Korngold Violin

When Vilde Frang programs violin concertos in unexpected pairs, such as her 2010 coupling of Jean Sibelius' Violin Concerto in D minor with Sergey Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, or her 2012 disc of Carl Nielsen's Violin Concerto matched against Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D major, the results are quite fascinating. For this 2016 release on Warner Classics, Frang plays the Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35 of Erich Wolfgang Korngold and the Violin Concerto, Op. 15 of Benjamin Britten, and the works invite comparisons because they are so dramatically different.

This sparkling suite for violin and piano came into being when the composer had to adapt his incidental score for a production of Shakespeare's play to the impending absence of the chamber orchestral. The result is a brilliant piece for violin and piano, which the composer quickly released in a four-movement version. There are other recordings of the chamber orchestra suite in five-movements that duplicate only three of the movements of this version. Violinist Gil Shaham and pianist André Previn are ideal partners in this brilliant performance. The four movements allow Shaham to show four sides of his violinist's personality: He skips and plays in carefree fashion in the opening movement, indulges in the grotesquery and parody of the second, gets to play the romantic in the garden scene of the third movement, and dazzles with virtuosity in the final hornpipe. Previn's part is more than mere accompaniment; the piano often has a large part of the mood of the music and his contribution is, to use a word already employed here, ideal.

Both concertos on this new disc were written when their composers were in the USA around the time of World War II: the Korngold was completed in 1945, the Britten in 1939. In the course of the 1930s Korngold, an Austrian Jew, had become a prominent Hollywood composer, but could not return to his homeland after 1938; the young Britten, a pacifist, left the UK for New York shortly before the declaration of war in 1939. Both composers had been child prodigies and both concertos are centred around the key of D, the most ‘natural’ key on the violin and the tonal focus for the violin concertos of Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky

“Performing contemporary music had added immeasurably to the way I play Tchaikovsky’s Concerto,” writes violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter in the liner notes to her 2nd recording of the work in 20 years. To be more precise, what performing contemporary music has added to Mutter’s performance of Tchaikovsky’s concerto is an abrasive tone, an aggressive technique, & an interpretation that treats Tchaikovsky’s tender little concerto as if it were a lover who liked it rough & raw. Although there is no denying Mutter’s virtuosity, her performance is at best willful & at worst wrongful.

"Performing contemporary music had added immeasurably to the way I play Tchaikovsky's Concerto," writes violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter in the liner notes to her second recording of the work in 20 years. To be more precise, what performing contemporary music has added to Mutter's performance of Tchaikovsky's concerto is an abrasive tone, an aggressive technique, and an interpretation that treats Tchaikovsky's tender little concerto as if it were a lover who liked it rough and raw. Although there is no denying Mutter's virtuosity, her performance is at best willful and at worst wrongful.

Ilya Gringolts plays with a ferocity that – in tandem with taut rhythmic control – adroitly avoids even the slightest hint of frenzy. And yet, for all its intensity and firmness of grip, there’s an equally riveting sense of spontaneity to his playing, too – particularly in Adams’s Concerto, with its intricately variegated, continuous solo part. Gringolts phrases assertively and with such expressive agility that at times in the first movement it sounds as if the violin and orchestra are working independently yet in sync, like separate gears in a great machine.

Pavel Šporcl's two most recent projects have manifested his remarkable stylistic flexibility. Vivaldi's Four Seasons and the crossover CD Gipsy Way with the Roma cimbalom band Romano Stilo earned the violin virtuoso richly deserved enthusiasticresponses on the part of critics and listeners alike. With this new CD, Šporcl returns to classical music. Well, sort of… When listening to Korngold's violin concerto it becomes obvious that the composer had devoted to film music over a long period, yet it may be the composition's directness and figurativeness that have made it so popular among the world's leading violinists. On the other hand, Richard Strauss's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D major, Op. 8, does not appear inconcert programmes and recordings so often.

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.

Korngold began work on his Violin Concerto in 1937, following his father’s suggestion that the main theme from his score for the Errol Flynn epic Another Dawn would make a good basis for a concerto. The work remained dormant while Korngold was exiled to Hollywood after the Anschluss. He resumed work on it in 1945, and fully revised it. Premiered by Jascha Heifetz in 1947, the Concerto is widely performed and recorded, and is certainly Korngold’s best-known concert work. Widely considered the greatest composer-prodigy since Mozart, Korngold composed the String Sextet in 1914, when he was only seventeen years old. It shows his fully developed style and assured idiomatic writing for the ensemble. Andrew Haveron leads the Sinfonia of London Chamber Ensemble in the Sextet, and is joined by John Wilson and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra in the Violin Concerto.