MUSIC / Classical Releases

PROKOFIEV: Symphony No 3.

VARESE: Arcana.

MOSOLOV: Iron Foundry Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra / Riccardo Chailly (Decca 436 640-2) THE roaring Twenties. Mosolov's Iron Foundry is soon stoked for action, three and a half minutes of aural thunder, its moving parts whirring, grinding, clanking beneath an army of horns blaring out the people's worksong. For Soviet music it was more than just an industrial revolution.

Edgard Varese, meanwhile, had already won the space race. His galactic spectacular is still one of the century's most dazzling exhibitions of orchestral sorcery. Its musical processes go off like so many cosmic fireworks. Images of fantastical star wars surround the shrill marche militaire, while the leading thematic figure suggests that the evil Kaschei of Stravinsky's Firebird has conveniently metamorphosed into Darth Vader.

Decca engineering excels here. This will be one of the year's leading demo discs.

Riccardo Chailly leads the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra with his head - ever the musician, never the sensationalist. It isn't hard to imagine more visceral, more physical performances of all these pieces. Prokofiev's Third Symphony is very much the killing-you-softly approach - an expression of illicit desires more than explicit actions. It's way too rationalised for my taste. ES BACH: The Six Brandenburg Concertos New London Consort / Philip Pickett (L'Oiseau Lyre 440 675 2) THE problem with authenticity, to quote the composer Robert Simpson, is that we don't have authentic ears. Why recreate the playing, and especially the expressive styles of vanished ages, if we don't know what they mean. Philip Pickett, however, thinks that we do - up to a point. The musical rhetoric of Bach's time, for instance, was described, even catalogued by his contemporaries. Searching these works, and the overtly allegorical visual arts of the period, Pickett has come up with a series of interpretations of the Brandenburg Concertos; No 1 is 'The Triumph of Caesar', No 3 'The Nine Muses and the Harmony of the Spheres', No 5 'The Choice of Hercules' and so on.

Some of it rings true, and certainly there will be listeners to these uniquely colourful and dramatic baroque concertos who will have been reminded of classical allegorical scenes from contemporary paintings, friezes, tapestries and the like. The trouble is, try to pin Pickett's specific images to Bach's gloriously alive musical figures and more often than not they seem to take wing and vanish. That, in a way, is a tribute to the performances - they are very much alive, especially in the fast movements, where the element of dance never seems very far away. But how much in the playing can be specifically related to Pickett's programmes? The extravagant solo violin rubato in the first movement of No 4 might suggest Apollo's 'outrageous trickery' in his legendary musical contest with the satyr Marsyas, but the image that came to my mind was of a modern period violinist casting his 18th-century corset to the wind and having a bit of more than slightly self- parodistic fun.

In the end, perhaps what really matters is that Pickett's investigations have given these performances a freshness that too many period versions lack. The slow movements may not quite be the most luscious nor the most pathos-saturated in the catalogue, but Lisa and Pavlo Beznosiuk (recorder and violin) intertwine seductively in the central affectuoso of the Fifth Concerto, and the sound of the mixed strings in the adagio of No 6 is gorgeous - the clear intimate recordings certainly help. SJ BARTOK: The Miraculous Mandarin; Concerto for Orchestra City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Simon Rattle (EMI CDC 5 55094 2) SIR Simon's fascinating account of the Concerto for Orchestra has nothing whatever to do with display. You could argue that it has nothing whatever to do with Bartok - that it's a mite precious, that its myriad refinements at times run contrary to the nature of the piece. For sure it isn't rude, ruddy, grass- roots Bartok in the sense that the famous Reiner or Fricsay recordings are. But for atmosphere, for a rarefied Elysian beauty (the woodwind and strummed harp departures of the Introduzione), for the pale, fragile Elegia, for new perspectives on so many details, it is ear-opening.

So, too, The Miraculous Mandarin. The indecency, of course, is in the shot-silk texturing. But Rattle doesn't spare our nervous dispositions either. The opening cityscape is just the beginning of the nightmare, scarified flutes and piccolo skirling the traffic chaos; organ and heavy brass weighing in terrifically; Colin Parr's seductive solo clarinet comes right out of the shadows - sinister and sexy; and the Mandarin himself is duly miraculous, Rattle affording him a spectacularly portentous entrance with lurid trombone glissandi to the fore. ES