The curious, the
knowledgeable music enthusiast and
those with cult fascinations find
their cherished and multiply-copied
radio broadcast tapes and CDRs being
pensioned off with every month that
passes. Those air-checks can often
be relegated to the loft provided
you are prepared to fork out for the
latest release and don’t mind possibly
duplicating your cherished CD or CDs
of the Dvořák
concerto. Mind you performance values
on the commercial release may not
always match up to your cherished
favourites. Here there is no question
of the new disc disappointing.
At long last Samuel
Coleridge-Taylor’s Violin Concerto
has been commercially recorded ...
and issued. I make the pedantic separation
because there are strong rumours that
this work was recorded for Lyrita
Recorded Edition by the Scots violinist
Lorraine McAslan circa 1995. As with
so much from Lyrita it has not been
issued ... one day, Oh Lord! One day!
I seem to recall that the Coleridge-Taylor
was to have been coupled with Julius
Harrison’s Rhapsody for violin and
orchestra, Bredon Hill; rather
a short CD so perhaps Lyrita had something
else up their corporate sleeve as
well.
This
is a half-hour work, rather like the
Dvořák. In style and melodic-contour
it has much in common with the Dvořák
by which I suspect it was strongly
influenced. Other works are occasionally
touched on, for example the major
Mendelssohn and Bruch works and
the Glazunov also. The Tchaikovsky
is hinted at in the staircase ascender
and descender figures for woodwind
playing obbligato in the finale as
well as in the stuttering brass fanfares
in the first movement which transiently
recall Capriccio Italien. There
is also a dash of Elgar in there as
well. It is a highly attractive work
with a powerfully memorable store
of whistleable tunes both sweetly
sung and lively. It is said that the
Concerto was influenced by Negro spirituals
but if that is the case their
presence is no more obvious than the
American sources in Dvořák’s
New World Symphony.
The work stands happily on its own
two feet.
Coleridge-Taylor
was, not surprisingly, dubbed ‘the
colored Dvořák’ by Maud Powell,
the work’s first soloist who premiered
the concerto on 4 June 1912 at the
Berkshire Festival in the USA. It
had its UK premiere at the Proms in
London on 8 October 1912 and was performed
at Bournemouth in February 1913. It
dropped out of the repertoire for
many years until Sergiu Schwartz revived
it. There has also been at least one
1990s performance with the Harvard
Orchestra where the soloist was someone
now better known to us as a conductor
featured on the Naxos American Classics
series, John McLaughlin Williams.
There was a time when JMW seemed to
be carving a place for himself as
the American champion of neglected
Brits. He also gave what was probably
the US premiere of the Bax Violin
Concerto in 1990 with the Boston Pro
Arte Orchestra conducted by Geoffrey
Rink.
Lorraine McAslan
also broadcast the work for the BBC
on 9 June 1995 with the Ulster Orchestra
conducted by Jan Latham-Koenig. Getting
out my off-air tapes of this broadcast
and of the other one by Sergiu Schwartz
with Brian Wright and the Guildhall
School Symphony Orchestra some comparison
can be made. Schwartz (broadcast on
27 February 1981) is sweet-toned but
the pacing moves forward with leaden
boots and tired muscles. While this
tempo has the advantage of allowing
Schwartz to mine the work’s lyrical
strata without distraction (to great
advantage in the Andante) there is
no doubting the extra ‘lift’ and mercurial
poetry in Graffin and Hankinson’s
approach. Schwartz has difficulty
keeping his instrument in precise
tune; not a problem with Graffin.
If anything McAslan is even more self-absorbed
and reflective than Schwartz especially
in the first two movements. The Ulster
Orchestra is, not surprisingly, much
better than the Guildhall group and
their horns make wonderful air-lofted
use of the accompanimental figures
in the first movement. The Ulstermen
are riper than the Johannesburg Orchestra
but there’s not much in it. Graffin
however is surer-footed and more polished
and impassioned than Schwartz and
McAslan so I can happily give a full
recommendation to the Avie version.
Do try the hearts and flowers embrace
of the middle movement - generous-hearted
writing and playing, brimming with
sentiment and yet not mawkish.
The
Dvořák has competition and it
is fairly numerous and often prestigious.
There was a time when it was a fairly
rare customer but now there
are at least a dozen versions in the
catalogue. While hardly state of the
art in sound my preference is for
Josef Suk’s version on Supraphon coupled
with Suk’s Fantasy.
Graffin lays in to the Dvořák
with a will from the very start. This
is a work of folksy sweetness without
any feeling of contrivance or poverty
of expression. Graffin is as much
at ease here as he is on his Hyperion
CD of the three Saint-Saëns violin
concertos; it’s just that here he
has the advantage of better tunes.
The excellent notes
are by Jessica Duchen and Philippe Graffin
in English, French and German.
Make no mistake the
Coleridge-Taylor is a vivacious and
captivating work which I guarantee
that you will come to love. It
is aptly harnessed with the Dvořák
and if you know the Dvořák work
and love it then you will have a good
feeling for what to expect from the
Coleridge-Taylor without it being
in any way a carbon copy.
Rob Barnett
Philippe Graffin, violin 
for
details