Mendelssohn & Beethoven: Violin Concertos

Joshua Bell's fresh approach to these violin warhorses makes for an unexpectedly inviting listening experience. In the Mendelssohn he marries his bright tone to forthright phrasing in a manner that communicates the music's emotion without sliding into the gooey sweetness heard in some interpretations. There's little if anything hackneyed about Bell's reading, indicating he's thought about the work anew, right through to the stylistically appropriate cadenza he composed himself (Bell cites research that suggests Mendelssohn's friend Ferdinand David may have actually composed the original cadenza).

Hilary Hahn delights in putting together works that normally don't go together. Her previous pairings of works by Beethoven and Bernstein, Barber and Meyer, and Brahms and Stravinsky went against what most listeners and critics think of as apt disc mates. And in every one so far, Hahn has succeeded: each performance is superb in its own right and each sounds even better in context of the work with which it shares disc space. But not this time. In her new recording of Mendelssohn's E minor and Shostakovich's A minor concertos, Hahn has coupled an astoundingly brilliant performance of the former with a slight and shallow performance of the latter.

These classic recordings need little comment from me on artistic grounds. Heifetz's account of the Mendelssohn never has been bettered for sheer dazzling virtuosity, and although the Beethoven is more controversial (some find it "cold"), I love its unaffected, truly classical purity. Besides, you also get Munch and the Boston Symphony, no mean bonus. It's interesting to compare the two performances in multichannel sound, since the Beethoven is two-track, while the Mendelssohn offers three.

Recordings of Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64, are abundant, and even the pairing with the rarer Robert Schumann Violin Concerto, WoO 23, of 1853 are not as infrequent as they used to be. The thorny Schumann concerto has undergone a reevaluation upward, and plenty of players now concur with the judgment of Yehudi Menuhin: "This concerto is the historically missing link of the violin literature; it is the bridge between the Beethoven and the Brahms concertos, though leaning more towards Brahms." Violinist Carolin Widmann who (like the ECM label on which the album appears) has focused mostly on contemporary music, takes up the challenge of providing something new here, and she meets it. The central fact of the recording is that Widmann conducts the Chamber Orchestra of Europe from the violin. Others have done this before, but few have pursued the implications of the technique as far as Widmann has: the performances are unusually light and transparent, and they are perhaps thus in accord with the sounds an orchestra of the middle 19th century might have produced. Sample the unusually lively, sprightly reading of the Mendelssohn concerto's finale.

The Daily Telegraph describes Nikolaj Znaider as "the most stimulating young musician playing today, drawing on musical intelligence, perception and dynamism to give performances of rare intensity." This release presents one of the world's foremost violinists playing two landmark concertos, accompanied by the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester "one of Europe's finest orchestras" (The Guardian) under the baton of its music director Riccardo Chailly.

Admirers of Sir Yehudi Menuhin will be pleased to have this compilation of his early stereo recordings of the major violin concertos. I have always enjoyed his version of the Bach Double Concerto with Christian Ferras; it rightly dominated the catalogue throughout the 1960s, and the spirited baroque vitality of the performance, plus a beautifully judged central Largo, give great satisfaction. Moreover, it demonstrates what a good sound balance Peter Andry and Neville Boyling could achieve in London's Kingsway Hall in 1959.

Nathan Mironovich Milstein (January 13, 1904 [O.S. December 31, 1903] – December 21, 1992) was a Russian Empire-born American virtuoso violinist.Widely considered one of the finest violinists of the 20th century, Milstein was known for his interpretations of Bach's solo violin works and for works from the Romantic period. He was also known for his long career: he performed at a high level into his mid 80s, retiring only after suffering a broken hand.

In this new concerto album one of the greatest violinists of our time, Christian Tetzlaff, performs two standard violin concertos in fresh new interpretations together with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin directed by the orchestra’s exciting new music director, Robin Ticciati. Both Ludwig van Beethoven and Jean Sibelius made outstanding contributions to the history of music as great symphonists. Both composers also wrote a violin concerto – Beethoven wrote his D major concerto in 1806, Sibelius his D minor concerto a century later.

If one did not know that French violinist Renaud Capucon had gotten married just two days earlier, one might almost have guessed it from these extraordinarily joyful recordings he made of Beethoven's and Korngold's violin concertos. Capucon was already well known among classical music cognoscenti from his many chamber music recordings for his supple phrasing, effortless lyricism, sweet tone, and big sound.