Working as I do in one of those Royal highfalutin’ music
educational establishments, I’ve become used to receiving
commentary on the occasional wobbly heaps of new CDs which arrive
and linger on my desk for a day or so. One of the Department of
Early Music students immediately fell on ‘the new Rachel
Podger’, and told me the story of the special Stradivari
instruments used before I’d even had a chance to look at
the cover. I’ve played the first fifteen or twenty minutes
of this CD more times than I now care to count, merely because
that’s the duration of the school run in this rainy autumn
season, and hearing the gorgeous opening of the Haydn
Violin
Concerto in G major I could never bring myself to shove an
unsympathetic finger onto the track-skip button and miss out by
exploring further, if you get what I mean.
Recordings of Haydn’s violin concerti are not all that common,
and my collection has been only fairly recently been provided
with the two on this new disc by their inclusion in the marvellous
Haydn
Complete
Symphonies MP3 Edition from Nimbus. With Rainer Küchl
as soloist these are fine performances and very well recorded.
With a more overtly resonant acoustic they are however not quite
as transparent as with this new SACD disc, and Rachel Podger lays
into her cadenzas with more gusto, the double-stopping moments
6:48 into the first movement of the
Violin Concerto in G major
having a wonderful folksy feel. The second
Adagio movement
is very high quality Haydn indeed, and played here with the utmost
sensitivity. I’ve moaned about over-exposed harpsichords
in the past, but the continuo is so remote in the energetic final
Allegro that it seems to have been banished beyond acceptable
bounds. The excellent orchestral strings more than make up for
this, but the harpsichord tends to buzz around on the far right
rather than contributing much of substance by way of rhythm or
harmony. There’s a slightly bumpy edit at 2:08 as well,
the beat shifted slightly and delayed by a couple of nano-seconds.
Readers should understand we reviewers have to put this sort of
thing in just to show we’ve been paying attention, but in
fact this has no real impact on what is otherwise a superb recording
and performance. While we are on the subject of Haydn I’ll
deal with the
Violin Concerto in C major, which is another
very fine work, the technical demands of which Rachel Podger brushes
aside, creating a performance of sheer joyful musicianship and
deceptive ease. Podger plays her own Pesarinius violin of 1739
for the two Haydn concerti, and the exquisite high tones of this
instrument come across with a marvellously floating, almost ethereal
quality at moments throughout the C major concerto. The pizzicato
accompaniment of the
Adagio, with its shades of Vivaldi,
allows the solo line to soar and sing with delightful freedom.
Mozart’s
Sinfonia Concertante KV364 is justly famous,
and the musicians here are against stiffer competition in the
catalogues. This recording does however have a unique selling
point, a loan of two Stradivarius instruments from the famous
collection of my old Royal highfalutin’ musical institute
the Royal Academy of Music in London. The violin is the 1699
Crespi,
and Pavlo Beznosiuk plays the
Castalbarco viola from ca.1720.
This was originally made as a viola d’amore which would
have had a flat back. The instrument was later converted into
a viola by changing this for a swell back, and adding a heavier
Amati head. This kind of messing around would appear to disqualify
the instrument from being called a true Stradivarius, but the
table of the instrument is still one of the finest examples of
Stradivarius’s work, and having recorded KV364 Rachel Podger
commented on the special resonance the instrument possesses, especially
in the upper registers.
Mozart’s
Sinfonia Concertante KV364 has been oft
recorded, and the version I’ve been listening to more often
than not has been that of Dominika Falger and Johannes Flieder
on the Dux label (see
review).
I like this for its transparent recording and sensitive playing,
but this new recording from Podger and Beznosiuk does bring us
to a different plane. Both strung with gut strings, the two solo
instruments are beautifully matched, and with both Rachel and
especially Pavlo being old friends of the Orchestra of the Age
of Enlightenment the whole thing has a feel of lightness and chamber-music
synergy which oozes warmth and fun in the outer movements. This
is helped with the not-huge acoustic of All Saints’ Vicarage,
East Finchley, which is more chapel than church in terms of sonic
feel; more English country mansion than Salzburg Schloss, but
is not to say that this is a lightweight in terms of dynamic contrast.
Take the build-up from the anticipatory opening phrases to where
everything takes off at 1:48 into the opening movement and you
can hear a really well prepared crescendo.
The minor-key centre to this work is of course that wonderful
Andante which is played here with utmost intimacy and the
most charmingly poignant phrasing. I’ve listened carefully,
and am not entirely convinced the tempo of the opening is kept
strictly after the entry of the solo violin, at which it seems
to slow ever so slightly. This is another very minor point, so
I’ll leave it up to the listener to make up their own mind
as to whether they agree. My only reason for bringing it up is
that I can’t think of many other criticisms. The orchestral
balance is nice: the sometimes difficult intonation with the oboes
taken with almost entirely poised refinement. The duet cadenza
in this movement sounds like a short but soulful conversation
or double monologue; both participants reminiscing on a departed
friend - united, but each with their own viewpoint.
The only point remaining is that of taste in terms of the sound
qualities of the solo instruments. Some listeners, being used
to ‘modern’ instruments with bound rather than gut
strings, may be less convinced by the difference in tone with
the gut strings. These give a rounder sound, with a different
kind of buzz in the timbre, and a different kind of projection
due to the shifts in harmonics in the spectrum of the sonic signature
of each note. I personally quite like this effect, and it fits
with the early-music background of the rest of the orchestra,
so to suggest it might have been done differently in this recording
would be silly. If you are the kind of person who can’t
listen to Mozart on a fortepiano then you might possibly turn
your nose up at this equivalent in terms of string sound, but
if you are the kind of person who can give yourself over to the
narrative in the music and the expressive qualities in the playing
rather than throwing up barriers, then you will soon become lost
in this performance. The question of vibrato also arises on this
topic and yes, the soloists here are restrained in its use but
in fact rarely use none at all. It’s not the kind of pumped
up vibrato you might find if playing high romanticism, but as
any good musician will tell you, the music and the instrument
both have a way of informing the style of your playing. This isn’t
so much ‘authentic’ playing as has become a dirty
word in certain circles, but playing which to my mind seeks the
core of the music. Whether or not it the listener believes it
has been found will be a personal response, but either way I don’t
believe inflexible dogma has anything to do with the results in
this recording.
Of the last
Presto movement of KV364 Podger says “you
hear it and you instantly love it”, though of course partially
in its context as a reply to that darker central movement. The
orchestral violins love it a little less perhaps, being not entirely
together around 8 seconds in, but the tempo is quite a blistering
one and the most ‘on the edge’ sounding of the whole
disc. This makes for exciting listening however and the music
doesn’t sound rushed or out of control. The musical ideas
are thrown around with all the entertaining abandon one would
hope for, and this entire recording and performance is very satisfying
indeed.
Channel Classics’ SACD recording for this release is excellent,
with wide ranging dynamics, enticingly deep bass, and toothsome
treble especially for the soloists. The surround perspective as
is usual with this label separates and creates a greater sense
of air around the players, without going in for over-the-top sonic
effects, and the straight stereo mix also works very well indeed.
With the lean and flexible spirit of an excellent orchestra, top
notch solo playing and some of the finest music the classical
era has to offer, for what more could a person ask?
Dominy Clements
see also review by Jonathan
Woolf
Rachel Podger (violin), Pavlo Beznosiuk (viola, Mozart)
[67:43] 