Volume 22 Issue 7 - April 2017

Given his wonderful playing on the Mozart
concerto DVD reviewed here last month,
I was delighted to see that this month’s
offerings included a new CD of Henning
Kraggerud playing Nordic Violin Concertos
with Bjarte Engeset conducting the Malmö
Symphony Orchestra (Naxos 8.573738). The
Violin Concerto Op.28 by Johan Halvorsen
is paired with the Violin Concerto Op.33 of
Carl Nielsen, with the well-known Romance of Johan Svendsen
completing the disc.
The concerto by the Norwegian Halvorsen (1864-1935) has an
interesting story. He was an outstanding violinist and a self-taught
composer, and his violin concerto was introduced by the 18-yearold
Canadian violinist Kathleen Parlow in the Netherlands in 1909.
After only a handful of performances by Parlow the work was not
played again during Halvorsen’s lifetime. When he retired in 1929 he
destroyed several of his manuscripts, his wife stating after his death
that she believed the concerto to be among them. But in 2015 the
score and parts were discovered in Parlow’s papers in the University
of Toronto’s Faculty of Music Library, where they had resided since
1963. Kraggerud gave the first modern performances in Norway last
July, making this world premiere commercial recording in Sweden a
short while later. It’s a lovely work, full of lyrical themes and redolent
of Norwegian folk music, with more than a hint of Hardanger fiddle
music. The solo part is technically demanding, but Kraggerud is
clearly in his element with a work which will hopefully find a place in
the regular repertoire.
The Nielsen concerto, written just a few years after the Halvorsen
in 1911, continues to be a work which should be much better known,
but hopefully this is changing, Haggerud’s terrific performance here
coming not long after Baiba Skride’s equally excellent 2015 recording.
A lovely performance of the Svendsen Romance rounds out an
outstanding CD.
If you love the Elgar Cello Concerto then you
should really try to hear the new Super Audio
CD Elgar & Tchaikovsky from the outstanding
cellist Johannes Moser with the Orchestre
de la Suisse Romande under Andrew Manze
(PentaTone PTC 5186 570). Moser is simply
superb in the emotional work that essentially
marked the end of the 62-year-old Elgar’s
compositional activity. Written in 1919, it is
essentially a lament for the composer’s Edwardian world that was
destroyed by the First World War, and Moser beautifully captures the
very soul of the music.
Moser notes that both Elgar and Tchaikovsky were looking back
to a brighter past – Elgar to the pre-1914 world and Tchaikovsky to
the music of Mozart, using an original theme written in Mozartian
style as the basis for his Variations on a Rococo Theme Op.33. It’s
the original version that is performed here, and not the modified and
altered version by the cellist Wilhelm Fitzenhagen that constituted the
original 1877 publication and is still frequently heard in the concert
hall. Moser’s performance makes you wonder why anyone would ever
want to hear the Fitzenhagen version again.
Three shorter Tchaikovsky works for cello and orchestra complete
the CD. The Nocturne from Six Pieces for Piano and the famous
Andante cantabile from the String Quartet No.1 were both transcribed
by the composer, and the Pezzo capriccioso Op.62 is a lovely
original work.
Manze and the orchestra supply great support throughout a simply
lovely CD.
There’s more excellent quartet playing on
Landscapes, the latest CD from Germany’s
Schumann Quartett in a program of works
by Haydn, Takemitsu, Bartók and Pärt (Berlin
Classics 0300836BC). It’s clear that these are
works that the quartet – brothers Erik, Ken
and Mark Schumann and Estonian violist
Liisa Randalu – has played and cared about for
some time.
Haydn’s String Quartet in B-flat Major Op.76 No.4, the “Sunrise”
makes for a lovely opening to the CD, the emerging radiance of the
opening particularly well captured. Landscape I by the Japanese
composer Toru Takemitsu acknowledges the Schumanns’ family roots
– their mother is Japanese – and is a somewhat bleak piece with a
decidedly meditative stillness about it.
Bartók’s String Quartet No.2 Op.17 is an expressive post-Romantic
piece written during the First World War when the composer was
forced to take a break from his Hungarian folk-song collecting. The
folk-music element is clearly present in a work dominated by an air of
melancholy.
The final piece, Fratres, by the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, was
prepared with the composer and recorded in July 2016 in a church
near the Estonian capital of Tallinn. It’s one of several instrumental
versions of this very effective work.
The enigmatic Nigel Kennedy is back with
another non-classical CD in My World, a
program of his own compositions on the
German label Neue Meister (0300878NM).
Launched just over a year ago, the Berlin label
features “…music by artists and composers who
recognize no boundaries between the classical
L/R
Like the review? Listen to some tracks from all the recordings in the ads
below at The WholeNote.com/Listening
L/R
Puccini: Turandot
Available at L’Atelier Grigorian
70 Yorkville Ave., Toronto &
Grigorian.com
Le Mozart Noir
Le Mozart Noir is an award-winning
film that uncovers the mystery
around Joseph Boulogne, Le
Chevalier de Saint-Georges, a Black
eighteenth-century violinist and
composer.
New Era: Music by Mozart, Danzi
and Stamitz / Andreas Ottensamer
Available at L’Atelier Grigorian
70 Yorkville Ave., Toronto &
Grigorian.com
Bruckner: Complete Symphonies /
Danile Barenboim
Available at L’Atelier Grigorian
70 Yorkville Ave., Toronto &
Grigorian.com
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