If you enjoy romantic music and over an hour
of lush melodies, then this is for you. Dohnányi was a
highly versatile musician, an excellent pianist, fine conductor
and, it must be said, a successful composer with colourful orchestration
and a fund of melodic invention at the heart of his music. As
if that were not enough, he was a respected teacher with fellow-Hungarians
Annie Fischer, Georg Solti and Geza Anda numbered among his pupils.
Best remembered for his Variations on a Nursery Rhyme for piano
and orchestra, there are plenty of other works worthy of exposure
and record companies such as Chandos and ASV are to be thanked
for their contributions. The Suite in F# minor was such a work
I discovered on Chandos and programmed immediately to the evident
pleasure of orchestra and audience alike. On the strength of hearing
his American Rhapsody which begins this highly enjoyable and varied
disc, I am tempted to conduct it. It is an affectionate tribute
to the country which gave him refuge, and like Dvorák before
him, Dohnányi honours the New World with numerous quotes
from ‘On top of Old Smokey’ to the British ‘Sir
Roger de Coverley’ which had found a home in the Appalachian
Mountains. The Harp Concertino (a lovely account by Lucy Wakeford)
is a concise one-movement work, French impressionist in character
and with textures redolent of Debussy and Ravel. The most Hungarian
work in terms of folk melody and an escape from the Teutonic Brahms-Liszt
influences to which Dohnányi was so unashamedly prone,
is the far earlier Romanza, taken from his Serenade for string
trio where it formed the second movement.
The Violin Concerto, forming the pivotal centre
of this disc, may well count as the last in the grand Romantic
vein using, as Brahms did in his second piano concerto, the traditional
symphonic structure of four movements. There are many highlights
in this fabulous performance by that fine violinist Janice Graham,
who meets all its technical demands with seeming ease and plays
from the heart at its most golden moments, of which there are
plenty. This is a sensuously passionate concerto in the style
of Korngold, full of appealing melody, its scherzo a jocular,
catchy interlude placed before the moving Adagio whose melodies
Rachmaninov would surely have been proud to write.
Performances throughout are excellent. The English
Sinfonia is a fine orchestra filling the cavernous space of Watford’s
Colosseum with glorious sound under the committed baton of John
Farrer, who clearly loves this music, the charming Johann Straussian
Wedding Waltz making a stylish final filler. This was a great
pleasure from start to finish.
Christopher Fifield
Janice Graham (violin) Lucy
Wakeford (harp) English Sinfonia/John Farrer