Classical home listening - Joshua Bell and a Mahler must-have

The Guardian 0

Bell and friends are on relaxed, impeccable form, while Iván Fischer’s Mahler cycle draws to a blazing close

• In a 30-year career bristling with awards and success as a soloist on the world’s most illustrious stages, the American violinist Joshua Bell has always kept time for intimate music-making. On his latest album, companion to a PBS broadcast in the US, he performs with friends – Jeremy Denk, Peter Dugan and Kamal Khan – and his wife, the soprano Larisa Martínez. Joshua Bell: At Home With Music (Sony) contains eight short tracks, from Dvořák (arr Kreisler) to Gershwin (arr Heifetz), via Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Wieniawski and Bernstein. The choice is personal and idiosyncratic, the mood salon-style music of the highest quality, impeccably performed by Bell on his 1713 “Huberman” Stradivarius.

He and pianist Jeremy Denk play only the opening movement of Beethoven’s “Spring” sonata, but it’s enough to hint at the work’s serenity, drama and scale. You might wish for the whole sonata, but that thought is banished by the quick shift into Dvořák’s wistful Slavonic Fantasy in B minor (with Peter Dugan). Martinez is properly coquettish in Musetta’s aria from Puccini’s La bohème (arr. Kohn), with Bell revelling in the violin line’s twists and meanders. His virtuosity is on display in Wieniawski’s showpiece Polonaise de Concert, Op 4, every harmonic and trill lovingly placed.