Home listening - new releases from Melvyn Tan and Linus Roth

The Guardian 0

Tan plays Ravel, Liszt and Weber on a captivating disc, while Roth makes a convincing case for three rarely performed violin concertos

• Pianist Melvyn Tan raised a few eyebrows three years ago when, on disc, he turned his attention away from the classical to the Romantic period and began exploring Liszt. He continues that exploration on a new release from Onyx entitled Miroirs, only this time he includes Liszt alongside Weber and Domenico Scarlatti as inspirations for Ravel’s mercurial experiments with the keyboard. It’s a beautifully judged disc, opening with a spectacularly virtuosic performance of Weber’s Invitation to the Dance, which leads perfectly to Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales. Tan’s teacher, Vlado Perlemuter, a pupil of Ravel, knew at first hand that Liszt’s Transcendental etude Feux follets was the direct inspiration for Noctuelles, the first of Ravel’s suite Miroirs, which Tan plays here with a gossamer-light touch, the movements interspersed with their likely inspirations – two Scarlatti sonatas and two examples from Liszt’s Années de pèlerinage suites. An illuminating recording, captivatingly played.

• There’s more captivating playing from violinist Linus Roth on volume 22 in Hyperion’s Romantic Violin Concerto series, a melodic voyage of discovery through works from two Danes, Eduard Lassen and Rued Langgaard, and the Prussian Philipp Scharwenka. Langgard’s is a single-movement piece from 1943, nostalgically recalling an earlier age of compositional innocence. Lassen’s is more muscular, but overflowing with delightful melodies, while Scharwenka’s is the most sweetly pleasing, with a deeply lyrical central andante. Roth plays with almost missionary zeal, he and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, under Antony Hermus, making a convincing case for these works to be more widely performed.