The American String Project: Brahms, Shostakovich, and Dvořák (MSR Music)

The American String Project may be Seattle’s best-kept secret, but this follow-up to its critically acclaimed 2008 recording of Bartók’s String Quartet No. 1 in A minor, Op. 7; and Schubert’s String Quartet No. 14 in D minor, D. 810, “Death and the Maiden” (MSR Music 1269) shows once again that this world-class 15-piece conductorless string orchestra is deserving of decidedly more attention.

The talent-laden ASP—which on this album includes violinists Jorja Fleezanis, Arnaud Sussman, and Stephanie Chase; violist Mara Gearman; and cellists Julie Alber and Arek Tesarczyk, among others—boasts a shifting lineup that meets annually for a week of rehearsals, performing, and recording string-orchestra arrangements of standard chamber works.

In 2008, ASP co-artistic director and double-bassist Barry Lieberman, who heads up the project with violinist Maria Larionoff, arranged three chamber works for string orchestra: Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 4 in D major, Op. 83; Brahms’ String Quartet No. 2 in A minor, Op. 51; and Dvořák’s String Quartet No. 9 in D minor, Op. 34. Each is especially well suited to this type of expanded treatment.

An avid fan of Arturo Toscanini, Lieberman’s charts are first and foremost designed for inclusion of a bass part, and he deftly adds an emotional wallop to the music without sacrificing the integrity and intimacy of the familiar quartet ensemble parts. Each piece reflects the rich, sonorous bottom-heavy tone for which the ASP is known.

Larionoff leads the Shostakovich piece, Fleezanis leads the string orchestra on the Brahms work, and Chase leads on the Dvořák. Lieberman has called the fourth movement of the Dvořák quartet “the single most beautiful slow movement of any work I know,” and both his arrangement and the players do it justice. To date, ASP has recorded four of Shostakovich’s 15 string quartets and intends to record the rest.

With news of the ASP spreading fast, you owe it to yourself to catch up to its amazing music, just so you can say you heard them when.

The ASP’s 2009/10 season concerts will be held May 14–17.

Viola Concertos by Edward Elgar and Alfred Schnittke. David Aaron Carpenter, viola; Philharmonia Orchestra, Christoph Eschenbach, cond. (Ondine ODE)

David Aaron Carpenter is an excellent young violist. His technique is brilliant, but not showy—his tone is rich and pure. Born in New York in 1986, Carpenter has won several awards, including first prize in the 2006 Naumburg Viola Competition, and is enjoying a successful international career. There is much to recommend this debut CD.

Dedicated to enhancing the public’s appreciation of his instrument and to enriching its repertoire, he chose two innovative works for this recording: Schnittke’s Viola Concerto and Elgar’s Cello Concerto in the viola transcription by the great English violist Lionel Tertis (approved by the composer, with some emendations by Carpenter). The two works make an interesting combination, not only because Elgar (1857–1934) died the year Schnittke (1934–1998) was born, but because in some ways these two works are each other’s opposites.

Schnittke’s concerto was inspired by its dedicatee, Yuri Bashmet (one of Carpenter’s illustrious teachers). Unmistakably influenced by Shostakovich, it is full of uninhibited, obsessive emotionality, agonized outcries, and sardonic, distorted rhythms. Elgar’s, despite some moments of humor and subdued passion, is all English dignity, introspection, and melancholy expressiveness. The Elgar is intriguing, though the inevitable octave jumps are jarring and one misses those sonorous low E’s.

Carpenter’s style, especially his throbbing vibrato, is much better suited to the Schnittke: his performance eloquently captures its volatile character and mercurial moods. In the Elgar, the rhythmic liberties and dynamics are often exaggerated, and the extroverted emotional abandon runs counter to the work’s noble restraint. The buildups and climaxes are most convincing. —Edith Eisler

Caroline Goulding. Caroline Goulding, violin; Christopher O’Riley, piano. (Telarc)

When violin virtuoso Jamie Laredo sings your praises, as he does on Caroline Goulding’s website, you know that you’re in good company. There’s much to admire about the striking eponymous debut from this gifted young violinist, which features From the Top host Christopher O’Riley on piano. Goulding—a 17-year-old student at the Cleveland Institute of Music and a From the Top alum—is blessed with confidence, grace, and the ability to infuse music with warmth and personal vision.

Rather than deliver yet-another rendition of a well-ridden warhorse, Goulding offers a program of sometimes sentimental, often sprightly, but always entertaining fare. You might mistake these selections as the fun stuff that most violinists reserve for their encore, except that these short works present considerable technical challenges, which Goulding handles with aplomb.

She opens with Fritz Kreisler’s Gypsy-flavored song “La Gitano,” which is followed by three more Kreisler compositions: “Gypsy Caprice,” “Berceuse Romantique,” and “Syncopation.” Her playing is precise yet playful as Goulding shows over and again that she has a sophisticated sense of dynamics.

Her reading of selections from George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, from a transcription by Jascha Heifetz, are beautifully rendered, particularly the quick-shifting “Ain’t Necessarily So,” which Goulding performs with heart and soul.

Other selections include John Corigliano’s gymnastic workout the Red Violin Caprices for solo violin, Paul Schoenfeld’s challenging Four Souvenirs for violin and piano, and Henri Vieuxtemps Souvenir D’Amerique Variations on “Yankee Doodle,” Op. 17. She closes with a pair of Gaelic tunes featuring Cape Breton-style fiddling: the wistful ballad “Hector the Hero” and a brisk medley that concludes with “Jean’s Reel.”

Throughout, Goulding displays not only the remarkable command of technique found in other hard-working violin prodigies, but a natural sense of musicality that can evade even the most technically accomplished string player. —G.C.

Janáček: Piano Trio “The Kreutzer Sonata”; Schumann: Trio in G minor, Op. 110; Études for piano in Canonic Form, Op. 56. Weilerstein Trio (E1 Music)

There is something special about family-based chamber-music ensembles. Most are formed by members of the same generation, so the Weilerstein Trio—violinist Donald, founding leader of the Cleveland String Quartet; pianist Vivian, his wife and frequent duo partner; and cellist Alisa, their 27-year-old daughter—is somewhat unusual. And it is remarkable, but not surprising, that Alisa has the most commanding, assertive personality—she has been enjoying a brilliant international solo career since her debut at age 13.

Their program, too, is unusual. It features one original piano trio, Schumann’s rarely performed Op. 110, and two singularly felicitous transcriptions. One is the trio arrangement of Schumann’s Études for piano in Canonic Form, Op. 56, by the great cellist Paul Bazelaire, which sounds completely natural for the instruments—the strings interweave their lyrical, romantic, and mischievous melodies, surrounded by a busy but light piano part. The playing is lovely.

The other, Janáček’s First String Quartet (1923), is also well suited to the instrumental combination, being based on an unpublished piano trio left incomplete 15 years earlier. Janá?ek was an organist and more familiar with keyboard than string writing. His quartet abounds with Alberti bass–like figures, which Stephen Coxe uses to good effect in this arrangement.

The performance is splendid—dominated by Alisa’s vibrant tone and passionate abandon, its energy and intensity generate an enormous emotional impact. On the other hand, the “real” Schumann Trio seems less idiomatic to the combination than the transcriptions. Its dense, heavy piano part and many unison passages create textural problems, which are unfortunately reinforced by the recorded balance. —E.E.

The Baroque Beatles Book. Baroque Ensemble of the Merseyside Kammermusikgesellschaft, Joshua Rifkin, cond. (Nonesuch)

When Paul McCartney laid down the tracks for “Yesterday”—between June 14 and 17, 1965, at EMI Studios in London—the recording marked the first time a Beatle was heard solo and the first time the band used strings. It ushered in the common use of stringed instruments in pop music and helped bridge the then-wide rift between classical and pop music. Within months, Jac Holzman, the head of Elektra and Nonesuch records, hatched a plan to re-imagine the Beatles as a Baroque ensemble. The result is the newly reissued and remastered cult classic featuring early Beatles tunes transmuted into movements of larger “lost” works. Case in point: the “Last Night I Said” Cantata for the Third Saturday After Shea Stadium, MBE 58,000, which combines “Please Please Me,” “Help,” and “I’ll Be Back.” As far as classical treatments of Beatles’ tunes go, and there are a million of them out there, this is one of the most inventive and the most engaging. And you thought you’d heard the last of the hype surrounding the recent remastered Beatles catalog and Rock Band computer game . . . —G.C.

Beethoven: Complete Sonatas for Piano and Violin. Isabelle Faust, violin; Alexander Melnikov, piano. (Harmonia Mundi)

This new recording of Beethoven’s 10 richly varied violin sonatas shows in graphic detail and with cool passion, two beautiful young people falling deeply and irresistibly in love—musically speaking, of course.

Faust’s most intriguing strength, besides her formidable technique and nano- command of gradations of tone and volume, is her shy curiosity about how the music ought to go and where it is going. Complementing this, she has a sense of humor that must drive her musical lovers mad with delight. Melnikov matches her in the sweep of his technique, surpasses her in sheer beauty of sound, and uncovers an unusual amount of interior detail in the piano part (too often called “noodling”) which adds substantially to the music's impact. Faust and Melnikov even know what makes the original-instrument group tick, throwing in embellishments here and there with perfectly authentic, sexy glee.

High marks, too, for the skill of the Harmonia Mundi engineers in providing a gently ambient recording space that feeds off Faust’s and Melnikov’s ability to communicate with each other so intimately. The bonus DVD is an interview with the two charming and insightful principals, and an artfully filmed studio performance of the first movement of Opus 96; artful or not, it will definitely help you understand the meaning of those enigmatic trills with which the movement is filled. —Laurence Vittes

Chocolates: Music for Viola and Piano by James Grant. Michelle LaCourse, viola; Martin Amlin, piano. (MSR Classics)

Soloist Michelle LaCourse’s introduction to the music of James Grant came in 1997 when she presented his Viola Concerto and was taken by the torch-song quality of a slow jazz movement. Their collaboration was sealed after the concert when Grant (b. 1954)—winner of both an Aaron Copland and a Sylvia Goldstein Award—produced a box of chocolate truffles for the violist.

A decade later, LaCourse went into the studio to create this world-premiere recording, a dozen short tunes inspired by or evoking the many moods of chocolate.

These sometimes bittersweet confections (indeed, there is a short piece titled “Bittersweet”) have a melancholy, rainy day mood. Sentimental, but never saccharine, LaCourse strikes the right tone throughout, milking the vibrato here, holding back there. Always tasteful and richly satisfying. —G.C.

Einojuhani Rautavaara: 12 Concertos for strings, winds, piano, harp, organ, and birds. Elmar Olivera, violin; Marko Ylönen, cello; Esko Laine, double bass; and others. Various orchestras and conductors. (Ondine)

The expression worn by the handsome Finnish composer in his cover photograph, taken in 1948, seems quite in keeping with his provocative statement that his concertos symbolize the dramatic conflict between the individual (the soloist) and the collective (the orchestra). Though different, these works, written over four decades and featured on a four-CD set, share several traits: the juxtaposition of opposites; the violent contrasts between dynamics, textures, colors, and moods; the colorful orchestration; and the tendency to stretch the soloists’ technical and tonal resources. In the violin, cello, and bass concertos, the solo parts go into the highest stratosphere and require the players to produce double-stops, chords, jumps, high-speed runs, and every imaginable sound effect. The performances by three consummate string virtuosos are quite breathtaking, as is that of the Clarinet Concerto, played here by its dedicatee, Richard Stoltzman.

The three Piano Concertos are full of tone clusters, instrumental fireworks, and effects. Rautavaara (b. 1928) wrote the first one for himself in 1969, the second 20 years later for his great compatriot Ralf Gothóni, who gives a stunning performance of both, and the third for Vladimir Ashkenazy, who also conducts. —E.E.