Bruch Weithaas

From the dozens and dozens of recordings availible for this piece, I have to say this is probably the best one I have ever heard. Especially from someone like me, who has about nine recordings of every violin concerto ever written. I have, among others, a Pearlman, Zukerman, and Mutter recording of this peice, yet this seemingly unknown recording has a unique characteristic: Ms. Suwanai's cleaniliness of the notes and preciceness of the music.

During his lifetime Odysseus was one of Bruch’s most frequently performed and highly regarded works: the influential English critic J. A. Fuller-Maitland thought it his masterpiece, and Brahms admired it greatly. It was a very successful performance of Odysseus in Liverpool in 1877 that led three years later to Bruch’s appointment as Director of the Philharmonic Society there. It is an oratorio, not an opera (subtitled Scenes from the Odyssey), and one reason for its decline into obscurity may be that for such a subject it is often undramatic, in word-setting (sometimes rather square and inexpressive) and in its choice of episodes: Odysseus’s return to Ithaca, and the jubilation over his rout of the suitors are portrayed, but not Penelope’s recognition of him nor the fight itself. There is no narrator, and there are very few dramatic links between the 12 self-contained sections.