Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst - Complete Music, Vol. 5 (Sherban Lupu; Ian Hobson)

Information

Composer: Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst

• Polonaise in D Major, Op. 17
• L'art de phraser, Op. 16: No. 14, Feuillet d'album
• 3 Rondinos, Op. 5
• Variations brillantes sur l'air de Pacini
• Romanesca fameux
• Variations sur l'air national hollandais, Op. 18

Sherban Lupu, violin

Ian Hobson, piano

Date: 2016

Label: Toccata Classics

https://toccataclassics.com/product/heinrich-wilhelm-ernst-complete-works-volume-five/

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Review

The quantity of premiere recordings in this fifth volume of the complete Ernst series is high: fully fifty percent of the works have never before been graced by performance on disc. This is auspicious for the Ernst lover though the listener rather more casually interested in the development of violin performance and composition in the decade between 1833-42 may well view this as a niche-within-a-niche.

Sherban Lupu and Ian Hobson, as well as Toccata, remain indomitable. There will be seven volumes in this series charting the Moravian’s complete oeuvre and when completed it will be a memorable achievement. It’s already exceptionally fine, though this volume is more focused on occasional and co-composed pieces, majoring on the near half-hour Rondinos Brillants, Ernst’s youthful Op.5.

The Rondinos use material from operas popular and fashionable at the time, sure concert sellers therefore for the audiences lured to hear this so-called second Paganini. Ironically there seems no evidence that he ever played them, though publication would have ensured some commercial following. These pieces make no pretence at musical sophistication. They’re full of operatic panache, with enough virtuosity enshrined to scare off all but the hardiest players of the day. Whilst his Rondino on Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable is engaging, and that on Carafa’s now all-but-forgotten Natalie ingenious, it’s Halévy’s La Tentation - an opera-ballet – that deserves the most praise, a carefree balletic piece full of grace with a degree of appropriate pathos to keep the emotional temperature from sinking too low.

Mark Rowe’s characteristically excellent notes – he has, after all, written the leading biography of Ernst – presents a chart detailing the form of the Polonaise de Concert, Op.17 so you can follow the episodes with an eye on the clock counter. This shows how well-constructed Ernst’s pieces invariably are, even the slightest. Its quite formal complexity is one thing but the music needs to stand up too and the sinuously ingratiating second subject certainly does that and so too the fulsome, somewhat showy – but why not? – cadenza. His collaboration with Stephen Heller has been encountered in the series before – here it’s Ernst’s arrangement of the pianist’s lovely Feuillet d’album. This disc also charts Ernst’s collaboration with G.A. Osborne in the Brilliant Variations based on an aria from Pacini’s Niobe, a satisfying but not wholly distinctive piece. The simple and unvarnished charm of Romanesca fameux is fully conveyed in this fine performance and Ernst’s bravura piece of panache – his variations on the Dutch National Anthem – ends the recital on quite a high note.

Standards are very much up to the expected level by now – a certain very occasional thinness in Lupu’s tone is of no great consequence – so we can look forward to volume six with expectation.

-- Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International

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Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst (8 June 1812 – 8 October 1865) was a Moravian-Jewish violinist, violist and composer. He was widely seen as the outstanding violinist of his time and one of Niccolò Paganini's greatest successors. Some said Paganini mastered the difficulties better, but Ernst played with more sentiment. Ernst also played the viola and performed the solo viola part of Berlioz's Harold en Italie multiple times. After 1844 he lived chiefly in England. He joined the Beethoven Quartet Society in London and played Beethoven String quartets with Joseph Joachim, Henryk Wieniawski and Carlo Alfredo Piatti.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Wilhelm_Ernst

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Sherban Lupu (born 1952 in Braşov) is a Romanian-born violinist. Lupu studied with George Manoliu and Yfrah Neaman, and attended master classes with Yehudi Menuhin, Henryk Szeryng and Nathan Milstein. Subsequently he came to the US to study with Dorothy De Lay, Josef Gingold and Menahem Pressler. In 2000, Lupu received a lifetime achievement award from the Romanian Cultural Foundation for his efforts to promote Romanian culture and music internationally. In 2011, after 25 successful years of teaching, Lupu was awarded the title of Professor Emeritus of the University of Illinois.
http://www.sherbanlupu.com/

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Ian Hobson (born 7 August 1952 in Wolverhampton) is an English pianist, conductor and teacher, and is a professor at Florida State University. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music, Magdalene College, Cambridge, and Yale University in the United States. His teachers included Claude Frank, Ralph Kirkpatrick and Menahem Pressler. Hobson won silver medals in the Arthur Rubinstein and Vienna-Beethoven competitions and first prize in the 1981 Leeds International Pianoforte Competition. He has performed in many countries with many orchestras, frequently conducting from the keyboard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Hobson
https://www.ianhobson.net/

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