• Reynaldo Hahn (1874-1947), who moved in the same circles as Marcel Proust, has a reputation of being a louche Frenchman specialising in salon songs. Instead he was born in Caracas, to a German-Jewish father and local Venezuelan mother. The family emigrated to Paris when he was three, remarkable logistically considering he had 11 older siblings. Reynaldo Hahn: Chamber Music & Song (Champs Hill) features the instrumental music, notably the Piano Quintet in F sharp minor (1921) and the late Piano Quartet No 3 in G (1946). With their tonal, romantic mood and luscious melodies, these works might have been written a century earlier. Beautifully played here by the pianist James Baillieu, with Benjamin Baker and Bartosz Woroch (violins), Tim Lowe (cello) and Adam Newman (viola), they’re a pleasurable discovery.
• In their first Shostakovich disc, the Belcea Quartet, with pianist Piotr Anderszewski, have chosen the String Quartet No 3 and Piano Quintet (Alpha Classics). The five-movement Quartet No 3 (1946) in F major starts with an Allegretto of sardonic, neoclassical cheer, but shadows fall and the mood darkens to one of raw unease, well captured in this agile account. The Quintet (1940) dates from soon after Shostakovich’s catastrophic falling-out with the Stalinist regime over his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. That work’s edgy mood surfaces in the noisy, jazzy outburst in the quintet’s third movement. In a fine performance, Anderszewski and the Belceas give full expression to the work’s melancholy and lyricism.
• Catch up with Opera on 3: Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk on Radio 3 iPlayer in the brilliant production of Shostakovich’s operatic masterpiece from the Royal Opera House. Eva-Maria Westbroek, soprano, sings Katerina, the bored housewife of the title, with bass John Tomlinson as her repellant father-in-law, Brandon Jovanovich as Sergey and John Daszak as Ismailov, with the chorus of the Royal Opera and a big ensemble cast conducted by Antonio Pappano.
