Roel Dieltens JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH Complete Cello Suites

Performing on Baroque cello and bow, cellist Roel Dieltiens offers his second recording of the Bach complete cello suites on this Et'Cetera album. With so many recordings of the suites available, and many cellists even committing different versions of their own playing across their career, it can be difficult to find anything new and worthwhile. Dieltiens puts the focus of this two-disc set on the effect of each suite created not only by the notes themselves, but on the key chosen by Bach. Such a focus certainly presents a potential pitfall of the playing becoming overly emotional and distorted, but Dieltiens generally avoids this. The six preludes have an appropriately improvisatory feeling and rhythmic freedom while the dance movements typically maintain their rhythmic integrity without being rigid or stodgy. Only the occasional Sarabande (from the Second Suite in particular) becomes a little indulgent with the liberties taken with rhythm and tempo. Dieltiens also incorporates his own ornamentation to various degrees, a custom perfectly in line with his performance practice. Some suites, such as the Fifth, get very little of this extra stylization, while the First and Third suites have many added trills, turns, and mordents. This adds extra interest to Dieltiens' technically superb playing and keeps listeners' ears tuned into what might come next. Et'Cetera's sound captures the rich depth of Dieltiens' playing, but also unduly emphasizes many powerful fingerfalls that can be somewhat distracting. (Mike D. Brownell)

EnAccord String Quartet CAPRICCIO

The string quartet repertoire is an unending voyage of discovery and exploration. The great masterpieces of the repertoire conceal unknown jewels in their shadow; these latter works, however, seldom find their way onto a concert programme. This recording introduces our listeners to our first and highly personal anthology of splendidly varied and short pieces for string quartet. We hope you enjoy them - because there are many more such works still to be discovered and enjoyed. 

“Our CD is a collection of short stories: each piece has its own structure and mood, its own individual world. Schulhoff’s five pieces, each with its own individual character, are perfect examples of this.”
Rosalinde Kluck - alt violin

“The Lekeu piece was a real discovery. Splendid music with great depth. But what a tragedy! How many more masterpieces could Lekeu have composed, if he hadn’t died at such a young age?”
Maike Reisener - cello

“It was an immense pleasure to get to grips with these small masterpieces. Puccini’s Crisantemi is possibly the best of them for me personally. It’s like a scene from one of his operas, with so much emotion and so atmospheric. And of course I’m pleased that there’s also an important work by a Belgian composer on the CD as well…”
Helena Druwé - violin

“To make this CD was a really intriguing experience. I think it’s so amazing to have so many different styles on one CD, because you get to hear all of the different things that our quartet can do. For me, one of the best things in the CD is the Mendelssohn piece, with its warm and impassioned introduction.”
Ilka van der Plas - violin

Basque National Orchestra / José Ramón Encinar GUBAIDULINA Kadenza

Sofia Gubaidulina’s religious nature, specifically Russian Orthodox, finds expression in each of these pieces. Each also makes use of her much-loved bayan, the Russian button accordion played here with great virtuosity by Iñaki Alberdi. Kadenza is a solo tour de force; Et exspecto, based on the closing words of the Creed (‘I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come’) is an impressive five-movement sonata in which, the booklet-note tells us, the performer’s interpretation goes, with her encouragement, well beyond the composer’s notation.

In the other works, much is made of the combination of the accordion sounds and Asier Polo’s cello. With In croce, a number of cross-like ideas derive from the title – crossing of registers, crossing of lines and textures and so on – which are essentially private creative stimuli for the composer. But in the major work on the record, the half-hour Seven Words, the sentences spoken by Jesus on the cross are graphically, even fervently implied. Gubaidulina’s love of short motifs, here often using very close intervals, produces in her hands music of strong and even painful intensity, seizing and gripping the attention, sometimes with fiercely punched chords on the accordion or with soaring harmonics on the cello that vanish into silence after the final Word. The longest movement is the central No 4, Jesus’s cry, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’, a powerful and deeply affecting invention. This is a remarkable, compelling work. (John Warrack / Gramophone)