# Danceworks, Principia, Patrol — Steve Martland Band/Smith Quartet (Catalyst)
The new-music label Catalyst has had far more misses than hits so far, but these three pieces by Steve Martland provide a very good introduction to his musical world, which treads a canny course along the borders of minimalism, rock and jazz. Like his teacher, Louis Andriessen, Martland has rejected the bourgeois conventions of the symphony orchestra and tends to write for harder- edged instrumental combinations in which reeds and keyboards predominate. Danceworks, full of jagged rhythms and deftly interlocking lines, is the most Andriessen-like of the pieces here, while the string quartet Patrol, with origins in the techniques of Scottish fiddlers, unexpectedly reveals the influence of Tippett in its strenuous, singing counterpoints, though the final effect is serene and elegiac.
# MESSIAEN: Eclairs sur l’Au-Dela … Orchestra de l’Opera-Bastille/Chung (DG)
MESSIAEN’S last major work, first performed in 1992 six months after his death, receives a rendition of great poise and command from Chung and the Bastille Orchestra. Like all large-scale Messiaen, Eclairs sur l’Au-Dela (Visions of the Beyond) is an orchestral act of devotion, meditating upon transcendence in very personal terms. As always, religious awe is mingled with a celebration of the beauties of the natural world. Even without the Roman Catholic trappings, though, it is a majestic piece, using a huge orchestra with great restraint.
# SHOSTAKOVICH: 24 Preludes and Fugues Tatyana Nikolayeva (Melodiya)
THE re-release on CD of the Russian Melodiya catalogue is restoring to circulation many of the greatest recordings of the Soviet era. Nikolayeva’s Shostakovich, recorded in 1987, certainly comes into that category. The cycle of preludes and fugues, a homage to Bach’s Well-Tempered Klavier, was written for her after Shostakovich heard her playing Bach in 1950; Nikolayeva gave the first performance two years later. The music moves through all the major and minor keys just like Bach, and is beautifully suited to her unaffected playing. Yet it’s anything but academic; there are flashes of the gravity of the symphonic Shostakovich, as well as of the sardonic composer of the operas and ballets.
# TCHAIKOVSKY: The Seasons, Six Pieces Op 21 Mikhail Pletnev (Virgin Classics)
TO the devotee, Tchaikovsky’s piano works contain many beautiful things; to the non-believer they are little more than superior salon music. Mikhail Pletnev chooses some of the best for this discriminating, elegantly played disc. The Six Pieces, written in 1873, are in effect a set of variations, which include a fugue and a funeral march. The Seasons, from three years later, is a Schumann-like album of 12 miniatures, impressions of each month of the year not designed as a continuous sequence but as self-contained pieces. It may not be a collection to play through in a single sitting, but it is ideal for random sampling. Pletnev’s playing provides some exquisite delights; his technique is flawless and he is always alive to the possibilies of colouring and inflecting the music in ways that create individual sound worlds for even the thinnest, least prepossessing pieces.
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