Notes and Editorial Reviews
Mordkovitch displays a range of tone-color from a dreaming, rapt quality to bold eloquence, and she does not lose warmth or beauty of tone when really digging into the strings.
I warmly welcomed Thomas Zehetmair's coupling of these concertos for its careful differentiation of their two contrasting sound worlds, subtly underlined by Sir Simon Rattle's demonstration of how much chamber music both works contain. Mordkovitch and Sinaisky take a more sumptuously romantic view, the palette warmer, the textures richer almost throughout, thus emphasizing kinships rather than distinctions. The risk is that Szymanowski's opulence will be emphasized at the expense of his delicacy and fantasy, and the fact that on the whole this is
Read more
not the case is due very largely to Mordkovitch's range of tone-colour, from a dreaming, rapt quality to bold eloquence. Sinaisky is more apt than Rattle to go for richly saturated colours with a formidable, windowrattling bass end to the spectrum, but with the exception of one particularly sonorous passage in the First Concerto Mordkovitch has the sheer heft to avoid being overwhelmed — and, as she shows in the molto energico section of the Second Concerto, she does not lose warmth or beauty of tone when really digging into the strings.
Admirably persuasive performances, in short, coupled with a luxuriously Straussian account of the Concert Overture in which, as in the two concertos, Sinaisky shows a fine control of expressive rubato. Just a little of Zehetmair's and Rattle's delicacy is lacking, but most listeners will find the added richness ample compensation. The recorded sound has that same quality but, save in the densest tuttis, with no lack of clarity.
-- Gramophone [3/1997]
Read less
Works on This Recording
1.
Concerto for Violin no 1, Op. 35 by Karol Szymanowski
Performer:
Lydia Mordkovitch (Violin)
Conductor:
Vassili Sinaisky
Orchestra/Ensemble:
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1916; Poland
Date of Recording: 04/12/1996
2.
Concerto for Violin no 2, Op. 61 by Karol Szymanowski
Performer:
Lydia Mordkovitch (Violin)
Conductor:
Vassili Sinaisky
Orchestra/Ensemble:
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1933; Poland
Date of Recording: 04/13/1996
3.
Concert Overture in E major, Op. 12 by Karol Szymanowski
Conductor:
Vassili Sinaisky
Orchestra/Ensemble:
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
Period: 20th Century
Written: 1905/1913; Poland
Date of Recording: 04/12/1996
Sound Samples
Violin Concerto No. 1, Op. 35
Violin Concerto No. 2, Op. 61: Moderato, molto tranquillo -
Violin Concerto No. 2, Op. 61: Allegramente, molto energico -
Violin Concerto No. 2, Op. 61: Andantino, molto tranquillo -
Violin Concerto No. 2, Op. 61: Tempo I
Customer Reviews
Be the first to review this title
Review This Title
