This is certainly no
run of the mill encore-recital programme.
Instead Benjamin Schmid has opted for
a well-characterised and geographically
widespread selection that takes in his
composer-accompanist and contemporary
Miklós Suta as well as legato
Paganini (praise be) and some jazzy
Milhaud and Gershwin. Obviously there
are chestnuts along the way but the
tenor of the recital is predicated on
variety as well as spice, lyric generosity
as much as finger-busting virtuosity.
The Saint-Saëns
is a case in point. This makes some
serious demands on intonational security
and on control of harmonics, forcing
the player high up the fingerboard.
Schmid passes these tests well, if sometimes
one might wish his tone would expand
more at certain points; it can be quite
a tightly centred and steely one. His
Paganini demonstrates he can spin a
melody with assurance and his Brahms-Joachim
Hungarian Dances avoid the evergreens
and instead opt for Nos.7 and 20, which
have considerable charms of their own.
Lisa Smirnova proves no servile chauffeur-accompanist
in her selections and she shows in the
Hubay how important this is; this is
the Hungarian’s Carmen Fantasie, which
treads different ground from all those
other Fantasies on the same work from
Sarasate to Waxman. Schmid digs deeper
into the string here, giving us some
fat tone in the lower strings, though
even he can’t minimise some rather repetitious
writing in the final paragraphs. With
the Gershwin and Milhaud we come to
a side of Schmid’s musical make up that
has been noted – his liking for jazz
inflexions. His Gershwin, in the famed
Heifetz transcription – is well nuanced
but doesn’t bend the line and doesn’t
give in to the temptation to overplay.
The Milhaud is better known in its orchestral
guise but its scalar problems are a
real test and are especially exposed
in this violin and piano reduction.
Nevertheless, once surmounted, we can
enjoy the Latin American tints and the
more brittle Parisian rhetoric in Schmid’s
gutsy performance. Skuta’s Toccata muses
between improvisation and a sophisticated
kind of minimalism. There’s a wistful
song at its heart but also some weird
sounding tone colours and a deal of
rhythmic insistence, elements of the
folkloric and opportunities for some
coarse sounding roughening of the tone
by the violinist. Moments of the playing
put me in mind of Roby Lakatos.
Well recorded and thoughtfully
annotated by the violinist this is a
successful selection of Schmid’s encore
arsenal. It’s well stocked, cleverly
deployed and makes for a pleasurable
listen.
Jonathan Woolf
Benjamin Schmid (violin) 
