Beethoven: Violin Concerto;
Romances Nos. 1 and 2. Christian Tetzlaff, violin; Tonhalle Orchestra Zürich conducted by David Zinman.
Brilliant Classics. $7.99.
Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 3 and 5. Christoph Eschenbach, piano; London
Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hans Werner Henze (No. 3); Boston Symphony
Orchestra conducted by Seiji Ozawa (No. 5). PentaTone. $19.99 (SACD).
Enescu: Complete Works for Violin
and Piano, Volume 2. Axel Strauss, violin; Ilya Poletaev, piano. Naxos.
$12.99.
Dialogus: Music for Solo Violin.
Hlíf Sigurjónsdóttir, violin. MSR Classics. $12.95.
The communicative power of
the violin shows not only through its use as the dominant instrument in
symphony orchestras but also through its various solo incarnations, alone or in
combination. For example, using the concerto form to set a single violin
against an orchestra allows a wide variety of expressive approaches, and some
can be surprising even when the concerto is as well-known as Beethoven’s. In a
Brilliant Classics re-release of a performance from 2005, Christian Tetzlaff
looks at the concerto from some unusual angles, keeping it upbeat and almost
lighthearted throughout – a very different approach from the super-serious one
frequently used for this music. Tetzlaff thus plants the concerto more firmly
in the 18th century than the 19th, a valid approach
despite the work’s date of 1806. Tetzlaff, very well supported by the Tonhalle
Orchestra Zürich under David
Zinman, chooses moderate tempos throughout and avoids imposing any grandeur or
heaven-storming elements on a work that is actually one of Beethoven’s most
upbeat. The violin here moves within as well as above and beyond the orchestra,
and there is a very pleasant feeling of ensemble cooperation rather than the
competitiveness that later concertos were to invite and even demand. Tetzlaff
also does one highly unusual thing here: instead of using the usual
first-movement cadenza (by Fritz Kreisler), he takes the cadenza written by
Beethoven for piano when the composer
recast the concerto for piano and orchestra – and plays it on the violin. This
is in itself a very unusual cadenza, featuring a timpani accompaniment for the
soloist, and hearing it played on the violin is genuinely strange. It is not
wrong so much as highly unfamiliar and surprising. Beethoven indisputably wrote
this cadenza, but just as indisputably intended it to be played on piano.
Hearing it as Tetzlaff performs it certainly transforms this well-known violin
concerto into something different and surprising, if not, it must be said,
totally convincing. However, as a way of bringing a breath of fresh air to a
work that can sometimes seem overly familiar, Tetzlaff’s choice of this cadenza
is a fascinating one. Soloist and orchestra offer the two Romances as encores of sorts for the concerto, and both are played
with taste, refinement and the same sort of delicacy and care that Tetzlaff and
Zinman bring to the concerto – these are pleasant rather than highly significant
pieces, and both sound very lovely indeed in these readings.
The piano is, after all,
itself a kind of stringed instrument, which makes it tempting to think of all
the ways in which it differs from the violin. Since its strings produce their
sound by being struck rather than bowed, the piano is properly designated as
percussion, and there is a constant battle between pianists and pianos when it
comes to bringing forth delicate and legato
passages from an instrument that, especially in its modern incarnation, seems
to want to sound forth with all the percussive power in its possession. In
fact, Beethoven’s brilliance in the first-movement cadenza of the piano version
of his violin concerto lies largely in the way he combines two forms of percussion:
piano and timpani. Beethoven did not write for a modern 11-octave concert grand
– they did not exist in his time – and that makes his understanding of the
potential of his era’s five-to-six-octave pianos all the more remarkable. His
Piano Concertos Nos. 3 and 5 show this in different ways. The PentaTone SACD
featuring Christoph Eschenbach (who is nowadays better known as a conductor)
is, like the Violin Concerto featuring Tetzlaff, a re-release: the original
dates to 1973 and was recorded in quadraphonic sound, an ahead-of-its-time
system that never really caught on but that comes across particularly well when
reprocessed using modern remastering techniques. Eschenbach himself is a big
plus on this CD, but the performances as a whole are only so-so. Concerto No.
3, which was recorded in 1971, is actually flabby: conductor Hans Werner Henze
(far better known, and far better, as a composer than a podium leader) overdoes
the work’s lyricism at every opportunity, slowing things down so much that the
work’s considerable forward momentum simply disappears. The second movement is especially
mischaracterized and almost painful to hear – despite the excellent sound of
the orchestra. Eschenbach must have agreed to this misguided interpretation;
that fact undermines the quality of his playing. On the other hand, he manages
the “Emperor” concerto with great aplomb, and Seiji Ozawa, a frequently
overblown and overly self-important conductor, is on his best behavior here
with a Boston Symphony whose richness of tone and evenness of sectional balance
are first-rate. This 1973 reading is somewhat on the Romantic side, especially
in the melancholy second movement, but never to such an extent as to seem
implausible for a concerto written between 1809 and 1811. As a whole, this is a
(+++) release with one very-high-level performance and one that is simply
misshapen.
The very different strings
of the violin and piano have long attracted composers for their ability to
establish a special kind of emotional connection between the instruments.
George Enescu, for example, was violin-and-piano-focused from an almost
unbelievably early age. His earliest work of any length, Romanian Land, is for violin and piano and was written, as the
manuscript says, when Enescu was “five and a quarter.” Even earlier, very short
pieces were also for violin and piano. Clearly Enescu (1881-1955), who was to
become a brilliant violinist himself, latched on at the earliest imaginable
time to the emotive power of the violin and piano. It is thus no surprise that the second volume
of Naxos’ (++++) collection of his complete violin-and-piano works includes
pieces written when he was as young as 14 and as old as 70. The earliest works
here are Tarantella (1895); Ballade, Op. 4a (1895-96); Aubade (1899/1903); and Violin Sonata No. 1, Op. 2 (1897). The
first three of these are small pieces that nicely balance the two instruments,
although the unpublished Tarantella
also has some characteristics of a virtuoso violin showpiece. The sonata, on
the other hand, is a substantial work in three movements that flow into each
other in Lisztian style. It certainly shows Brahmsian influence in the
interplay of the violin and piano, and pays homage to Beethoven in its overall
sound and forward drive. Yet it is evidence that already, at age 16, Enescu had
learned how to synthesize material from the past and have it emerge in his own
style. The work’s polyphony is particularly noteworthy, showing a sure hand in
blending multiple textural elements into an overall well-structured, highly
involving sound. The later music on this CD is even more assured but scarcely
more emotive. The very brief Hora Unirii
(1917) – the title is that of an 1856 poem and is more or less the Romanian
national motto – is simple and straightforward. The almost equally short Andantino malinconico (1951) is
hauntingly expressive. And the series of late miniatures called Impressions d’enfance, Op. 28 (1940)
will surely remind some listeners of Schumann’s Kinderszenen, if only because of the great contrast between the
works. Enescu’s 10 scenes are extremely personal: he wrote the music when he
was in declining health and in self-imposed exile because of the start of World
War II. Several of these reminiscences are very fleeting: two, A Cricket and the very imaginative Wind in the Chimney, last barely 20
seconds apiece. The others range from the opening The Fiddler, for solo violin and evocative of a Moldavian street
singer, to the concluding Sunrise,
which seems to pull composer and listener alike not only into a new day but
also toward an unknown future. This is Enescu’s most-complex late duo work,
requiring just the sort of attentiveness to detail that it receives from Axel
Strauss and Ilya Poletaev as the climax of a CD that is impressive for its
playing and even more so for the imaginative and wide-ranging ways in which the
composer uses the two instruments.
The purest of all
expressions of the violin, however, comes when the instrument plays unaccompanied
– a feat that is notoriously difficult to bring off successfully, especially
with the knowledge that Bach did so at an astonishingly high level with his Sonatas
and Partitas for Solo Violin, BWV
1001-1006. The impossibility of matching these works has certainly not stopped
innumerable composers from trying, through the years, to produce solo-violin
music of substantial interest. That sometimes quixotic quest continues today,
and Hlíf Sigurjónsdóttir plays six examples of ways in
which contemporary composers have undertaken it on a new MSR Classics CD.
Written between 1983 and 2012, these pieces all show an understanding of the
violin’s technical and expressive capabilities, and all make suitable demands
of the soloist without being display pieces for their own sake – indeed,
several lean far more to the contemplative side than to that of virtuosity. And
it is interesting that the CD is called Dialogus,
since it would seem to be more monologue than dialogue – except that Sigurjónsdóttir
is clearly intending to be in a musical dialogue with the listener. The title
may also refer to performer-composer dialogue, since several of these pieces –
all of which are world première recordings – were dedicated to her. The music
is varied and sometimes clever, with the two longest works here – both of them collections
of comparatively short movements – being the most intricate and involving.
Merrill Clark’s The Sorceress/Sigurjónsdóttir Sonata (2010) is as closely tied to the performer
as a work can be, fully showcasing her expressive and virtuosic capabilities.
It is akin to Bach’s solo-violin works as well, concluding with a very extended
Ciaconna that is nearly as long as
the other four movements put together and that quite clearly recalls the
magnificent Chaconne that caps Bach’s
Partita No. 2. It does Clark no
discredit to note that he aims higher here than is perhaps wise, since his
design invites inevitable comparisons that are not to his work’s benefit.
Nevertheless, this movement makes a fitting capstone to an extended solo-violin
piece that is impressive in many ways. More accessible and somewhat less dry, Winter Trees (1983) by Jónas Tómasson
seeks to portray, in its four movements, good, sad and mad trees – the listener
gets to figure out just what the adjectives mean – and then, in the finale,
simply quiet… (with the ellipsis). The
remaining four works here are expressive in their own ways and generally lean
toward thoughtfulness rather than display for its own sake. They are From My Home (2012) by Rúna Ingimundar; Meditation (1996) by Karólína
Eiríksdóttir, which is particularly deeply felt; Kurìe (2012) by Hróđmar Ingi Sigurbjörnsson; and Variations on Victimae Paschali Laudes
(1987) by Alfred Felder. It is inevitable in all-contemporary discs like this
one that most listeners will find some elements of greater interest than
others; and indeed, the composers do not all have especially distinctive
styles, even though all write more than adequately for solo violin and all are
treated with equal care and attentiveness in Sigurjónsdóttir’s performances. This is a (+++)
recording that offers listeners interested in modern solo-violin music a chance
to hear some of it that has not been recorded before performed with
considerable skill by a soloist who knows how to extract what emotive elements
the pieces contain. It is also a disc best heard one piece at a time, to allow
listener to absorb what compositional differences there are among the composers
and to avoid having the works seem collectively like a pale attempt to match
the ones that Bach created 300 years ago.
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