FANFARE
USA

ROSSINI: Six Sonatas for Strings (CLAVES CD 50-9222)

The Chamber Orchestra Kremlin may be added to the list of first-rate small orchestras arising from the social turmoil in the former Soviet Union. To judge from a two-CD sampling from Claves, Misha Rachlevsky's band is right up there with Yuri Bashmet's Moscow Soloists and Vladimir Spivakov's Moscow Virtuosi, and Rachlevsky himself bears unstrained comparison with those eminent new additions to the ranks of conductors.

Gioacchino Rossini's youthful sonatas present no vast technical problems for late twentieth-century string players, but their felicities of style are often left unrecognized by conductors who perceive only brio and innocent good humor. Refreshingly, these performances go deeper than most, playing with the cantilena elements in an almost vocal manner, and getting some genuine bloom into the central slow movements. Rachlevsky's string players are encouraged to luxuriate in instrumental tone in these expansive and subtly inflected readings which make most others sound underplayed.

One notes that the recording site and personnel are Russian; if they used the old regine's hardware, they did so in a way which ameliorated the spaciness of the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. The recording is roomy but not to excess, preserving the vivid character of this ensemble. One reservation: In order to scrunch (David Johnson's word, see Fanfare 15:6, p. 263) all six sonatas on one seventy-nine-minute CD, repeats have been promiscuously lopped. This is a real loss in view of the attractive playing of Chamber Orchestra Kremlin and of Misha Rachlevsky's enterprising interpretive skills. Still it's worth a positive recommendation.

JOHN WISER