Norman Lebrecht's CD of the Week - 5 April

Rachmaninov: Piano Concertos 2 and 3 (Avie) **

These are two of the strangest Rachmaninovs I have ever heard, irritating on first impression, intriguing on repetition. Opening the C-minor concerto on the slow side of moderato, Vasily Petrenko drops to a plod to let the lugubrious Simon Trpceski bend the adagio into a pretzel of tortured yearnings.

Together, they then beat up the finale into a stop-start road chase.

The D-minor concerto goes astray in Trpceski’s peculiar phrasing, at times compelling, at other times sounding as if he speaks music as a foreign language. With brilliant tone and surgical accuracy, the wayward Macedonian contorts the familiar work beyond recognition – which is no small feat – and leaves the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic playing on for dear life.

Part of the listener’s fascination is speculating whether the conductor and soloist managed to discuss interpretation beforehand, or were merely winging it. I guess the test will be if they ever work together again. In the meantime, we get to eavesdrop on a broken-telephone Rachmaninov conversation and the usually reliable Petrenko gets a rare red mark for eccentricity.

Three string quartet CDs for springtime

Beethoven: String Quartets 2, 6, 9, 13-15 (Virgin) ****

I have played these test-pressings so often they are almost worn out. In a current flush of extraordinary string quartets – Auryn, Ebene, Belcea, Pavel Haas, Wihan, to name just the young pretenders - the Berlin-based Artemis bring a confident muscularity to mainstream repertoire. Playing on the balls of their feet, they attack Beethoven at high speed and with no deference to false tradition. The early works are done with glib abandon while the Grosse Fuge opening is so loud it is almost orchestral. But the internal dialogue is vivid and contemporary: you really want to know how this conversation is going to develop and how they will bring it to an end.

Matyas Seiber: String Quartets (Delphian) ****

Three quartets by the British-Hungarian composer span the decades of his short working life. The first, from the 1920s, is inflected with Kodaly-style folk resonances. The second, dated 1934-5, attempts fusion between Schoenberg’s serialism and a spot of blues. The third, written for the Amadeus Quartet in 1951 and titled Quarteto Lirico, finds its compass in Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite and ends in exquisite beauty. Seiber, killed in a South African car crash in 1960, has fallen into neglect. The Edinburgh Quartet play his work with deserved passion and the wonderment of discovery.

Beat Furrer: 3rd String Quartet (Kairos) **

Furrer’s quartet ‘begins in a state of paralysis: toneless grinding, individual hard and high notes, dry, gripping, knocking, vibrating – isolated sounds occurring in a seemingly random way’. That’s the sleeve note speaking. If this sort of thing turns you on, KNM Berlin’s performance is true to what I’ve seen of the score.