After a series of critically acclaimed recordings on Onyx, most recently of the Mendelssohn (ONYX4060) and the Tchaikovsky concertos (ONYX4076), James Ehnes teams up with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and its charismatic music director, Kirill Karabits, in Violin Concertos by Benjamin Britten and Dmitri Shostakovich.

The Britten, an early work, was completed in the September of 1939, just as World War II broke out. Britten had already composed 'Our Hunting Fathers' in 1935 (words by W H Auden), and this work’s ferocious condemnation of political extremism and man’s inhumanity can to some extent be detected in the concerto. The barbarity of the Spanish Civil War (the concerto was written for the young Spanish violinist Antonio Brosa), the rise of Hitler’s Nazis and the persecution of the Jews appalled Britten. Peace and reconciliation was his credo, as exemplified in the later 'War Requiem'. In the scherzo, tuba and piccolos present the listener with an image of the horrifying abyss mankind was lurching towards.

The first of Shostakovich’s two violin concertos was composed in 1948 for David Oistrakh. It had to wait until 1955 for its premiere due to the ban on ‘serious’ music by the notorious Zhdanov Conference and Party Decree of 1948. Only ‘patriotic’ music was allowed. With Stalin’s death in 1953 Shostakovich was finally able to exert his artistic freedom. It is a truly symphonic work in scale - grand, dramatic and cast in four movements with a huge cadenza placed before the finale. Only in the finale does the sun burst out in a brilliant helter-skelter coda.

"Ehnes’s sound had the beauty of burnished steel as he roamed the stratosphere, the poise of his playing complementing the poise of this music which might have been written to show off his talents, for his sound is absolutely Protean... Required in the Scherzo to swoop and slide like a Transylvanian village fiddler, he went on to deliver a brilliant cadenza, musingly at first and then catching fire, before ushering in the majestically sweeping threnody of the Passacaglia. Here he dazzled, going through a series of duets with different instruments using a different timbre each time, making quick-fire contrasts between legato and pizzicato, at one point effortlessly bowing a leaping melody on one string while plucking another, and finally making his instrument speak with two voices, one low and richly sonorous and the other high and pure, and in the latter mode drifting off into space.

This reflected a rare rapport between conductor and soloist, but the other works in the programme revealed an orchestra in top form with Karabits gaily revisiting his Soviet origins " - Michael Church, The Independent, concert review [Britten]

Europadisc Review

James Ehnes’s latest recording for Onyx pairs two well-matched violin concertos by Britten and Shostakovich which have several features in common. In addition to their predominantly sober but intense mood, they both include a passacaglia or ‘ground bass’ movement (the third-movement finale in the Britten, the slow movement in the Shostakovich), as well as a solo cadenza placed immediately before their respective final movements. Though both works pre-date the late friendship between the two composers, which began in the late 1950s and lasted until Shostakovich’s death in 1975, there’s a clear expressive affinity here, with both concertos being composed against the backdrop of turbulent political events. In the case of the Britten, composed for the Spanish violinist Antonio Brosa, it was the end of the Spanish Civil War and the outbreak of World War II; for the Shostakovich, it was the Soviet crackdown on artists and musicians in the late 1940s.

That the pairing works so well is a tribute both to James Ehnes’s phenomenal technical mastery and expressive clear-headedness, and to the sterling support he receives from Kirill Karabits and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. In music that might otherwise sound unremittingly bleak or emotionally over-indulgent, Ehnes finds just the right balance between clarity and involvement.

In this performance of the Britten Concerto, there’s a nicely-judged sense of Hispanic sensuousness combined with melancholy in the opening movement’s first subject, which contrasts well with the spikier second subject. The development section then evokes a sense of increasingly oppressive heat. The scherzo second movement matches virtuosic abandon with a threatening incisiveness, culminating in a virtuosic performance of the cadenza which is the more powerful for its hint of cool detachment — a perfect lead into the desolation of the mighty passacaglia-finale. Both soloist and orchestra explore a kaleidoscopic array of colours, building in intensity before the slow-march ending.

The Shostakovich Concerto is given a similarly powerful performance. The opening Nocturne is mystically brooding and deeply felt, both delicate and profound, with ominous low woodwind much in evidence, and a magically suggestive celesta. Even within such dark, almost static parameters, one wonders at the sheer timbral variety of this music, marvellously captured by the recording. The Scherzo opens with wonderfully light and agile playing from Ehnes and the orchestra, before taking on an increasingly menacing hue, by turns sarcastic and savage. Here one admires both the soloist’s stamina and his phenomenal control.

Ehnes rises superbly to the expressive challenges of the impassioned central Passacaglia and the following cadenza, leaving the listener in no doubt that this is the emotional heart of the work and, in many ways, of the entire disc. The concluding Burlesque rightly provides only the uneasiest of releases, its tumultuous virtuosity laden with irony.

The recording, made at The Lighthouse, Poole in December 2012, is ideally focused and balanced, and these performances are a tremendous achievement on the part of all concerned. For an interesting and artistically fruitful coupling, this disc is a clear winner.