| Site review by Castor October 26, 2006
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Performance: Sonics (MC): |
Julia Fischer’s eagerly awaited SACD of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto triumphantly justifies PentaTone’s decision to record it in spite of their already having two recommendable versions of this work by Christian Tetzlaff and Arthur Grumiaux in their catalogue.
As in her award-winning recording of Russian Violin Concertos Russian Violin Concertos - Fischer/Kreizberg, she is accompanied by Yakov Kreizberg, this time in dual role as conductor and pianist. As is clear from their earlier recordings together the Fischer / Kreizberg partnership is something special, and throughout this disc one gets a sense of them working together in complete accord.
From the soloist’s rapt entry at the start of the work to the wonderful sweep of the first tutti (note the thrilling trumpets) this is a spell binding performance and one that stresses the lyrical beauty of the score. Julia Fischer brings out all the beauties of the solo part, often using a subtle rubato that, while never impeding the forward momentum of the music, allows every phrase to tell.
The cadenza is a miracle of both precision and imaginative fantasy, and here the recording demonstrates how perfectly it has captured both the positioning of the soloist within the spacious acoustic and the sweetness of her tone.
The sorrowful Canzonetta, taken a fraction slower than is often the case, is played with much light and shade and there is a magical interplay between soloist and woodwind in the central section (from 3.50 onwards). It makes the same passage in the Tetzlaff / Nagano version sound positively mundane.
The Finale opens with tremendous attack from the orchestra and soloist – listen to those pizzicatos (0.24)! Fischer does not gallop away, as some do, to make the movement into just a virtuoso vehicle, but she certainly observes the Vivacissimo marking, and Kreizberg allows the woodwind to phrase the lovely second subject with an elegance and grace that is matched by the soloist. The very fast ending is quite breathtaking and would, I am sure, bring any concert audience to its feet.
The nostalgic ‘Sérénade Mélancholique’ allows us to appreciate Julia Fischer’s ability to sustain a long melodic line. It is one of Tchaikovsky’s least known and performed works, so it is wonderful to have it in such a deeply felt performance as this. It contrasts well with the delightful ‘Valse - Scherzo’, again another rarity that is played with great virtuosity and a terrific sense of fun making light of its formidable difficulties.
Finally, Yakov Kreizberg leaves the conductor’s podium to accompany Julia Fischer most sympathetically in the three movement ‘Souvenir d’un lieu cher’. The intimacy and sadness of Meditation is captured by the performance, although I would have preferred a slightly less close balance, allowing more air round the two instruments, and perhaps a less anonymous sounding acoustic signature than that of MCO Studio 5, Hilverum in which these three pieces were recorded.
The Scherzo is played with amazing quicksilver virtuosity, while the final Melodie has both simplicity and a winning charm that brings this superb SACD to its conclusion.
It need hardly be said that PentaTone’s recording, engineered by Erdo Groot and Jean-Marie Geijsen is of the highest quality, matching these most musical of performances and capturing them in glorious sound.
A top recommendation and an essential purchase!
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Copyright © 2006 Graham Williams and SA-CD.net
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| Site review by Polly Nomial February 1, 2007
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Performance: Sonics (MC): |
This latest Julia Fischer and Yakov Kreizberg recording is made with the Russian National Orchestra instead of the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra that was employed for their Mozart concerto cycle (the Sinfonia Concertante is still awaited but promised).
Like all of Fischer's recordings to date, all feature the same characteristics: superlative technique, rock solid intonation and a wide range of tone colour which is allied to a sensitive and engaging musical imagination. Unlike the other recent releases of the concerto on SACD (Tchaikovsky, Korngold: Violin Concerto - Mutter and Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto etc. - Joshua Bell) this is somewhat more urgent in the first movement. Coming in a full 1'30 ahead of Bell, there is no haste nor lack of clarity but a more overtly Romantic approach than either Mutter or Bell allow themselves: when the music is more introverted, a calmer and soulful approach is adopted but when the music calls for the musicians to let rip, the notes almost explode from the speakers!
The slow movement is a genuine Canzonetta - no syrup is in evidence and yet the heartfelt expression from the superb woodwinds and Fischer would be enough to melt anyone's aversion to Tchaikovsky. The care which Kreizberg moulds the opening is wonderful, normally the woodwind dialogue between themselves and the soloist is played down but not here. The strings slink in and take over from the woodwind in a manner that Karajan would have approved of for the smoothness but Abbado would also approve from the pointing of the phrases - really quite marvellous.
The finale is, as one would expect from these musicians other recordings, tremendously exciting. It is not that the tempo adopted is especially quick (although it's not slow). Instead it is the lightning changes of dynamic and character, all executed at the same time as linking into the longer line of the music that make it so exciting. Unlike Mutter's recording, there is no hold up into the second subject and Fischer/Kreizberg make a quicker return to the core tempo than many others. It must also be said that the orchestral contribution is the most exciting I have heard since Abbado & the BPO for Vengerov - no mean feat! One feels as the final chord dies away, cheated that there is no roar of applause that there surely would have been had this been a concert performance - that it was not speaks volumes about the electricity that these artists generate.
The rest of the programme is no less enjoyable. For the substantial "encores", we are served up with the Sérénade mélancolique Op.26, the Valse-Scherzo Op.34 and the delightful tryptich Souvenir d'un lieu cher Op.42 (Bell offers Op.42/1 only on his disc which is a shame as there was more than enough room to fit the other two parts on). The first two are concertante works for violin and orchestra which are beautifully rendered with virtuosity of the highest order in both: the Sérénade is self-effacing, the Valse-Scherzo needs a more outward display. We get both from Fischer and the wonderful RNO. Kreizberg then sets down his baton for the piano and proves to be just as sensitive a pianist as he is a conductor.
The sound is the finest that Pentatone have yet achieved from the DZZ Studio 5 in Moscow (the Souvenir was recorded in Hilversum no less successfully) with a wonderful sense of presence for all instruments together with a clarity and staging that only a great MCH recording can bring.
Wonderful!
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Copyright © 2007 John Broggio and SA-CD.net
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| Review by fafnir December 23, 2006 (15 of 16 found this review helpful)
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Performance: Sonics (MC): |
All too often one had high expectations for a disc only to be disappointed either with the performance, the sound, or sometimes both. In the case of Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, the bar for me was set very high. For 50 years (I can hardly believe it) the Heifetz/Reiner recording has been the standard. This performance has been imprinted in me to an extent that all others seemed second best.
Therefore, I am pleased to say that Heifetz needs to move over; this performance is fantastic and the recording is as good as you can get. If fact, I have little to add to Castor's excellent review. This is a great disc and an essential SACD purchase - easily one of the top ten for 2006 or any other year.
I eagerly await the Brahms and Mozart discs to be released this year.
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| Review by Julien March 10, 2007 (7 of 15 found this review helpful)
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Performance: Sonics (S/MC): / |
Julia Fischer is highly talented, but still can improve a lot in order to really be remembered 100 years from now. She is still not able to artistically express everything she has (to me she is far from her peak), especially her vibrato is out of control as soon as she plays faster or excited. This is the main problem in an already beautifully played second movement for example. (We used to call that type of vibrato the "goat style")
But what disturbs me more is the lack of rhythmical feeling in the third movement, coming from her and the orchestra. Stern and Ormandy (Sony SACD) have it all, like it or not. This is still very young playing, and guessing from what I hear here I wouldn’t like to hear Julia Fischer in tango music for example...
Julia Fischer is at her best in soft and piano, which can be a rare quality nowadays. But she expresses herself a lot with her sound quality and a beautiful vibrato (in the pianos), and not enough on the vertical or rhythmical line (more vertical and varied bow work would be very welcome).
So, based on her true sensibility, my guess is that her playing could really be something in 20 years.
Something to praise anyway is her ability to play with the orchestra. The orchestra itself of course is doing a great job, but she is one of those soloists who listen so well and she makes her playing fit in the whole picture as if it was a chamber music work. I think the fact that she is a good pianist herself and practises all scores on the piano plays a role here.
Now the sound.
Very simple, I will rate the stereo and MC versions the same way, because both have the same problem and the same qualities. Very good job as always with Pentatone anyway, but the sound has this soft quality I don’t find very natural, lacking here the crisp and punch and direct side you find in the Jurowsky Shostakovich 1&6 recording. In stereo, I had the same problem with the Pentatone Nutcracker SACD.
The interesting part is that I understand both this recording and the Jurowsky one were made under the same conditions, same studio, same recording team, and even same orchestra. Different conductor though, and funnily enough, that soft side is very similar to Julia Fischer’s sound and personality. But soft on soft in not my cup of tea, and even though I guess she likes it this way I still believe her beautiful sound would sound even a lot better with the transparency of the Jurowsky recording.
Of course, the good thing with Pentatone is that I still haven't heard a true disappointment among that many recordings from them, which is not the case for most companies (Deutsche Grammophon...). So, still bravo!
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| Review by Windsurfer March 12, 2007 (11 of 16 found this review helpful)
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Performance: Sonics (MC): |
I’ve known this concerto since about 1955. My first recording of it was by Zino Francescatti and the New York Philharmonic on a Columbia LP. Soon to follow were recordings by Stern, Oistrach, Heifetz, Milstein, Perlman, Szeryng, Ferras, and then there were CDs from Mutter, Mullova, Bell, Repin, and Vengerov.
As an interesting aside, I read an interview of Victoria Mullova some time ago where she said she was dropping the Tchiakovsky concerto from her repertoire because it represented too much effort on the part of the violinist for the small musical value she felt the piece represents. Having heard several performances in concert as well as the above recordings I was thinking in agreement with her assessment of the piece and back in December of 2005 when my wife and I had an opportunity to hear Fischer live in New York, playing the Tchaikovsky, I secretly thought to myself – why the Tchaikovsky? Here is an overplayed warhorse that has far less musical value than so many other works that the public never gets to hear. Why not Bartok, Berg, Beethoven, etc...
...Then I heard the soloists entry: Just her tone quality in itself was arresting. A tone quality that cast off lights and highlights shimmering “held in midair like stars twinkling in the midnight sky” (words I borrow from a description of her playing - by a professional violinist on www.violinst.com.)
This was something truly extraordinary! The sheer lyricism was jaw dropping but also present was an urgency in the faster sections that no one else – not even Heifetz, who by comparison seems merely rushed, even approaches. In his review of the recording, PolyNomial refers to “lightning fast changes of dynamic and character, all executed at the same time as linking into the longer line of the music that make it so exciting. It is to me a matter of pulse and Fischer and Maazel with the New York Philharmonic maintained that pulse throughout the entire last movement leaving me just about breathless.
I hoped the recording with the Russian National Orchestra would equal that performance I heard in Avery Fisher Hall. I was not disappointed! It actually surpasses, and by a good margin, the live concert.
None of the recordings listed above has given me even remotely so much enjoyment as this present disc from Julia Fischer and PentaTone.
I’ve had this for about 3 months now. I hadn’t previously felt pressed to express my own experience of it in a review, because the very excellent reviews by PolyNomial, Castor, and Fafnir really said everything I thought I needed saying.
However in the light of what I feel is an absurdity recently published here on the subject, further examination of the qualities of Fischer’s performance of the concerto seems reasonable.
Over the last couple months, I’ve listened to the disc several times - also discussed it with friends who have heard it here and in their own homes. Our consensus remains well expressed by the reviews written by Castor and Polynomial and Fafnir.
In summary: This, at least for now, and probably for years to come, is THE recording of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto to own and enjoy. Others will (one should hope) be different, offering individual felicities not really possible here because of the interpretive choices made. We do not miss them, for when a choice is made to play something fast, one cannot also play it slowly at the same time...and conversely! The enormous satisfaction we derive from listening to this disc tells me that Fischer and Kreizburg made the right intrepretive choices.
I listened this morning to the entire concerto and then to the second movement (4 times) and to the third movement 3 times. The second movement is simply beautifully done – Certainly more beautifully done than on any of the records I listed above. Throughout the movement the violinist conveys a lovely deeply felt lyricism, and, contrary to the opinion expressed in the review immediately above, control of her bow arm and left hand are beyond question.
In the faster sections of the first movement and in the last movement, Both soloist and conductor demonstrate true mastery of their respective trades. Tension builds and is released into flowing lyricism, tension builds and builds until the final chords and you want to burst into applause right in your listening room and as PolyNomial said in his review: the only thing missing is the applause you know belongs at the conclusion of this performance for the ages.
I found no, again - absolutely no evidence here of any "out of control" aspects of any part of her playing - certainly not her vibrato. As for rhythmic felicity perhaps present in Stern's recording; its different. If you prefer Stern go listen to it with all its imprecision of intonation. If as alleged above, this is "youthful playing" we are more than happy with the shear excitment and lyrical beauty this perfectly played performance overwhelmingly conveys. This disc is truly a revelation! Please - don't miss it!
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| Review by JJ May 28, 2007 (3 of 6 found this review helpful)
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Performance: Sonics (S/MC): / |
Pour son sixième SACD, Julia Fischer revient au concerto pour violon russe avec celui de Tchaïkovski. Composée pendant une des périodes les plus difficiles et douloureuses de la vie du musicien, la partition fut créée avec le Wiener Philharmoniker en 1881. La Sérénade Mélancolique Op.26 pour violon et orchestre, en un seul mouvement andante, date de 1875. La Valse-Sherzo Op.34 fut dédiée au violoniste et ami intime du compositeur, Joseph Kotek. Souvenir d'un lieu cher Op.42 pour violon et piano est une œuvre faisant référence à la somptueuse demeure de la baronne von Meck, inspirée par l'architecture du château de Versailles et dans laquelle Tchaïkovski aimait à s'y reposer seul. Julia Fischer retrouve Yakov Kreizberg et l'Orchestre National Russe pour ce qui est certainement un de ses plus beaux enregistrements. Avec une approche d'une réelle originalité, en regard du nombre de versions de ce concerto, la violoniste allemande insuffle à la partition un souffle nouveau dans lequel, hormis une technique toujours aussi éblouissante, une vision intimiste d'une poésie absolue se fait jour. Son archet caresse les cordes de l'instrument avec plus de finesse élégiaque que de poids romantique. « La légèreté » de l'ensemble n'en demeure pas moins d'une force tangible à la fois passionnée et intérieure. Une nouvelle fois, Julia Fischer fait preuve d'une intelligence interprétative rare. Yakov Kreizberg connaît parfaitement sa partenaire et l'entoure d'un accompagnement orchestral idéal. Et lorsqu'il se met au piano pour Souvenir d'un lieu cher, l'osmose est parfaite. Voici donc un disque unique pour notamment, une vision originale d’un Concerto pour violon souvent joué et enregistré mais rarement habité.
Jean-Jacques Millo
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| Review by threerandot March 14, 2008 (8 of 8 found this review helpful)
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Performance: Sonics (MC): |
This recording of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto features an electrifying peformance of this famous work. This Pentatone recording appears to be a little closer in sound than some of her previous ones, but this all seems to be to the good side. The Russian National Orchestra are a first rate team of players and provide wonderful accompaniment.
Julia plays with a passionate intensity and warmth of feeling. Throughout this concerto, she plays all of the virtuoso passages effortlessly. The remarkable thing is Julia's confidence belies her age. She plays this music as if her life depends on it and it is hard to believe someone so young can be so accomplished. Her tone is never restricted in the high notes and she plays with a sound that is at times lyrical or at times playful. She also never misses the opportunity to play with great emotion, never lingering too long or too briefly on a given phrase.
Yakov Kreizberg manages to capture the right balance between his soloist and the orchestra and the RNO should be commended for their contribution. Listen to the beautiful winds in the canzonetta, all vividly caught. The somewhat closer microphone placement brings us closer to the orchestra and is beneficial in the lyrical sections.
In the finale, we are taken along for a wild ride with amazing virtuoso playing from Julia and the orchestra. Julia's technique is never sloppy or out of control, but she plays as if she was a "runaway freight train". This a recording of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto which has all of the confidence and authority one could wish for. A true gem and a performance that is definitely worth adding to your collection.
The mood of this disc changes with the somber and pastoral Serenade Melancolique. Julia plays with a sweet longing and the pizzicatto strings of the RNO are delightful. This a work full of hope and nostalgia and Julia, Yakov Kreizberg and the Russian National Orchestra play with great committment.
Next, the mood lightens with the effervescent Valse - Scherzo. This is a ravishing and charming waltz with spontaneous and wonderful playing. This was originally meant to be the slow movement in the Violin Concerto before it was replaced by the canzonetta. This piece may not have the same emotional significance as the Serenade Melancolique, but it is still worth having in this collection. Julia's playing is very persuasive. Listen to the impressive cadenza near the end.
In an intriguing and satisfying close to this disc, Kreizberg puts down his baton and accompanies Julia from the piano in the Souvenir d’un lieu cher Op. 42. Kreizberg is a sensitive and colorful accompanist and there is an intimate acoustic that puts us close to the solists. In the meditation, the emotions are on the sleeve and immediate. Julia and Yakov enjoy digging into the Scherzo with plenty of lively and rhythmic playing. The Schrezo also has a contrasting middle section full of charm and lyricism. The work closes with the nostalgic Melodie.
With the exceptional performance of the Violin Concerto, the virtuosity and precision of the playing, the excellent recording (although I do wish there was just a little bit more air around the sound) and the additional works presented in this collection, this disc deserves a place in your collection. Highly Recommended.
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