Graffin

It is easy to understand why Chausson’s Concert is not as regular a feature of concert programmes as, say, Franck’s Violin Sonata. After all, a work for piano, violin and string quartet must surely have an instrumental imbalance. How can Chausson occupy all three violin parts for nearly forty minutes? In short, he does not. Nor does he try. Much of the Concert is essentially a sonata for violin and piano with an accompanying, though essential, string quartet. Chausson’s refusal to involve the quartet at every juncture merely to justify the players’ fees results in a signally well-balanced late Romantic work. When the quartet does feature on an equal footing, the effect is all the more telling. The fingerprints of Franck can be detected readily throughout the Concert, but in this and the Piano Quartet, Chausson’s individuality overcomes his teacher’s influence. Indeed, there are premonitions of Debussy, Ravel and even Shostakovich. Tangibly the product of live performances, these accounts traverse the gamut of emotions, bristling with energy, lyricism and conviction, and ensuring that this disc will never gather much dust.

The Romantic Violin Concerto series reaches Belgium and the music of Joseph Jongen, a composer more celebrated for his organ music now, but who was equally admired in his day for his orchestral and chamber works. Jongen studied at the Liège Conservatoire where he heard the great violinist Eugène Ysaÿe and composer-conductors Vincent d’Indy and Richard Strauss.

The neglect of the vast majority of Saint-Saëns' chamber and orchestral output is a loss to music lovers everywhere. Even worse is the condescending attitude of musical academia toward a composer who not only was fantastically gifted in his own right, but a true scholar and student of the classics. And if his own works sometimes reflect the result of this knowledge, then what's the harm? The composer himself once said something along these lines: "He who does not get absolute pleasure from a series of well-constructed chords, beautiful only in their arrangement, is not really fond of music."

Hyperion’s Romantic Violin Concerto series reaches its tenth volume, and turns to two composers based in England, and works by them which have lain hidden for decades. This disc provides a fascinating glimpse of musical history and the shifting fashions of the age which made fame such a fleeting thing for so many composers.

Listeners will likely finish this recording of the Elgar violin concerto and feel at least a little conflicted. There are moments of austere beauty and exquisite sound quality that are sadly juxtaposed by periods of poor intonation and curious articulation choices. The first movement opens with an extended orchestral tutti for which the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and conductor Vernon Handley deserve praise. The orchestra provides a powerful, rich, and extremely sensitive backdrop throughout the recording that simply cannot be faulted.

This recording brings together four of Chausson's chamber works from different periods of his short life. His youthful Piano Trio and the Andante and Allegro date from April 1881; the Pièce for cello and piano—one of his last compositions—from 1897.

Acclaimed violinist and prolific recording artist Philippe Graffin scored a major coup when he unearthed the Violin Concerto of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, the Afro-English composer whose star has waned since the height of his fame at the turn of the last century, but has rapidly risen again on the strength of this world-premiere recording.