Édouard Lalo; Joan Manén - Violin Concertos (Tianwa Yang)

Information

Composer: Édouard Lalo; Joan Manén

• Lalo - Symphonie espagnole, Op. 21
• Manén - Violin Concerto No. 1 'Concierto español', Op. A-7

Tianwa Yang, violin

Barcelona Symphony Orchestra

Darrell Ang, conductor

Date: 2016

Label: Naxos

https://www.naxos.com/CatalogueDetail/?id=8.573067

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Review

Familiar and unfamiliar concertos are here placed side by side and not for the first time: Koch issued the same coupling with Mark Kaplan as the soloist but I have never seen that disc.

Lille-born Édouard-Victoire-Antoine Lalo attended the Paris Conservatoire. In 1855 he helped found the Quatuor Armingaud-Jacquard and four years later wrote his own String Quartet. The 1870s saw his music being taken up by Pablo de Sarasate who played his F minor Concerto and commissioned the Symphonie espagnole. A Cello Concerto followed, as did the Fantaisie (or Rhapsodie) norvégienne in 1878. After this there was a Concerto russe for violin in the late 1870s. The 1882 ballet Namouna survived only in delectable concert suite form, which was recorded for DG by Martinon in the early 1970s alongside the Rhapsodie Norvégienne and before that by Ansermet. Lalo also did well with his opera Le roi d’Ys (1888). In 2016 Alpha considerately collected all Lalo's concerted works in one 3-CD box.

The stormy violence of the first of Lalo's five movements sweeps the listener along as does the husky-honed scimitar tone of Tianwa Yang. She is just as telling, and I mean moving, in the Symphonie's whispered passages, as, for example, at 3:10 in the first movement. Everyone is on song for the slippery sultry Intermezzo which made me want to find Kogan's recording of the Havanaise by Saint-Saëns. The growling and brooding Wagnerian backdrop created by the orchestra for the Andante sets a contrasting scene for the scintillating sparks that fly left and right through the tic-toc of the Rondo Allegro. Yang has been rightly praised here many times for her Naxos projects (Mendelssohn; Saint-Saëns; Sarasate (review review) and Castelnuovo-Tedesco). Hers is a version to rival the conventional greats at any price. I suppose the Symphonie espagnole suffers from the canker of being unfashionable now but it lives on luxuriantly in this disc version.

Juan Manén was one of those composers who rises up not for what they were famed for during their lives but for a "subsidiary activity". He was an elite violinist (review review) with a worldwide reputation. He played Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy and Lalo Symphonie Espagnole to considerable acclaim. He took some hard knocks as a new and more adroitly virtuosic, dangerous generation appeared on the scene. The likes of Heifetz rose up in a world opening up to recording technology in a way that did not bless Manén. The seal was set when his compositions sank from view. That was the case until comparatively recently. His own music includes three violin concertos, of which Concierto español is the first. There are also two symphonies, a symphonic poem Nova Catalonia; six operas including a Don Juan trilogy, two ballets, a piano quartet, a string quartet, and a realisation of Beethoven's otherwise incomplete Violin Concerto in C. Manén will also be remembered for writing a substantial Fantasia-Sonata for Segovia. When in 1971 he died in Barcelona, his birthplace, few came to the funeral. As the excellent liner-notes, by that prince among violin-music writers, Tully Potter, report he "is commemorated by a square in Ciudadela on Menorca and a small but beautiful square in Barcelona."

Manén's atmospheric and heavy-toned Concierto español is an early work which, apart from the darker caste to the ideas in the initial and long Allegretto ben moderato, is a good fit with the Lalo work. The striking midpoint Lamento is Delian in its contented ecstatic musings. It feels more modern and transfixing than the Lalo. Things are brought to a good close by a furiously vituperative Allegro molto.

-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Édouard Lalo (27 January 1823 – 22 April 1892) was a French composer. Although Lalo is not one of the most immediately recognized names in French music, his distinctive style has earned him some degree of popularity. Lalo's music is notable for strong melodies and colourful orchestration, with a rather Germanic solidity that distinguishes him from other French composers of his era. His most celebrated piece is Symphonie espagnole, a popular work in the standard repertoire for violin and orchestra. His Symphony was a favorite of Thomas Beecham, while his Cello Concerto is also revived now and then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89douard_Lalo

***

Joan Manén (14 March 1883 – 26 June 1971) was a Spanish violinist and composer, born in Barcelona. As a child, his progress in music was so rapid that his father exhibited him as a piano prodigy. Then, having studied the violin under Clemente Ibarguren, he debuted as a violinist, and met with such success that in Germany he was compared to his famous countryman Sarasate. Almost entirely self-taught as a composer, Manén had begun to write at 13 and attracted much attention in Spain and Germany. His works include 3 operas, 3 violin concertos and many works for violin, piano and orchestra.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Manén

***

Tianwa Yang (born 8 April, 1987) is a Chinese classical violinist. Yang began learning to play the violin at age four and at ten, began studying with Professor Lin Yaoji at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. She debuted in Europe in 2001 and her North American debut was in the 2007-2008 season. Yang recorded her first CD in 2000, at the age of 13, with a recording of Paganini's 24 caprices, on the Hugo Classical label. In 2004, she began recording for Naxos, beginning a series of the complete works of Pablo de Sarasate, which will eventually cover 8 CDs. Yang performs on a Guarneri del Gesu (1730).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianwa_Yang
http://www.tianwayang.com/en/

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

FLAC, tracks

Links in comment

Enjoy!