Romantic Violin

Concertos Nos. 3 and 4 are not only formidably demanding from a technical standpoint, but also are extremely difficult to interpret musically. Rózsa has all the violinistic equipment necessary to tackle these fiendish scores, as he impressively shows in the first movement cadenza of the E minor work. For comparison, I turned to Salvatore Accardo's account on Deutsche Grammophon with Charles Dutoit and the London Philharmonic. Accardo is rightly regarded as a Paganini specialist, but he is neither as subtle in his phrasing and inflection nor so stylish and polished in bravura passages as Rózsa.

Albert Dietrich’s music is only now being revived 100 years after his death. Dietrich was the music director at the Oldenburg Court, Germany, from 1861-1891. His friendship with Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms helped to raise his profile and throughout his lifetime his music was frequently performed. Both Schumann and Brahms valued him very highly as a composer and Brahms often visited Dietrich in Oldenburg to perform with him. To celebrate this forgotten composer’s 100th anniversary, the Oldenburg State Orchestra under their Music Director Alexander Rumpf join forces with two soloists to perform three of Albert Dietrich’s most important works.

The music of Carl Nielsen holds a very special place for Danes, defining the nation’s musical voice for over a century and reflecting the soul of Denmark. Nielsen was a violinist from childhood, his early Sonata in G major having ‘a scent of Mozartian youth’, while the newly published Romance in G major was dedicated to his first teacher. Mature works include the Second Violin Sonata, ‘a work unparalleled in the sonata literature’, and the Prelude, Theme and Variations inspired by Bach’s Chaconne for solo violin. This collection represents the first ever recording of Nielsen’s complete music for violin solo or with piano.

Swedish composer Emil Sjögren (1853-1918) is perhaps best remembered outside his native land for his songs that were popularized by the great tenor Jussi Björling, who made a point of sharing works by his countrymen in his recitals. However, Sjögren wrote many chamber, piano, and organ compositions that deserve to be reexamined and revived on a more international level. Certainly, a gorgeous, lush, high Romantic work such as the Sonata No. 2 would be a welcome addition to the concert stage, especially when it is given as fine a performance as violinist Per Enoksson and pianist Kathryn Stott offer on this release from BIS.

"I had not expected quite such unabashed, rose-tinted lyricism from Anne Akiko Meyers. There’s more to her playing than plushy vibrato and mechanistic brilliance; not that exhilaration or panache are minimised here, in this glowingly Romantic performance. Her Franck, too, ably justifies a more reflective, even cerebral approach, further distinguished by the tonal opulence of the playing. Not a performance to induce surges of adrenalin perhaps, but eminently well conceived and lucid… this remains a splendid performance overall, thanks in no small part to pianist Rohan de Silva."

We've had to wait eighteen months for Tudor to complete Daskalakis and Ishay's survey of Raff's violin sonatas. The first disk (Tudor 7022 - review) was well received, revealing a warmer and more lyrical side to these works than had been displayed by the pairing of Ingolf Turban and Jascha Nemtsov with their edgy but impressive performances of the first three sonatas for cpo. The cpo project of recording all the music for violin and piano seemingly having stalled for the time being, this second disk has another Raff recording first, the emotionally charged Violin Sonata No.5.

Kubelík’s star began to wane in the years before World War I. Some felt he had gone off the boil but it was more a question of his public turning to new idols, Elman and Vecsey. In 1915 he retired to take composition seriously, not resuming his concert career until 1920. He toured Britain 20 times from 1900 to 1934 (packing the Royal Albert Hall with 7,000 people in 1926) and the U.S. many times up to 1938 (6,000 heard him at the New York Hippodrome in 1920-21). He commanded a wide range of music and in Central Europe he is remembered as a great musician. He died in Prague on 5 December 1940. The main fruits of Kubelík’s five-year break were his first three Violin Concertos, published in Prague in 1920. Of the eventual series of six, Pavel Šporcl says: ‘They are technically very demanding and musically extremely interesting.’ The First Concerto in C major, which he plays here, is a melodious Late Romantic work, well tailored to a front-line virtuoso’s strengths, and it should not have fallen out of the repertoire. Kubelík emerged from his purdah to première it at the Grosse Musikvereinssaal in Vienna on 29 January 1917, Nedbal conducting the Tonkünstler Orchestra.

It says much for the Russian pianist Rustem Hayroudinoff that he gives such a command- ing performance of the Dvorák Piano Concerto, always a tricky work to play thanks to unpianistic piano writing. Sviatoslav Richter, after making his classic recording with Carlos Kleiber, pronounced that it was the most difficult concerto he had ever tackled but somehow he made the original, unrevised piano-writing – which he insisted on using – sound totally convincing.

Long recognized as an outstanding chamber musician, Anthony Marwood has more recently been making waves as a concerto soloist, with two contributions to the Romantic Violin Concerto series and now a disc of Britten with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Ilan Volkov. The youthful Violin Concerto, with its mix of anguished lyricism and changeability of mood nods to both Berg (whose own Violin Concerto had made a profound impression on Britten) and Prokofiev but the result is entirely personal.