Britten’s Violin Concerto, from 1940, can be linked to Berg’s in several non-trivial ways: according to Donald Mitchell’s notes, Britten heard the premiere of Berg’s work in Barcelona, both concertos center on tragedies (although Britten’s subject matter appears more global than personal), and they were composed within only a few years of each other. If Berg’s Concerto hardly entered the mainstream for a generation, Britten’s suffered the same neglect. There may be reasons. Technically brilliant, it’s no simple showpiece; lyrical and dramatic, it’s also ominous and disturbing. Daniel Hope brings great technical assurance and panache to the demanding second movement, an incisive Scherzo with a twist of lemon, and to the rapid passagework in the concluding Passacaglia. But he also adapts to the first movement’s fresh lyricism, softening what sometimes seems its brash cockiness but not its steely core, and to the Passacaglia’s haunting final page. As in Berg’s Concerto, he’s miked so close up that he owes some of his commanding presence to the generosity of the engineers, who have trained a bright spotlight on him. (They’ve also revealed the vivid orchestral colors of Berg’s Concerto with great depth of detail and the stormy sonorities of Britten’s work with little diminution of their gale force.) But he owes nothing to them for his firm grasp of the work’s complexities and his tone’s cutting strength. Ruggiero Ricci also combined strength and lyricism in a moving reading (One-Eleven, EPR-96020) that barely emerges from what presumably the engineers took from an air-check. I remember finding Mark Lubotsky’s early readings of this Concerto favoring its more mordant passages (yet with strong-minded, soaring lyricism), while more recently, Maxim Vengerov (EMI 7243 5 57510 2 7) has also brought a similar mix of sweet and sour to the work. Vengerov’s incisive slashes, however, as in the central movement, never leave ragged edges, as, at least in comparison, do Hope’s.

Daniel Hope may not be the most individual among younger violinists. But of him it can be said without exaggeration that he communicates the kind of dramatic power that only the greatest violinists of the preceding era, notably Heifetz and Oistrakh, could generate at peak moments. Hope fries the ammeter’s circuitry throughout these two concertos: more than an hour of taut emotional tension. What he’s committed to disc supersedes others I’ve heard as a most visceral and deeply affecting recording of Berg’s Concerto; and that work is coupled with a performance of Britten’s that transmits its raw kinetic power. Strongly recommended.

Robert Maxham, FANFARE