Having become a fan of Nicola Benedetti’s playing through her
Italia album (see review),
we now enter an entirely different realm of musical experience,
as she “moves dramatically from the 18th-century world of Italia
to the 20th-century world of cinema.” If you can put up with
the look of this release, which is designed to evoke the golden
age of the silver screen and places our soloist into the role
of a glam Hollywood diva in a series of more or less silly photos,
there is a great deal to discover and enjoy in this superbly
performed and produced album.
Benedetti has long been a champion Erich Korngold’s deeply romantic
Violin Concerto, and with his reputation as a great
stage and screen composer it was logical to build this programme
around violin classics written specifically for the movies.
There is no great shortage of recordings of Korngold’s concerto,
and your choice will depend to a certain extent on the couplings
which go with the work. All of Benedetti’s competitors pair
the work with other violin concertos. Gil Shaham’s Deutsche
Grammophon disc has the Barber concerto as well as Korngold’s
score for Much Ado About Nothing, and his performance
is excellent, though he does slide around the notes more than
Benedetti. The single-disc recording also appears in a two disc
Korngold special (see review).
The Korngold Much Ado combination is also covered on
the Naxos label by Philippe
Quint, though the recording is not as lush and satisfactory,
and Quint isn’t quite as effortlessly brilliant as either Shaham
or Benedetti. None of the recordings you will find on the shelves
are particularly weak and many are superlative, such as Anne-Sophie
Mutter on DG and James
Ehnes on the Onyx label, but they all have to stand comparison
with that of the great Jascha Heifetz. His RCA recording, now
superbly re-mastered by Naxos,
is the one which originally inspired Nicola Benedetti, and while
his is a performance which speaks to us from a different era
it is nonetheless hard to equal in terms of emotional intensity
and communication, let alone technique.
The Decca engineers bring us a terrifically detailed and colourful
tapestry of sound for the concerto in Nicola Benedetti’s recording.
Her violin is close enough and arguably a bit over the top,
sounding almost amplified at times, but the presence of the
orchestra and the subtle touches of orchestration mostly come
through, so that the whole thing shimmers with effervescence
and a remarkable range of expression and mood. For anyone prejudiced
against Korngold’s unrepentant romanticism, this is the kind
of performance which will sell his music to you once and for
all – and in this I speak from my own personal listening history.
If you love Barber’s violin concerto then Korngold’s can reach
similar places, especially in the gorgeous central Romance.
Benedetti’s communicative playing carries everything here, with
the orchestra needing only to provide the subtlest of support.
The striking Finale wakes us up from our reverie, and
Benedetti’s pizzicati have terrific impact. Compliments also
go to the Bournemouth winds, shining through their tricky close-scrutiny
tests with grace and ease.
The rest of the programme is substantially filled with well
chosen and superbly performed music from film scores and works
used in films both justly famous and perhaps less well known
but by no means inferior. The lament from Schindler’s List has
been chosen to reflect Korngold’s Jewish background and life
story, and sets the expressively heartfelt tone right from the
top. Korngold’s Tanzlied des Pierrots and Mariettas
Lied are from his 1920 opera Die tote Stadt, which
has seen something of a revival in recent years. Chamber music
contrast is amply provided with Carlos Gardel’s tango Por
una cabeza known from ‘Scent of a Woman’, with accordion
and improvisatory variations from the players creating an unmistakably
smoky dance atmosphere.
Shostakovich is represented with famous melodies such as the
Romance and Prelude from the Gadfly Suite
showing he was capable of taking a Tchaikovsky pill and slapping
the high-romance tunes on with a jewelled trowel. Conductor
Kirill Karabits commented that the Andante from ‘The
Counterplan’ is “like a Mahler Symphony in 2.5 minutes.” Nigel
Hess’s big tune from Ladies in Lavender has a muted-strings
aura from the orchestra which is beautifully beguiling, and
Marinelli’s My Edward and I from ‘Jayne Eyre’ is a
point of reflective rest. Howard Shore’s Concertino
is known from ‘Eastern Promises’, casting a magical spell with
its cimbalom part, which is always evocative of tantalising
mystery. Mahler’s Piano Quartet in A minor is included
here for its use in the film ‘Shutter Island’, performed with
a suitably moody expression which works well in this context,
though is perhaps not this CD’s main selling point.
In all this is a thoroughly enjoyable excursion into some terrific
music. Nicola Benedetti is to be applauded for seeking beyond
standard repertoire to support her marvellous Korngold Violin
Concerto, though the ‘risk’ she mentions is more than covered
by the commercial appeal of the product as a whole. Don’t be
put off by the glitz and glam however, or by the thought of
bringing so much film music into your pristine serious classical
collection. This is the kind of disc we all need to have around
for those softer moments, and the performances are of a standard
which raises all of these scores to higher status, as if that
were needed.
Dominy Clements
Nicola Benedetti (violin)