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Stravinsky - Violin Concerto, Apollon musagete, Scherzo a la russe, etc.

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Label: Chandos

Cat No: CHSA5340

Barcode: 0095115534021

Format: Hybrid SACD

Number of Discs: 1

Genre: Orchestral

Release Date: 5th January 2024

Works

Stravinsky, Igor

Apollon musagete (1947 version)
Scherzo a la russe
Suite no.1
Suite no.2
Violin Concerto in D major

Artists

James Ehnes (violin)
BBC Philharmonic

Conductor

Andrew Davis

Works

Stravinsky, Igor

Apollon musagete (1947 version)
Scherzo a la russe
Suite no.1
Suite no.2
Violin Concerto in D major

Artists

James Ehnes (violin)
BBC Philharmonic

Conductor

Andrew Davis

About

One of the foremost musicians of his generation, James Ehnes continues to dazzle audiences around the world. Here he joins the BBC Philharmonic and Sir Andrew Davis in a recording of Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto. Written for the Polish virtuoso Samuel Dushkin, the four-movement work takes the music of Bach as its inspiration, and is built around a chord of the notes D, E, and A, which Stravinsky described as his ‘passport to the concerto’ and with which the solo violin part opens each movement. Dushkin gave the première, conducted by Stravinsky, in Berlin in 1932. Apollon musagète, a ballet in two parts for string orchestra, was written in 1927–28, and demonstrates the composer’s complete rejection of the Russian folk music and idioms that had been so instrumental in his previous ballets (The Firebird, Petrushka). They are replaced by a concentration on ‘pure form’, which became known as his neo-classical style. The album is completed by his two orchestral suites – light-hearted music arranged from piano duets he had written in the 1910s – and Scherzo à la russe, a showpiece for the Paul Whiteman band that he composed in the early 1940s when newly arrived in California.

Sound/Video

Paused

1

Violin Concerto - I. Toccata
2

Violin Concerto - II. Aria I
3

Violin Concerto - III. Aria II
4

Violin Concerto - IV. Capriccio
5

Scherzo à la Russe
6

Suite No. 1. I. Andante
7

Suite No. 1. II. Napolitana
8

Suite No. 1. III. Española
9

Suite No. 1. IV. Balalaïka
10

Suite No. 2. I. Marche
11

Suite No. 2. II. Valse
12

Suite No. 2. III. Polka
13

Suite No. 2. IV. Galop
14

Apollon musagète. Prologue
15

Apollon musagète. Variation d'Apollon
16

Apollon musagète. Pas d'action
17

Apollon musagète. Variation de Calliope
18

Apollon musagète. Variation de Polymnie
19

Apollon musagète. Variation de Terpsichore
20

Apollon musagète. Variation d'Apollon
21

Apollon musagète. Pas de deux
22

Apollon musagète. Coda
23

Apollon musagète. Apothéose

Europadisc Review

Although it was written consciously against the grand tradition of Classical and Romantic violin concertos from Beethoven to Tchaikovsky and Brahms, and harked back instead to the world of Bach, Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto in D (1931) has proved remarkably popular with violinists on disc. From historic recordings by Samuel Dushkin (the work’s dedicatee and first performer), Oistrakh and Schneiderhan to more recent contenders including Isabelle Faust and Vilde Frang, there’s a dazzling array of choices for this neoclassical (or rather, neo-Baroque) work. However, it’s rare for two high-profile new recordings to be released within just a week of one another: James Ehnes has recorded it with the BBC Philharmonic and Andrew Davis on Chandos, while Frank Peter Zimmermann (in what appears to be his third recording of the piece) teams up with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra and Jakub Hrůša on BIS, following their acclaimed 2020 release of Martinů’s violin concertos.

Both recordings have their strengths. Ehnes is marginally more expansive, with noble tone and nimble technique, and the orchestral detail is vivid thanks to Chandos’s typically well-focused recording. From the outset (with the famous ‘passport chord’ that opens each of the work’s four movements) there’s a doggedness to the opening Toccata, while the first of the two central Arias finds Ehnes’s rich tone well deployed against the orchestral soloists and the second has some wonderfully heartfelt playing. The concluding Capriccio bursts into life, with pre-echoes of the ‘Dumbarton Oaks’ Concerto much in evidence. Davis is an attentive accompanist, and the BBC Philharmonic woodwind players in particular are exemplary in their duets with the solo violin. In the final analysis, however, this performance feels slightly too ‘studied’: the individual elements are expertly drawn, yet somehow the admirable parts don’t quite gel into a convincing whole.

Whether you choose the Ehnes recording may depend on the couplings. This is an all-Stravinsky disc, with a range of works from his so-called ‘neoclassical’ phase illustrating the sheer variety covered by that catchall term. A genial account of the Scherzo á la russe (originally written in 1945 for the Paul Whiteman band) follows the Concerto, before the timeline leaps back to the 1920s and the two Suites for small orchestra. The album concludes with what is perhaps Stravinsky’s neoclassical masterpiece, Apollon musagète, a ballet scored for string orchestra. Davis and the BBC Philharmonic strings deliver a beautifully considered account of the score, even though it often doesn’t have quite the bite or élan of some rival recordings. Nevertheless, for those wanting an all-Stravinsky coupling for the Violin Concerto, this disc makes an attractive proposition.

Turn to Zimmermann on BIS, however, and you get a rather different take on the work: there’s a degree more urgency, and also more edginess, while at the same time capturing some of that poised detachment so crucial to the neoclassical aesthetic. The solo violin is very much to the fore, the orchestral sound a little more backward than on the Chandos disc, yet thanks to Hrůša’s expert direction the coordination between soloist and orchestra is faultless. There’s a coolness to Zimmermann’s virtuosity which speaks of long experience with this score, yet he knows how to dig in without creating an overrich tone. And the Concerto as a whole, including a more restless account of Aria I and a wonderfully tender and dreamy Aria II, coheres in a way that Ehnes and Davis on Chandos can’t quite match.

The other works on the BIS disc are also for violin and orchestra: Bartók’s two Rhapsodies, composed just a few years before Stravinsky’s Concerto, are steeped in the folk music of Eastern Europe. Each follows the slow–fast Lassú–Friss pattern of movements familiar from Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies, and both soloist and orchestra clearly relish the opportunity to get stuck into the earthy folksiness of these two surprisingly contrasting pieces. They are followed by a work which, appropriately enough, combines neoclassical and folk elements: Martinů’s Suite concertante for violin and orchestra of 1944. Cast in four movements, it is partly modelled on Stravinsky’s Concerto, and its first two movements are similarly a Toccata and Aria. Yet the music is very much Martinů’s own, with an immersive urgency to the opening movement, and big splashes of sound in the orchestral tuttis. The Aria is uninhibitedly expressive, but with a delicate sheen to the demanding violin part which is wonderfully conveyed by Zimmermann.

The following Scherzo opens with a crack and continues in fizzing fashion even at its moderate tempo, with a measure of sardonic humour, and Zimmermann’s fabulous dexterity and virtuosity is lightly worn, which suits the quicksilver nature of the music. Folk elements in the concluding Rondo are married to a broad, expansive orchestral palette, against which the soloist dances with not a care in the world. The concluding stretta brings the tonal centre back to the work’s home key of D major (another common feature with the Stravinsky) in a bracing close. An added bonus is the haunting Méditation, which formed the original second movement of the Suite. It’s a magical end to an exceptionally rewarding disc, well-programmed and brilliantly executed and recorded. Another triumph for Zimmermann, Hrůša and the team at BIS!