Classical Music

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Another wonderful disc from Ilya Kaler.

Ilya Kaler’s new recording of the Brahms concerto on Naxos is eminently recommendable. When reviewing his recent recording of the Tchaikovsky violin concerto (see review) I remarked that Kaler’s performance was one “of elegance as well as brilliance” that “wears it war-horse status lightly, impressing itself upon the listener by virtue of its freshness and natural feeling”. Those comments are equally applicable to this recording.

Kaler’s conception of Brahms’ score is one that rejoices in its beauties. Ably supported by the warm sounds exhaled by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Kaler’s violin sings with a golden tone and sweetly inflected phrasing. He takes his time over the first movement, but maintains his rhythmic control and sense of the music’s overall architecture. In this his performance succeeds where, as Jonathan Woolf points out, Julia Fischer’s similarly conceived account fails. Kaler also lingers lovingly over the gorgeous slow movement – taking over 10 minutes. His pacing is more conventional in the Hungarian finale, which smiles more than it swaggers here.

The coupling of Brahms and Schumann is astute. Firstly it makes programmatic sense. Both concertos share the tonality of D – Brahms in the glowing major, Schumann in the dramatic minor. Both were written for Joachim, and the bond between Schumann and Brahms themselves is as well known as it is complicated.

Secondly, the coupling is an attractive addition to the Naxos catalogue. It complements an earlier disc (Naxos 8.550938), on which Kaler joins cellist Maria Kliegel in Brahms’ double concerto, offered as a coupling for Kliegel’s performance of the Schumann cello concerto. Buy these two discs, and you have the complete Schumann and Brahms string concertos at one fell swoop.

The coupling of the Schumann and Brahms concertos is also fairly unusual in the broader catalogue. While recordings of the Brahms proliferate, there are few recordings of the Schumann concerto and when they do appear they tend to be lumped together with more Schumann. Only Joshua Bell, to my knowledge, has coupled these two concertos on disc before. That disc now forms half of a mid-price twofer in the price bracket above this release (Decca – The Joshua Bell Edition – 4756703). Bell's recording is also available at bargain basement price on Australian Eloquence, but sundered from its Brahms coupling.

Schumann wrote his violin concerto very quickly in the autumn of 1853. Joseph Joachim and Clara Schumann had reservations about the piece. In happier times Schumann would probably have revised the piece, but the rapid decline in his mental health prevented this and the score languished unplayed and unknown until the 1930s. It is an attractive piece, constructed along classical lines, and deserves more attention and respect than it is usually accorded. The first movement has a symphonic seriousness and integrity, contrasting the wild, surging argument of its first subject with a gentle, sensitive second subject. The central movement is quietly beautiful. The finale, in the form of a polonaise and with prominent wind writing, brings the concerto dancing to a close.

Kaler's performance is successful and offers collectors a distinct choice. Bell's recording has a straight forward brilliance and Kremer's EMI recording with Muti, like Menuhin's electric premiere recording of the uncut score, emphasises the drama of the work. Kaler takes a different view. Again favouring spacious tempi – his first movement at 14:28 takes a minute longer than Bell's and two minutes longer than Menuhin's – he presents the concerto very much as the classical conception of a poetic soul. Where the other interpreters listed above play for Florestan, Kaler takes Eusebius' part.

The balance favours the violin in both concertos, but there is air enough around the soloist, and the warm Lighthouse Concert Hall acoustic gives the orchestral sound a lovely glow. Listening through earphones can be disconcerting in the Schumann where either Kaler's or the conductor’s breathing is quite prominent. I did not notice this so much when listening through speakers.

Keith Anderson's liner-notes live up to his usual high standard, but gloss over the circumstances of the Schumann concerto's rediscovery by Joachim's great-niece and avoid entirely discussion of the political wrangling over the concerto's premiere performances.

Another wonderful disc from Ilya Kaler and a bargain of the month.

-- Tim Perry, MusicWeb International

NORDGREN: VIOLIN CONCERTO NO 4

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BÉRIOT Violin Concertos: No. 2; No. 3; No. 5 • Philippe Quint (vn); Kirk Trevor, cond; Slovak RSO • NAXOS 8.570360 (70:56)


Violinists nowadays remember Charles-Auguste de Bériot (1820–1870) as the composer of 60 concert studies that, on the way to Paganini’s caprices, season with brilliance and fluency the strength imparted by Jakob Dont’s Caprices, op. 35, and Pierre Gaviniés’s Matinées . His First, Seventh, and Ninth Concertos, in addition, held their ground in the teaching studio (as did his Scène de ballet ), and Maud Powell even recorded the Seventh with piano. If, in his own time, Bériot basked more luxuriously in the spotlight as the consort (later, the husband) of the celebrated diva Maria Malibran than as a violinist, his contribution to the history of violin-playing assures him a permanent place in the affections of violinists. As the founder of the Franco-Belgian School (his Méthode inculcates the norms of his elegant style through its numerous duets more effectively than it does through its loose pedagogical logic), he combined what he made sound like Paganini’s pyrotechnic virtuosity with the era’s prevailing Romanticism. Some professed to hear Malibran’s voice singing through his violin (and presumably in his compositions) long after she had died—the two may have shared a deeper musical bond than the period’s tabloids could have divined. As a teacher, Bériot also left, in Henri Vieuxtemps, a student whose works offered transcendental “ editions de luxe ” (Paul Stoeving’s description) of his teacher’s and Émile Sauret, whose staggering cadenza still steals technical thunder from Paganini’s First Concerto.


Takako Nishizaki recorded the First, “Military,” the Eighth, and the Ninth Concertos for marco polo (8.220440, 11:2, and now on Naxos 8.555104), so Quint’s recording brings the number to six available (with four still left to be brought forward). The Second Concerto in B Minor, op. 32, combines Paganinian brilliance with operatic suavity and, at times, an almost carnival-inspired gaiety like that in which listeners may also revel in Giovanni Bottesini’s works for double bass. The first movement’s thematic statements in octaves and flashing passagework should be familiar even to violinists who have played only his Duos concertantes . A step backwards from Ernst and Lipinski technically, it represents a stylistic step into the future, in fact into Vieuxtemps’s violinistic language and that of Wieniawski and of the many who would follow them. While Kirk Trevor captures the orchestral part’s near bombast, Philippe Quint, who seems to have been miked at a greater distance, sounds slender though heartfelt and less brilliant than simply bright while, perhaps appropriately, projecting less passion than mannered affect. The second movement’s cantilena provides a well-crafted showcase for his highly developed stylistic sensibilities. The finale, Rondo russe, reflects Viotti’s style of violin-playing as well as Bériot’s.


The Third Concerto in B Minor, op. 44, a substantial work like the Second, lasts more than 25 minutes. As in the better-known Seventh Concerto, the soloist comes out punching in two-fisted double-stops, a more aggressive opening than that of the Second Concerto, and the showy virtuosity continues throughout the movement, including a repeated passage in sliding double-stops similar to that in Franz von Vecsey’s Caprice No. 1, “The Wind.” The slow movement’s built around a declamatory middle section unusual for its rhetorical ardor. The finale, like Quint’s performance, suggests quicksilver, with a rapid-fire closing passage that hints at things to come in the finale of Vieuxtemps’s Fourth Concerto.


Though the Fifth Concerto—the program’s first in a major key (D)—lasts only half a minute longer than a quarter hour, it begins with a long, dramatic orchestral introduction. The soloist’s entry with ingratiating salon-like melodies exemplifies the sudden turns from the dramatic to the charming, from the virtuosic to the singing, that stud these pieces—and, in fact, Bériot’s works in general. The slow movement serves as little more than a slender bridge to the virtuosic finale, which opens portentously in the manner of a first movement, though it’s destined to expire after only about four minutes.


Despite the intervening years (Nishizaki recorded Concertos No. 1, 8, and 9 in 1986 and Quint recorded Nos. 2, 3, and 5 in 2006), the engineering seems to have a similar focus, placing the soloists in a natural balance with the orchestra. Quint’s tone seems a bit sweeter and a bit more slender, but he’s hardly less aggressive in the Bériot’s flashy passages.


Bériot’s music may smack too much of drawing-room refinement for the most serious general listeners, although admirers and detractors should agree that its passions never overstep the bounds of decorum and its darker clouds invariably give way to sunshine before dampening anyone’s spirits. For violinists and aficionados, however, these concertos, in Quint’s and Trevor’s sympathetic performances, will explain a great deal about the development of the art of violin-playing and the style of the virtuoso concerto throughout the coming century. Urgently recommended to those not hostile to the style or content.


FANFARE: Robert Maxham

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Distinctly Russian, unabashedly Romantic and full-bodied, yet intellectually devised and highly disciplined, Medtner' compositions for violin and piano encompass music of rare beauty and power, gratifying for both performer and audience. Violin Sonata No.

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