Joseph HAYDN (1732-1809)
Violin Concerto in G major HobVIIa:4 (c.1761-65) [18:56]
Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART (1756-1791)
Sinfonia Concertante KV364 (1779) [29:42]
Joseph HAYDN
Violin Concerto in C major HobVIIa:1 (c.1765-70) [19:25]
Rachel Podger (violin), Pavlo Beznosiuk (viola, Mozart)
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
rec. March 2009 (Haydn) and July 2009 (Mozart), All Saints’ Vicarage,
East Finchley London.
CHANNEL CLASSICS CCS SA 29309 
[67:43]
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