Information
Composer: Johan Halvorsen; Carl Nielsen; Johan Svendsen
- Halvorsen - Violin Concerto, Op. 28
- Nielsen - Violin Concerto, Op. 33, FS 61
- Svendsen - Romance for Violin & Orchestra, Op. 26
Henning Kraggerud, violin
Malmö Symphony Orchestra
Bjarte Engeset, conductor
Date: 2017
Label: Naxos
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So is Johan Halvorsen’s 1909 Violin Concerto – presumed destroyed until it was found in 2015 – a rediscovered masterpiece? Perhaps not. But it’s a whole lot more than characterless late-Romantic note-spinning, with some fascinating and arresting structural features (it opens with the same ‘orchestral salvo/soloist cadenza’ gesture as Bruch’s First Concerto before it and Nielsen’s after it) and at times a highly individual gait. The way the accompaniment stalks the leading device in the second movement could even foreshadow Prokofiev, while the finale’s swing tells you it’s in three when it’s actually in four. Henning Kraggerud’s woody but relatively contained sound fits the piece beautifully until, as in that finale, you want the soloist to take proceedings by the scruff of the neck. Kraggerud never really does and the concerto’s final pages can feel a little unsure of themselves as a result.
And, as we’ve heard before, Nielsen’s Concerto needs something rather more than Kraggerud’s unfailing and rather contained eloquence: either Vilde Frang’s elfin revisionism (EMI, 9/12) or Cecilia Zilliacus’s uncompromising fortitude. Where Zilliacus ramps up the tension by digging into repeated notes and confronting the orchestra head-on, Kraggerud sometimes appears deliberately unemphatic and can struggle with tuning where Zilliacus, for all her abandon, doesn’t. There is too little direct engagement and reaction between soloist and orchestra, and it’s also telling that Kraggerud’s go-to sound – vibrato speed, weight of bow on string – is remarkably similar in Svendsen’s Romance. That piece is gorgeously and sensitively played, but next to it Nielsen’s Concerto should be a whole different aesthetic ball game.
-- Andrew Mellor, Gramophone
More reviews:
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan_Halvorsen
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Carl Nielsen (9 June 1865 – 3 October 1931) was a Danish musician, conductor and violinist, widely recognized as his country's most prominent composer. Although his symphonies, concertos and choral music are now internationally acclaimed, Nielsen's career and personal life were marked by many difficulties, often reflected in his music. Nielsen maintained the reputation of an outsider during his lifetime, both in his own country and internationally. It was only later that his works firmly entered the international repertoire, accelerating in popularity from the 1960s through Leonard Bernstein and others.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Nielsen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Nielsen
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Henning Kraggerud (born 23 June 1973 in Oslo) is a Norwegian musician and composer. He studied with Camilla Wicks, Emanuel Hurwitz, and Stephan Barratt-Due, before embarking on a career that has brought solo appearances thought Europe, Russia and United States. He made his American debut in 1998 at Carnegie Hall, and has collaborated in recitals and chamber-music performances. A leader-soloist of chamber orchestras and sinfoniettas, Kraggerud is skilled at improvisation, and is an experienced composer, having written music arrangements and his own cadenzas. He plays on a 1744 Guarneri del Gesù.
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