2023 Approaching 60,000 reviews and more.. and still writing ...	Search MusicWeb Here

Searching Musicweb Monthly index Recordings of the Year Label index Masterwork index Series index Search engines Review Archive Classical Downloads Jazz Concerts Nostalgia Books Film music Resources Composer pages Tony Duggan's Mahler National Discographies Mark Morris's Guide to C20th Composers Ralph Moore's Surveys Online books Piano Trio Survey Cello Concerto Project Pot Pourri - Early MusicWeb Gerard Hoffnung Arthur Butterworth's columns Philip Scowcroft's British light music Interviews Programme notes MusicWeb Listening Studio Talking about Books Other material Articles Seen & Heard Message Board About Musicweb About Musicweb Contact Musicweb Contributors What they say about us Visitor stats Site Map

Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn

BUY NOW  Crotchet   AmazonUK   AmazonUS

Karol SZYMANOWSKI (1882-1937) Violin and Piano Works Violin Sonata Op. 9 (1904) Romance Op. 23 (1910) Nocturne and Tarantella Op. 28 (1915) Mity, trzy poematy Op. 30 (1915) Kołysanka (La Berceuse d’Aitacho Enia) Piotr Pławner (violin) Waldemar Malicki (piano) Rec. Pomeranian Philharmonic Concert Hall, Bydgoszcz, Poland, February 1997 DUX 0287 [67.48]

Dux draws upon two fine soloists and chamber partners, the young Piotr Pławner and the experienced pianist Waldemar Malicki, for a conspectus of Szymanowski’s works for violin and piano. One of the features of the repertoire is the way in which it has attained an increasingly strong place in the currency of international musicians. Pławner plays through the Brahmsian rhetoric of the first movement of the early Sonata, written when the composer was twenty-two, with expressive warmth that borders on the over-emotive. The wideness of his vibrato can sometimes spill over – but there is also a generous inflection to his phrasing – as well as a lightness and evenness that is attractive. He and Malicki find the right sense of stormy fantasy for the robust finale. His hyper-romantic rubati and finger intensity inflame the Romance showing a keen appreciation of period expressive devices; despite its name this is a piece that knows drive as much as relaxation. In the Nocturne and Tarantella he is less theatrical and overt than Ida Haendel preferring instead a more inward and introspective and consonant performance. The Three Myths receive a good traversal; La Fontaine d’Aréthuse has finely judged portamenti though it’s less cutting than Haendel and Ashkenazy whilst the Dryads and Pan evinces a fine silken tone and splendidly supportive pianism. The recorded sound is mellow and attractive and the notes are as ever with Dux in Polish, English and German and both attractively laid out and helpfully authoritative. Jonathan Woolf   Error processing SSI file

Return to Index

Error processing SSI file