MICHAEL DERVANreviews the classical pieces of the week...
Paganini: 24 Caprices
Thomas Zehetmair (violin)
ECM New Series 476 3318
*****
The difficulties of Paganini’s 24 caprices for solo violin are compounded by the fact that so much of the musical content is, well, on the meagre side. Thomas Zehetmair shows himself unusually alert to the issues involved, and often conjures up a manic fervour that brings to mind the extraordinary persona – diabolic in the eyes of 19th-century contemporaries – that Paganini himself created. His approach is dangerous. Think of the excitement of a rough mountain ride on a motorbike, with grass, earth and shale flying in all directions. What makes Zehetmair really interesting, however, is the intensity of his characterisation, the sense of fantasy (and, often, heightened lyricism) that deepens the musicality of the exercise, whiffs of sulphur notwithstanding. www.ecmrecords. com
Flying Solo
Augustin Hadelich (violin)
Avie 2180 ****
Augustin Hadelich’s Flying Solo disc includes well-manicured accounts of three Paganini caprices that seem rather pale beside the excitable, on-target Zehetmair. Hadelich’s smoothness and containment pay much richer dividends elsewhere. In Bartók’s daunting Solo Sonata, one of the few solo violin works of the 20th century to elicit regular comparisons with Bach, he offers finely controlled, cogent, unstrained playing that’s at once free and musically logical. He’s good, too, in the third and fifth of the six solo sonatas that Ysaÿe wrote in 1923. And he relishes what he calls the “neurotic character” of the 12-tone solo sonata written in 1951 by German composer Bernd-Alois Zimmermann. www.avierecords.com
Pergolesi: Stabat Mater Violin Concerto in B Flat; Salve Regina in C Minor
Orchestra Mozart/Claudio Abbado
Archiv Produktion 466 8077 *****
Claudio Abbado is planning three CDs to mark the tercentenary of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-36). The composer's famous and often haunting Stabat Materwas criticised in its day for its embrace of the world of opera, but that never diminished its popular appeal. Abbado and the young period instruments players of his Bologna-based Orchestra Mozart chart its poignant changes with loving detail, and the two soloists (soprano Rachel Harnisch and the rich-toned contralto Sara Mingardo) blend beautifully. Soprano Julia Kleiter sings a Salve Reginain C minor that's cut from the same cloth as the Stabat Mater, and Giuliano Carmignola plays a buoyant Violin Concerto in B flat. www.tinyurl.com/ 5b9s4r
Bach: Brandenburg Concertos
English Baroque Soloists/John Eliot Gardiner
SDG 707(2 CDS) ****
John Eliot Gardiner is a conductor as expressive with words as with music. He brings an almost irresistible brio to Bach's BrandenburgConcertos, recorded at concerts in Paris (Cité de la Musique) and London (Cadogan Hall) last January and April, performances in which he wanted to assist his players "to dance out this quintessentially dance-inspired music". He has words to explain the extraordinary, at times almost riotous independence of the horn parts in the First Concerto – "a court-versus-country battle for supremacy". Elsewhere he's regularly prepared to press his performers to extremes. The soloists, including Kilkenny-based harpsichordist Malcolm Proud, rise to the challenges with equanimity. www.tinyurl.com/yzqwcpm
