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Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Benjamin Britten; Erich Wolfgang Korngold - Violin Concertos (Vilde Frang)


Information

Composer: Benjamin Britten; Erich Wolfgang Korngold
  1. Korngold - Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35: I. Moderato nobile
  2. Korngold - Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35: II. Romance: Andante
  3. Korngold - Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35: III. Finale: Allegro assai vivace
  4. Britten - Violin Concerto, Op. 15: I. Moderato con moto - Agitato - Tempo primo
  5. Britten - Violin Concerto, Op. 15: II. Vivace - Animando - Largamente - Cadenza -
  6. Britten - Violin Concerto, Op. 15: III. Passacaglia: Andante lento (un poco meno mosso)

Vilde Frang, violin
Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra
James Gaffigan, conductor

Date: 2016
Label: Warner Classics
http://www.warnerclassics.com/shop/3253637,0825646009213/vilde-frang-britten-korngold

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Review

Collectors of a certain age may look askance at the packaging (there are no fewer than five photographs of the soloist and no one else gets a look-in), but let the carping end there. These are urgently communicative, potentially transformative accounts of scores which, if no longer confined to the fringes of the repertoire, have yet to command universal admiration. Placing them back to back is a risk given their very divergent aesthetic responses to the huge political and moral challenges of their time. So far as I am aware, Gil Shaham and Daniel Hope are the only big-name soloists to have recorded both concertos, never mind actually pairing them. In her brief introduction to the project, Vilde Frang writes that it has long been her wish to bring together two of her favourite concertos. If you’ve been impressed by her previous releases you’ll already have this one marked down as a compulsory purchase and likely Awards contender.

There are several paradoxes at the heart of Frang’s captivating performance style. Playing with almost intimidating dexterity and polish, not to mention impeccable intonation (it comes as no surprise to discover that Anne-Sophie Mutter was an early mentor), her music-making still manages to project an impression of honesty and naturalness. An exciting player, she prefers taking chances to playing it safe, in spite of which her interpretations feel airily unforced rather than ostentatious. It’s quite a feat and one reliant on supportive collaborators able to unfold a (sometimes unpredictable) musical narrative with comparable ease. Fortunately James Gaffigan, whose international career was launched in Frankfurt at the 2004 Sir Georg Solti International Conducting Competition, is with her every step of the way, as is the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra.

First up is Korngold’s escapist confection, and it receives a notably unsentimental reading. This is not to imply that the super-articulate music-making is either cool or predictable. The first-movement cadenza is assaulted with sudden anger, the slow movement played with a clean directness that sounds utterly fresh, at least until a riskily self-conscious inflection just before the end. In the emptier pyrotechnics of the finale Frang comes close to trumping Shaham, if not Heifetz (whose recording is the subject of this month’s Classics Reconsidered – see page 96). Her pure, sweet timbre is leaner but she is much assisted by sensitive conducting and the kind of sound engineering that exposes unexpected strands in the orchestral texture rather than unduly spotlighting the star. I found this a deeply satisfying take on a vehicle intended to slake Heifetz’s insatiable thirst for technical display rather than to extend Korngold’s compositional range. That said, you may feel that the swashbuckling needs a little more schmaltz to make it palatable.

From Korngold’s Romantic patchwork to Britten’s high seriousness (and his obsessive working of scalic material) is quite a leap, yet, with these exponents, there’s no hint of the latter overreaching himself in this extended, bleakly eloquent take on the Prokofiev violin concerto model. Indeed, the argument is projected with such searing intensity that the work asserts its claim to be considered one of the masterpieces of the last century. Once again Frang proves immaculate above the stave; and, because the third-movement passacaglia never gets bogged down in the manner of Vengerov and Rostropovich or Little and Gardner, the sense of looming threat is ever present through to the equivocal close. While Marwood and Volkov make the whole concerto feel more contemporary, brisker from the outset, texturally spikier and more fractured than Lubotsky with Britten himself as conductor, there are other aesthetic possibilities. Whatever the work’s pockets of English reserve, Frang refuses to undersell those passionate outbursts fuelled by the composer’s political and moral convictions during and after the Spanish Civil War. This is a remarkable rendition, at once spacious and tautly held together, cool where it needs to be but eminently emotive with just the right kind of ‘perilous sweetness’. The soloist’s tone is never remotely wiry or frayed and the harmonics are simply sensational.

Here then are two ardent performances to complement or even supplant existing favourites. Such technical inviolability and emotional truth is born of long familiarity. In 2013 Frang and Gaffigan took the Britten as far afield as Sydney and, as YouTube aficionados will know, the Korngold is an old friend too. That the works’ American connections are ably explored in Mervyn Cooke’s booklet-note is the icing on the cake.

-- David Gutman, Gramophone
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Benjamin Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976) was an English composer, conductor and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British classical music, with a range of works including opera, other vocal music, orchestral and chamber pieces. Over the next 28 years, he wrote 14 more operas, establishing himself as one of the leading 20th-century composers in the genre. Britten's other works range from orchestral to choral, solo vocal, chamber and instrumental as well as film music. Britten was also a celebrated pianist and conductor, performing many of his own works in concert and on record.

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Erich Wolfgang Korngold (May 29, 1897 – November 29, 1957) was an Austrian-born composer and conductor. He was a noted pianist and composer of classical music, along with music for Hollywood films, and the first composer of international stature to write Hollywood scores. Along with such composers as Max Steiner and Alfred Newman, he is considered one of the founders of film music. Korngold's serious music, with his late romantic style, has recently undergone a re-evaluation and a gradual reawakening of interest.

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Vilde Frang (born 19 August 1986 in Oslo, Norway) is a Norwegian classical violinist. Her recordings for EMI / Warner Classics have received numerous awards including a Classical BRIT, Deutsche Schallplattenpreis twice, four ECHO Klassik Awards, two Edisson Klassiek Awards, Diapason d'Or and Gramophone Magazine's "Editor's Choice". Frang holds a professorship at the Norwegian Academy of Music, Oslo. She performs on a Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume from 1864.

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4 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Hi Ronald! Can you please provide a new link to this recording? Many thanks!

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  3. Choose one link, copy it to your browser's address bar, wait 5 seconds, then click on 'Skip Ad' (or 'Continue') (top right).
    If you are asked to download anything, IGNORE, only download from file hosting site (mega.nz).
    If MEGA shows 'Bandwidth Limit Exceeded' message, try to create a free account.

    http://eunsetee.com/Q6PX
    or
    https://ouo.io/bpYdzI
    or
    http://uii.io/N7e6f

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