influences pervade the work, since we hear (and feel) allusions from Schumann, Weber, Mendelssohn, and Wagner. Wife Marian intimated that MacDowell’s Celtic heritage accounts for the pantheistic, bucolic elements throughout the work. We open “In a Haunted Forest,” in which the texture enjoys a menace (Maestoso) close to Der Freischuetz, with some impressive woodwind scoring. The ensuing, brief “Summer Idyll” marked as Allegretto grazioso, an indication and waltz feeling shared by Dvorak and Glazunov. “Im Oktober” (1893) serves as the inserted movement to fill out the original four-movement version of the suite.  The music alternates between a militant affect and a lyrical sense of repose in sympathy with much of Grieg.

The “Song of the Shepherdess,” marked Andantino semplice, achieves a sense of grandeur and transparent intimacy, at once. The last movement, “Forest Spirits,” combines elements of Weber, Mendelssohn, and Grieg, moving with hurtling energy and a dancing flightiness. Misterioso serves as the dominant impulse, set as a series of scalar motifs that end with a rhythm close to the second movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. The balletic chirps of the woodwinds might invoke Tchaikovsky to respond.   A military fanfare suddenly rushes in to conclude the suite with a precipitous crash. Recorded in Manchester, England, the sonic production from Brian Pidgeon and Mike George proves immediate and clear.

—Gary Lemco 

Yeol Eum Son – Ravel Piano Concertos, Bach Preludes, Fugures, and Partitas – Naïve

by Audiophile Audition | Jan 22, 2026 | Classical CD Reviews

RAVEL: Piano Concerto in G Major; Piano Concerto in D Major for the Left Hand; BACH Prelude and Fugue in C; Prelude in C Minor; Gigue; Siciliana – Yeol Eum Son, piano/ Residentie Orkest the Hague/ Anja Bihilmaier – Naïve V8447 (52:00 (complete details below) (5/12/25) [Distr. by Naxos] ****:

Korean pianist Yeol Eum Son (b. 1986) first came to my attention via the 2009 Van Cliburn Competition; then on its heels, the 2011 Tchaikovsky Competition, both of which illustrated her glistening, clear technical prowess. This album conceived over the period 2022-2024, combining concertante works by Ravel with solo Bach pieces arranged for the left hand – by Paul Wittgenstein (1887-1961), who commissioned the Left Hand Concerto  – bears a valedictory character, a signing lament for the World War that preceded the works, coupled with the triumph over adversity that marks the transcriptions, so that a one-armed performer may realize the gift of melody inscribed in the Baroque works. 

Maurice Ravel, 1925

From the opening Allegramente whip crack and high piccolo, the 1932 Concerto in G crackles with humor and transparent aplomb, buoyant and mischievous. Basque harmonies collide with jazz rhythms, not to create bad Gershwin but to romp in Spanish sensibilities that no less convey the textural freedom and youthful verve in Mozart and Saint-Saens. Ravel literally tormented himself in creating the operatic Adagio assai, whose lyric tracery, a waltz-sarabande whose purity of line suggests an antique, aristocratic gesture. Such graceful innocence the world may no longer be capable of supporting in our time.

In this second movement, as she has in the cadenza of movement one, Son exerts a lithely fluid line, sustained by a firm sense of pulse. The English horn, who had set the Basque tone of the first movement, restores the main melody, ceded temporarily to clarinet, oboe, and flute. By the last movement Presto, Ravel has yielded to his notion of the piano as primarily a percussive instrument, antagonistic to the gentler persuasions, and so joining trumpet and trombone for a dazzling series of runs over an eddying and mounting tension that threatens to become some martial call-to-arms. The sly glissandi of the various instruments ameliorate the wild aggression, so even the final thump of the bass drum feels more like a smirk than an existential demise.  

Ravel’s 1930 Concerto in D for the Left Hand, conceived in one movement subdivided into three parts, suggests a Lisztian symphonic poem with piano obbligato, arising from the somber depths of keyboard and orchestra to proclaim a rebirth of its commissioner’s musical vitality. A grinding sarabande merges from a musical, bass morass dominated by contrabassoon and horn, evolving to an assertion of will by the piano and its liberated cadenza. The improvisation becomes bold and manic, somberly virtuosic, as Ravel stretches the intervals between thumb and index finger, maintaining consistently the illusion of fluid motion. The middle, fast section, in a deliberate jazz style, arises from impulses stated earlier, only slower.

Conductor Bihlmaier delivers crisp attacks, earthy punctuations and stealthy thumps to underline the piano’s dervish romp into a world simultaneously complicated and folk-like. Harp and snare drum effects bristle and clomp, moving us into a musical phantasmagoria, one step away from one Gatsby’s celebrated summer parties. The cadenza from Son utters pure poetry and the love of life and its compensations. Cyclical, symmetrical, and fearfully demanding, the final movement declares a moral, if not a physical, victory of staggering proportions. 

To complement the Ravel concertos, Son drew upon Paul Wittgenstein’s third volume of Transcriptions (Bearbeitungen) from his School for the Left Hand. The adaptability and flexibility demanded to sustain Bach’s arioso for the C Major Prelude reveals registration art that conceals art. The brief C Minor Prelude requires quick staccato and repeated note adjustments that sound like Scarlatti. The familiar Gigue from the first of the piano partitas moves a bit more marcato than, say, Lipatti or Gould, but it evinces good, fluid pulse and motor inevitability. At last, we have the tender Siciliano that sounds like a music-box in the style of the French clavecinistes. The final trill is magic.

—Gary Lemco

Yeol Eum Son plays Ravel, Bach

RAVEL:
Piano Concerto in G Major;
Piano Concerto in D Major for the Left Hand;

BACH BWV 846 (arr. Wittgenstein for he left hand):
Prelude and Fugue in C Major,
Prelude in C Minor, BWV 999; Gigue from Partita No. 1 in B-flat Major, BWV 825;
Siciliana from Sonata for Flute and Harpsichord in E-flat Major,

Residentie Orkest the Hague/ Anja Bihilmaier

NASH ENSEMBLE plays RAVEL – Piano Trio, La Valse – Onyx

by Audiophile Audition | Jan 12, 2026 | Classical CD Reviews

NASH ENSEMBLE plays RAVEL = Introduction and Allegro; Piano Trio in A minor; La Valse (two-piano version; String Quartet in F major – The Nash Ensemble – ONYX4270 ((75:55) (10/02/25) [Distr. by PIAS] *****:

The chamber music of composer Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) justifies Stravinsky’s epithet, “the most perfect of Swiss watchmakers,” analogy that characterizes Ravel’s sense of clarity, precision, and exotic coloring. The Nash Ensemble addresses some of the major compositions, 1902-1920, recorded 14-17 April at Yehudi Menuhin School in Surrey, under the supervision of Producer Andrew Keener. The Ravel album is dedicated to the memory of Amelia Freeman (1940-2025), sixty years the Artistic Director of the Nash Ensemble.

Despite Ravel’s stricture that “music must be emotional first a intellectual second,” the tension between Ratio and Eros colors his entire oeuvre, and the 1905 Introduction and Allegro for harp and ensemble, commissioned by Erard to highlight the virtues of its double-action, pedal harp, conforms to the demands of a concertino in the manner of a septet in G-flat major.  Harp solo Lucy Wakeford establishes the dominance of her instrument in the measure 4 arpeggio, weaving a sensuous 4/4 theme, one of three, that the flute (Philippa Davies) and clarinet (Richard Hosford), and the cello (Adrian Brendel) have initiated, respectively. The shift to ¾ and moins lent (less slowly) graduates to a crescendo, only to dissipate in preparation for the sonata-form Allegro. While the harp will sang and dance the main theme in variants, color effects from viola (Lars Anders Tomter) and brilliant pizzicato strings will urge the music to the final, glistening harp cadenza, whereby trills from winds and strings lead us to a brief solo interlude by Wakeford, just prior to a dazzling, whirlwind coda.  

Conceived on the cusp of World War I, March-August, 114, Ravel’s Piano Trio vibrates with aspects of his Basque heritage and his fertile, exotic imagination. Ravel often decried the incompatibility of the percussive piano and the soft string tones, but he manages to discover a marvelous, if eccentric, blend of color that results in musical magic. The opening movement, Modéré, relies on the repetitive 8/8 rhythms from the Basque zortzico, unusual in refusing to modulate for the second theme away from the tonic minor. The theme moves in small, scalar increments until it jumps a fourth as it concludes. 

The second movement, perhaps, proves the most original: a pantoum, a Malaysian verse form in which two themes interlock through lines 2 and 4 of each four-line stanza, to become the first and third of the next stanza. In essence this movement embodies a scherzo and trio, juxtaposing ¾ injections by the string payers against the long 4/2 notes of the keyboard. Benjamin Nabarro, violin and Adrian Brendel, cello execute fiercely quick repeated, even in left-hand pizzicato, while pianist Simon Crawford-Phillips seduces us with melody. The slow Passacaglia movement testifies to Ravel’s penchant for Baroque taste. Marked Très Large ¾, the polyphonic technique taught Ravel by André Gadalge manifests itself in an 8-bar, processional theme – appearing first in the piano’s lowest register – reiterated eleven times, a concession to the Great War a step away from his Tombeau de Couperin suite. The pungent last movement Final: Animé, relies on two antagonistic rhythms, 5/4 and 7/4, a Basque construction that has violinist Nabarro’s having to negotiate, with precision, arpeggios and trills in harmonics. The Nash Trio performs this demanding but acerbically satisfying music with seamless aplomb.

I have noted elsewhere Ravel’s tendency to explode several of his dance forms, especially the Bolero and his 1920 homage to Johann Strauss and the Vienna Waltz, La Valse.  Alistair Beatson and Simon Crawford-Phillips collaborate in the 2-piano version, a swirling mass of dance music that culminates in a self-destructive bacchanal. “Voluptuousness to the point of paroxysm” state Ravel’s own characterization of this virtuoso, tragic and demonic piece that sways and convulses in the style of Liszt but remains cross-fertilized by French savoir-faire. 

Maurice Ravel, 1925

Finally, the cyclical Ravel F Major Quartet of 1902, which, while resonating the influence of Debussy’s 1893 Quartet in G Minor, maintains a striking individuality.  Among the other sonic glories of the first movement Allegro moderato, “very gentle,” the dialogue between first violin Benjamin Nabarro and viola Lars Anders Tomter for the expressive, two-octaves-apart, secondary theme stands out for sheer, suave execution.  The second movement, Assez vif, palpitates with cross rhythm typical of Iberia, pizzicato ¾ against 6/8, a concession no less to the gamelan sound of Java, but sonically open in a manner reminiscent of what Beethoven achieves in his middle quartets, Op. 59/1 and the “Harp,” Op. 74. By the end of the movement, he music’s “symphonic” dimensions burst forth in multiple-stop demands on the two violins, here executed fortissimo.  

Much of movement one’s thematic tissue finds recycling in the third movement, Très lent, in which Tomter’s viola makes expressive points with stylistic glamour. The other players’ tremolo figures support a mysterious, muted atmosphere, rife with the feeling of a rhapsodic nocturne that Bartok might have envied.  The last movement, vif et agité, thrusts stormy eighth notes in variable rhythms of 5/8, ¾, and 5/4, indulgent of emotional flourishes and demonstrative rhetoric. Recollections of movement one abound, but here these allusions have been blended in a storm both consoling and anxious, a musical enigma of which Fauré disapproved.  

–Gary Lemco