Hegedus is a reliable, sympathetic interpreter, but he understates the case for Miaskovsky. Like Medtner, Miaskovsky remained attached to the solid, I'm tempted to say bourgeois, principles of high art-music. He never embraced the renewing impulses of Prokofiev, Stravinsky or Shostakovich—impulses derived in no small measure from 'low' forms of popular entertainment music. But he did try his hand at the highly-charged fantasy world of Scriabin in Sonatas Nos. 2, 3 and 4, and given a certain fanatical edge in performance any of these can make a considerable impression.

Hegedus is presumably saving the Fourth Sonata, almost certainly the finest of the cycle, for a third volume. But his readings of the single-movement Nos. 2 and 3 are disappointingly lethargic (he drags them out to 19'56'' and 18'28'' respectively, where McLachlan takes by no means supersonic tempos and comes out at 13'35'' and 13'11''). In the scherzo of No. 5 Hegedus's measured tempo has something to be said for it—McLachlan's vivo is rather skimpy here—and he does find some subtle shadings where the Scotsman tends to be rather colourless. Neither player is particularly interesting at extremes of dynamic and tempo, but in general McLachlan's greater urgency pays consistent dividends.

Gramophone, October 1990

In the Second Sonata Chopin's elegant grace jars with a strenuous romanticism, Bachian patterning (16.40) and the Dies Irae thunders and glowers framed by Klimt-like textures - all starry robes and subtle smiles. Moving onwards to the fateful and deathly year 1917, the Fifth Sonata is in four movements. The guileless Mozartian pastoralism of the first movement reminded me of the gangling and generous 'summertime' theme from the finale of Prokofiev's Seventh Symphony. Miaskovsky's downbeat elegiac character retakes the heights in the Largo only to be dispelled by the Handelian/Graingerian ripple of the Vivo which has a real roll and sway to it in Hegedüs's hands. The finale strides, elbows wide, through the heroic uplands in a true Romantic style also exemplified by the Sonata-Triad of Medtner or the Corelli Variations of Rachmaninov. The Third Sonata is again a single movement structure just like its predecessor.

The music is far more luxuriantly coloured and decorated than the Fifth. Its strenuous conflict-laden strains can be compared with the first two Bax Sonatas. This work shows the same trend as symphonies numbers 1 to 3 (possibly No. 4 as well, though I have not heard it). Scriabin is the exemplar and there is a density to the music that suggests the heavy duty romanticism of the times extruded through the pessimism of Tchaikovky's Pathétique and Manfred.

The sound quality is very healthy and Hegedüs takes care to be delicate where delicacy is called for. Helpful notes from David Nelson and the cover illustrations are by my friend Michael Freeman whose paintings appear on all the Marco Polo Miaskovsky sonata series and also, I believ, their Danubius Villa-Lobos Quartets series.

Rob Barnett