Aram Khachaturian - Violin & Cello Concertos (Arabella Steinbacher; Daniel Müller-Schott)

Information

Composer: Aram Khachaturian

• (01) Cello Concerto
• (04) Violin Concerto

Daniel Müller-Schott, cello
Arabella Steinbacher, violin

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Sakari Oramo, conductor

Date: 2004
Label: Orfeo
https://www.orfeo-international.de/pages/cd_c623041a_e.html

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Review

Heartfelt performances of two approachable concertos

This first thing that struck me about this disc was Oliver Wazola’s fascinating booklet-note. It relates an extraordinary incident in 2003 where the management of Budapest’s Vigado Hall cancelled a concert because the works programmed had all been written in Stalin’s honour. Wazola then goes on to catalogue various brushes with the authorities suffered by Khachaturian; though heard in relation to the best of Prokofiev and Shostakovich it is hard to imagine how even the most spiky censor could hear anything less sinister in this music than good tunes, high spirits and warmth of emotion.

The Cello Concerto of 1946, one of the few concertos after Grieg to open with a timpani roll, is a case in point: tense to start with but soon settling to a balmy if occasionally reflective Allegro moderato. Possibly the score’s most original music is the opening of the second movement, with its lavish tutti (shades of early Bartók), swirling harps and imaginative use of woodwinds. As in the earlier Violin Concerto, the principal melody is sinuous and Eastern-sounding (though less memorable), the dance-like finale a near-relation to the Gayaneh ballet. Even in a performance as agile and well-managed as Daniel Müller-Schott’s, various repeated patterns do rather test one’s patience. This gifted young German bows a warm, seamless line, especially memorable in the finale’s lyrical central section.

Munich-born Arabella Steinbacher (b1981) is younger still. She has plenty to say about the superior Violin Concerto, especially the slower passages and in the long first-movement cadenza which she infuses with considerable emotion. And yet her playing has less polish or subtle colouring than Sergey Khachatryan. Sakari Oramo and his Birmingham players are supportive and imaginative partners, but you sense less of a flow in the the first movement, Steinbacher sounding more effortful than Khachatryan, as if she would rather have pulled the tempo back just a little. I will stick with him for the Violin Concerto, but I would commend this nicely recorded disc to those who fancy the Cello Concerto, which is given a memorably sympathetic and technically accomplished reading.

-- Rob Cowan, Gramophone

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Aram Khachaturian (6 June 1903 – 1 May 1978) was a Soviet Armenian composer and conductor. He is considered one of the leading Soviet composers and the most renowned Armenian composer of the 20th century. Khachaturian is best known for his ballet music—Gayane (1942) and Spartacus (1954). His most popular piece, the "Sabre Dance" from Gayane, has been used extensively in popular culture and has been covered by a number of musicians worldwide. His music combined Armenian, Caucasian, Eastern Europe and Middle East folk music with established musical traditions of Russia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aram_Khachaturian

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Arabella Steinbacher (born 14 November 1981) is a German classical violinist. Steinbacher was mentored by Ana Chumachenco at the Munich College of Music, and also took part in master classes by Dorothy DeLay and Kurt Sassmannshaus. She won several important prizes and a grant from the Free State of Bavaria in 2001, then became a student of Anne-Sophie Mutter's Freundeskreis ("Circle of friends"). Since starting to record exclusively for Pentatone in 2009, she published a number of albums demonstrating her musical variety. She currently plays the Booth Stradivarius (1716) provided by the Nippon Music Foundation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabella_Steinbacher

http://www.arabella-steinbacher.com/vita.html

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Daniel Müller-Schott (born 1976 in Munich, Germany) is a German cellist. He studied with Walter Nothas, Heinrich Schiff, Steven Isserlis and had one year studying with Mstislav Rostropovich. Aged 15, he aroused enthusiasm by winning the first prize in the International Tchaikovsky Competition for young musicians in Moskow in 1992. Müller-Schott has already built up a sizeable discography under the ORFEO, Deutsche Grammophon, Hyperion, Pentatone and EMI Classics labels, collaborated with artists such as Anne-Sophie Mutter and Angela Hewitt. He plays a cello by Matteo Goffriller, Venice, 1727.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_M%C3%BCller-Schott

http://www.daniel-mueller-schott.com/en/

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