The world of early music has thrived on the skills of musical families – the likes of the husband-and-wife teams Nikolaus and Alice Harnoncourt, Ton Koopman and Tini Mathot and the brothers Barthold, Wieland and Sigiswald Kuijken. Violinist Sigiswald features alongside fortepianist Luc Devos in the great Mozart works for violin and keyboard, tonally pure, broadly drawn performances incisively phrased, while flautist Barthold joins members of the Kuijken Quartet for a pleasing set of the Flute Quartets. La Petite Bande’s involvement extends to Eine kleine Nachtmusik, the Divertimentos K136‑138 and 205 and the Cassations K63 and 99. These are ‘dead centre’ period performances, expressive in what we assume to have been the manners of the day, and very well recorded.

Brilliant Classics’ Couperin Dynasty collection usefully gathers together François’s four dazzling books of harpsichord pieces (Michael Borgstede), Massimo Berghella playing harpsichord suites by Louis (historically the first important member of the Couperin family), harpsichord pieces by Armand-Louis (cousin of François) played by Yago Mahugo and catchy, vivacious fortepiano music by Gervais-François (a son of Armand-Louis and a contemporary of Beethoven) adeptly performed by Simone Pierini. The range of music on offer stretches from Gervais-François’s feisty variations to François’s majestic Passacaille, one of the finest masterpieces in the genre. It’s a musical feast to relish, more varied than you might expect. Excellent sound, too, and informative notes by Michael Borgstede, Peter Quantrill, Brigida Cristallo and Massimo Berghella.

I can’t leave the subject of musical families without referencing the tenor/pianist brother-and-sister team of Ian and Jennifer Partridge, who years ago made one of the brightest, liveliest and most eloquently phrased recordings of Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin in the catalogue for John Boyden’s Classics for Pleasure label. Boyden’s pioneering spirit gave birth to numerous memorable recordings including John Lill’s Waldstein Sonata, which is also featured in Divine Art’s celebratory two-CD set. A fresh-faced new recording of Schubert’s Trout Quintet featuring Boyden’s New Queen’s Hall Orchestra Players, commissioned specially for this release and recorded at Henry Wood Hall last year, is also part of the deal.

Returning to French music, albeit from a couple of centuries beyond the Couperin clan, I can reference the endlessly self-critical Jewish composer, critic, scholar and teacher Paul Dukas, whose 160th birthday is celebrated on October 1 next year, while the 90th anniversary of his death, also next year, is commemorated on May 17. For many, Dukas the composer is a one-horse town, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, an ingenious scherzo after Goethe that Walt Disney so brilliantly incorporated into his animation masterpiece Fantasia. But there’s a good deal more to Dukas than that, including the hugely imposing three-act opera Ariane et Barbe-bleue (‘Ariadne and Bluebeard’), recorded in extract by Toscanini and complete by Armin Jordan with the Nouvel Orchestre Philharmonique and a cast including Katherine Ciesinski and Gabriel Bacquier. Bluebeard shares space on a four-CD all-Dukas Warner Classics collection with such rarities as the Symphony in C, Polyeucte (also in C), La péri (Fanfare and the kaleidoscopic poème dansé), both under Jean Martinon, Villanelle for horn and piano (Pierre del Vescovo and Jean Hubeau), a couple of haunting piano miniatures (Hubeau) and, most interesting and on a larger scale, Variations, Interlude and Finale on a Theme by Rameau (Hubeau again). The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is spectacularly played on one piano by Martha Argerich and Alexandre Rabinovitch (Rabinovitch’s own arrangement), and a real curio, the dramatic 40-minute Piano Sonata, is played by François-René Duchâble, who made history when, in protest against what he saw as the ‘elitism of the classical music system’, he planned concerts where he destroyed two grand pianos, and in one, burned his formal concert dress. So, I ask you, what is the epic and wildly rhapsodic Dukas Sonata if not elitist? Please discuss!

Luxembourg cellist Françoise Groben (1965-2011) sadly didn’t live long enough to grow disillusioned with the elitist aspects of the music business (though, like me, I suspect she may well have had some level of sympathy for Duchâble’s viewpoint). A couple of years ago Hänssler Classic released a six-CD ‘In memoriam’ collection featuring Schumann’s String Quartet Op 41 No 3 (Groben was cellist for the Zehetmair Quartet, whose 2001 recording of Schumann’s First and Third Quartets won Gramophone’s Record of the Year at the 2003 Awards).

In reviewing Hänssler’s first Groben box (9/22) I referenced ‘a sensitive player with a quick, even vibrato and a faultless sense of musical line’, a responsive chamber music performer, too. It included impressive performances of Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations, Schubert’s Arpeggione (an interesting albeit anonymous orchestration), both Haydn concertos, the First Concertos of Danzi, Martin≤, Saint-Saëns and Shostakovich, Brahms’s First Piano Trio and sonatas by Rachmaninov and Grieg. Elgar’s Concerto also featured. This second volume is hardly less memorable. Highlights include the Schumann Concerto (under Uwe Mund), Brahms’s Double (with violinist Karin Adam and Leopold Hager conducting), Dvo∑ák’s Concerto (with Nicholas Brochot), Bloch’s Schelomo (under David Shallon), Bach’s Solo Suite BWV1009, the sonatas of Chopin and Shostakovich (both with Ivan Gajan) and Mendelssohn’s D minor Trio (where she is joined by pianist Peter Laul and violinist Graf Mourja). These performances and more make a strong impression, and all are well recorded. Dare we hope for a third volume? Let’s hope there’s enough archive material available to compile one.

The recordings

Mozart Chamber Music (S Kuijken et al, Accent ACC24401)

Couperin Dynasty (Borgstede, Mahugo, Berghella, Pierini, Brilliant 97051)

John Boyden A Celebration (Divine Art DDX21244)

Dukas Collected Works (Various artists, Warner Classics 5419 78087-1)

In memoriam, Vol 2 (Françoise Groben, Hänssler Classic HC23015)

This review originally appeared in the August 2024 issue of Gramophone. Never miss an issue of the world's leading classical music magazine – subscribe to Gramophone today