Bliss always said that
his concertos were inspired by the personalities of soloists,
whether it was Rostropovich (1927-2007) for the late and
somewhat anaemic Cello Concerto or Solomon (1902-1988)
for the leonine piano concerto. In this case it was Alfredo
Campoli (1906-1991) for the Violin Concerto.
The Violin
Concerto owes its existence to a BBC commission given to
the recently appointed Master of the Queen's Music. He
succeeded Bax who had died in October 1953. The premiere
was given by the dedicatee, Campoli with the BBC Symphony
Orchestra conducted by Sargent in the RFH on 11 May 1955.
Bliss conducted it the next evening for a radio broadcast.
That same year in November Campoli and the LPO with Bliss
conducting recorded it in mono for Decca. This was issued
as Decca LXT 1566 and was later a staple of the Decca Eclipse
label alongside the Bliss-conducted
Colour Symphony.
You can hear this on an all-Campoli disc with the 1949
Bliss
Theme and Cadenza and a voluptuous but much
cut-about Tchaikovsky concerto on
Beulah
3PD10. On 16 April 1956 Bliss conducted the concerto
with the USSR Symphony Orchestra in Moscow. Campoli was
the soloist. The concerto has made little headway in the
concert hall and that first Decca LP much reissued seems
to gave stifled further recording projects despite the
mono sound. In 1996 Carlton BBC Radio Classics brought
out a stereo version in which Campoli is captured with
Bliss conducting the BBCSO on 16 December 1968. That ADD
version was rapidly deleted when the label collapsed and
the concerto had to wait a further decade before this -
only its third outing. I keep hoping that John Georgiadis's
studio broadcast with the BBCSO and Handley in the year
of Bliss's death will be issued on CD but it seems
increasingly unlikely now.
He worked
on two other projects in parallel with the concerto. There
was work on a special edition of
The Beggar's Opera for
a Herbert Wilcox film. The other was a Feeney Trust commission
for the CBSO - the work that became the
John Blow Meditations -
which Hugo Rignold recorded so impressively and imaginatively
in 1965 with the CBSO and which was released with the
Music
for Strings on Lyrita Recorded edition LP SRCS 33 (now
reissued on
SRCD254.
The CBSO were to return the work in 1979 with Vernon Handley
for EMI but the Rignold version does not suffer in comparison.
For those among us who are interested in the numbers,
here are the timings for the Concerto:
| |
I |
II |
III |
| Mordkovich |
15:41 |
8:51 |
17:12 |
| Campoli (Decca) |
14:21 |
6:41 |
16:13 |
| Campoli (BBC) |
15:11 |
7:09 |
15:36 |
Mordkovich
dwells luxuriantly on the many beauties in this expansive
score. She takes the longest at just over 41 minutes with
Campoli 1 at just over 37 minutes and Campoli 2 at just
short of 38 minutes. The mono analogue recording from 1955
presents Campoli right up close without being as suffocatingly
gigantic as a typical RCA Heifetz concerto balance.
It’s a pleasure at last to hear this work in its full glory.
Bliss dedicated A
Colour Symphony to Adrian Boult yet it was the composer
who conducted the premiere at the Three Choirs in 1922.
As you can see from the following comparison with the
recently reissued Groves
recording on EMI, Hickox is
a minute or so faster overall:
| |
I |
II |
III |
IV |
| Hickox (Chandos) |
6:53 |
6:55 |
9:34 |
8:27 |
| Groves (EMI) |
6:49 |
7:43 |
10:15 |
8:20 |
Hickox is accorded a
typically fine and spanking new digital recording from
Ralph Couzens but it's a close run thing with the clean
golden age analogue recording for Groves
and EMI. Overall the Chandos represents a fine listening
experience and has many strengths. My allegiance though
is in the last and closest analysis to the Groves. Groves
has both expansive gravity and rapturous energy coupled
with a slightly better-honed rhythmic edge. Grand stuff
though and this is a fine performance and a splendid recording
of the Symphony by anyone's reckoning. It's also the only
way of accessing a modern recording of the Violin Concerto
in sound that can only be described as stunning.
Rob Barnett
Lydia Mordkovitch
(violin) 
