If works are to live they need constantly to renew their executant
champions. We cannot always be sustained by past exemplars and
lofty long-dead heroes. For this reason it is good to have this
collection which rather like the Telarc recording of the Rózsa
concertos for violin and cello offers a more natural perspective
than the fierce almost ill-tempered intensity of Heifetz and Piatigorsky.
Rózsa's often tempestuously aggressive
Sinfonia Concertante
is here given a concert hall ambience that places the two
soloists further back and allows the orchestra more of the spotlight.
There is plenty of Bartókian point, barb, grit and resin in the
performance as well as a most poetic yield ((8:20 in I) that gratifies.
I think you will learn more about this work in this understated
and Delian approach than you will from the unremitting glare of
other performances. I am sure that Christopher Palmer - such a
champion of Rózsa - would have loved this version especially in
the green-leaved ecstasies of the
Tema con variazioni.
The
Notturno
ungherese has that long-day-ended warmth also to be
found in Kodály's
Summer Evening. This is Rózsa
at his considerable best. Amongst the ‘Hungarianisms’ do
I also hear a laid-back cowboy Hollywood romance? It’s
reminiscent of
Shenandoah and the great rivers -
a sort of rolling
Vltava. It’s a lovely piece extremely
well done.
The
Tripartita here receives its second recording having
been premiered by Dorati with the National Symphony in Washington.
Its first recording came late on with David Amos, while a third
has just arrived courtesy of Chandos (see
review).
I first encountered the work in a studio concert broadcast in
the 1970s for one of Rózsa's birthdays. It was enthusiastically
done by Ashley Lawrence with the BBC Concert Orchestra, heroes
of a thousand studio tapes and - in repertoire terms - a far more
significant orchestra than their third-tier reputation suggests.
The
Tripartita is in three movements - now there’s a surprise!
The first is a vicious little bubbling
Intrada, eager with
the vehement aggression of one of his
film noir ‘krimis’
of the 1950s. The
Intermezzo Arioso is typically haunted
- a landscape lent ominous monotone by a solar eclipse; there
is a chill in the air. An explosive Waltonian
Finale - allegro
con brio brings things to a wild-eyed end after a slackening
of tension in the central core. This piece would pair neatly with
say Moeran's
Sinfonietta or Constant Lambert's
Music
for Orchestra
Nicely done if you would like to hear a less obvious Rózsa orchestral
mix.
Rob Barnett
András Agoston (violin) 
