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Niccolò PAGANINI (1782-1840)
Violin concerto no.1 in D major, op.6 (1817) [40:14] Camille SAINT-SAËNS (1835-1921) Introduction and rondo capriccioso, op.28 (1863)
[10:05] Jules MASSENET (1842-1912) Meditation from Thaïs (1894) [5:58]
Mariusz
Patyra (violin)
Sinfonia Varsovia/Johannes Wildner
rec. S2 Studio, Polish Radio, Warsaw, Poland, May 2004 DUX 0654 [56:18]
In 2001 Mariusz Patyra won the
prestigious international Paganini Competition for violinists
held in the eponymous composer’s Genoa birthplace. Given
that past winners have included such well-known – and frequently
recorded - soloists as Salvatore Accardo (1958), Jean-Jacques
Kantorow (1964), Gidon Kremer (1969), Ilya Kaler (1981),
Leonidas Kavakos (1988) and Ilya Gringolts (1998), we ought
clearly to expect a great deal from him in this repertoire.
On the evidence of this new CD,
the technical challenges of Paganini’s exceptionally taxing
score, which allegedly left some of his contemporaries
so amazed that they accused its composer/performer of forging
a pact with Satan, certainly hold no terrors for Patyra. He
sails right through them with apparent nonchalance – but,
at the same time, he invests his playing with intensity
and real heart. This is by no means a grandstanding account
of the concerto but rather one of those rare traversals
that combines both breathtaking virtuosity and real and
intelligent musicality.
After a slightly portentous account
of the opening bars, Wildner and the Warsaw players turn
in a sprightly, well-balanced account of the orchestral
introduction before Patyra enters compellingly and confidently
at 3:08. Paganini himself would no doubt have approved
of the fact that the soloist is placed well-forward here,
although the orchestral contribution still comes through
effectively, if in a rather generalised way, in the radio
studio’s very natural acoustic.
Dux’s engineers have captured the
violin with exceptional realism. Patyra’s tone is sweet
in his instrument’s higher registers and beautifully warm
and mellow in the lower ones. He adopts a purposeful and
generally flowing tempo throughout the first movement,
though slowing quite markedly for one or two of the more
lyrical passages. It is, moreover, apparent that he possesses
a full and very impressive battery of technical skills
and, as one would expect, they are on particular display
in the pyrotechnics of the long cadenza: Patyra need fear
comparison with no-one here; how one would have loved to
hear Heifetz in this concerto – but sadly he never recorded
it!
As in virtually all accounts, the
second and third movements – far less substantial and clocking
in here at just 5:16 and 10:25, as opposed to the opening
movement’s 24:33 - are something of an anticlimax. Nevertheless,
Patyra maintains his exceptional standards. The Adagio
is notably lyrical and, once again, flowing but also incorporates
some strikingly passionate climaxes (at, for example, 2:16). The
subsequent finale is light-footed and witty, skipping along
nicely as Patyra shows off his secure technique, while
Wildner is again an attentive and sensitive accompanist
whenever the score offers the orchestra scope to do more
than mark time and rum-ti-tum along.
The soloist is again placed well
to the fore in the Saint-Saëns, but that is certainly no
drawback when the performance is as idiomatic and atmospheric
as this one, combining rich lyricism with more than the
merely requisite degree of virtuosity. The well-known Meditation from
Massenet’s little-known opera Thaïs showcases Patyra’s
sweet tone as he plays with the greatest sensitivity and,
just as in the Paganini slow movement, with an innately
musical sense of where to inject the passion.
This is, then, clearly a very fine
disc and I have been delighted to add it to my collection. It
doesn’t, however, displace my preferred modern version
by Salvatore Accardo – not the usually-recommended Deutsche
Grammophon recording where he is supported by Charles Dutoit
and the London Philharmonic Orchestra but, rather, the
frequently overlooked version in which Accardo was both
soloist and conductor of the tremendously enthusiastic
and authentic-sounding Orchestra da Camera Italiana (EMI
Classics 5 57151 2). Lovers of the concerto will also
need no persuasion to turn to the classic – and intensely
involving - recording set down by the young Yehudi Menuhin
in 1934 with the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris under Pierre
Monteux (EMI Classics Références5 65959 2).
My one reservation is with the
short measure offered. I fail to see any excuse these
days for discs that clock in at under, say, 60 minutes
and the producers could surely have encouraged Patyra to
delight us with another lollipop or two.
In the early 1930s, Universal Pictures
used to head their movies’ final cast lists with the words: A
good cast is worth repeating. As many composers have
realised, that premise can easily be modified into: A
good tune is worth repeating. The Paganini concerto
is especially full of attractive and memorable melodies:
is it too much to hope that one day a soloist will couple
it with two of its several fascinating spin-offs? I calculate
that you could just about fit not only the concerto itself
(about 40:00) but also its inventive adaptations by both
August Wilhelmj (roughly 20:00) and Fritz Kreisler (about
18:00) onto a single disc. Now that would be really fascinating!
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