***** Danses et Divertissements (BIS)
***** Anna & Ines Walachowski (Berlin Classics, both through Ode Records)
Verdict: The spirit of the dance rules in two intriguing releases, one new, one not.
The Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet has the perfect title for its new BIS CD - Danses et Divertissements. And who
better to provide the diverting, sprightly music than a quartet of French composers at their insouciant best.
Paul Taffanel, a name best known to flautists, sets them off with a whimsical Quintet which the Berlin players dispense with an almost Gallic finesse, right through to its final skip of a Tarantella.
A Serenade by Andre Jolivet is more barbed in its humour - as if Prokofiev had taken temporary lodgings in Montmartre. The score is anchored around a rich, flowing oboe part delivered by Andreas Wittmann.
Henri Tomasi's Cinq Danses Profanes et Sacrees may take its title from Debussy but, musically, it is closer to Messiaen, with a brilliant "Danse nuptiale" which seems to be collaged from an aviary of birdcalls.
Auckland has been lucky this year, experiencing two performances of Poulenc's 1939 Sextet by the musicians of Auckland Chamber Orchestra and the Wellington group, Zephyr.
Pianist Stephen Hough joins the Berliners and they have a romp through Poulenc's high-spirited pages. The slow movement is almost sinfully languid; the Finale has the joie de vivre of classic Music Hall.
Fans should seek a budget reissue of the Walachowski sisters' debut CD released through Berlin Classics' Gold Reference series. The detail that Anna and Ines Walachowski discover in Mozart's D major Sonata is astonishing. The criss-crossing play of scales in its first movement is dizzying, while a bubbling Rondo is graced by immaculate passage work and coy rubato.
The rest is Rachmaninov. A duet arrangement of the famous C# minor Prelude is almost eerie in its spaciousness while his Opus 11 Six Pieces balance dancing and swooning in equal parts. Some might be surprised to find Alfons Kontarsky, a name mainly known for his advocacy of the Stockhausen set in the 60s and 70s, dancing and swooning with the Walachowskis.
He provides two extra hands when Rachmaninov asks for six in a delicious waltz and one of the prettiest Romances ever to fall from the Russian's pen.
