Home listening: the latest classical releases

Octets: Mendelssohn and Enescu

Quatuor Ebène/Belcea Quartet (Erato)

As an aural blast to start the listening year, what better than the jubilant and invigorating Octet in E-flat Major by Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) in a heady new recording. Here two world-class ensembles and long-term collaborators, the Quatuor Ebène and the Belcea Quartet (pictured), join forces with fizzing brilliance and musical intimacy.

Composed when Mendelssohn was 16 years old as a gift for his lucky violin teacher, it’s written for four violins, two violas, two cellos. The first violin enjoys most of the flamboyance and melody, but all players have to be on their mettle for tricks and surprises at every turn. The skittering Scherzo is fast but seems positively stately in comparison with the Presto finale: impossible to see how 16 hands could move so fast, in such perfect coordination, but they do. Another youthful octet, the work of the 18-year-old Romanian, George Enescu (1881-1955), makes a bristling, impassioned companion piece – a fully integrated work of eight-part equality.

Schubert: The Impromptus Opp 90 & 142

Eric Lu (Warner)

The pianist Eric Lu, born in Massachusetts in 1997 to Taiwanese-Chinese parents, has won the sort of prizes that make young players instantly famous: notably the Leeds competition in 2018 and last year the Chopin international piano competition. His 2022 recording of two piano sonatas established him as a clear-sighted but poetic interpreter of Schubert.

That impression is only reinforced by his new album: both sets of Four Impromptus, written at the end of the composer’s short life, the second printed only after his death. Lu calls them some of the “greatest jewels in the piano literature” and emphasises the sense of an inner journey through both groups. The mix of delicacy, poise and a self-effacing objectivity puts this player up there with the greatest.

New Music New York, BBC Radio 3

In this evening’s Sunday Feature (11 January), the writer Richard King explores New York’s the Kitchen, crucible in the 1970s for the composers who shaped modern American music for the next half-century: Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, Julius Eastman, and more. Airs 7.15pm on BBC Radio 3 and BBC Sounds

Photographs courtesy Parlophone Records