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Review
Berg never heard his Violin Concerto. He died three months before the first performance in Barcelona in 1936...but a 22 year old Benjamin Britten was there, and his own Violin Concerto written three years later appears to owe a debt, not just to the Berg Concerto (which the young Englishman found sublime and shattering) but also to the location of the premiere. This was Republican Spain just moments from civil war, and Britten the pacifist finished his concerto in America in 1939, after leaving war-torn Europe behind him. These concertos feel like natural partners on disc, and it's astonishing that this seems to be the first time they've appeared together.
Berg first...and because the composer wasn't around to oversee that first performance, a number of uncorrected errors made it into the published manuscript. This is the first recording of Douglas Jarman's corrected edition, and most of the changes will pass unnoticed...but there's one passage at the start of Part 2 where the violin suddenly soars a whole octave higher than we're used to, making an even greater impact when the soloist plummets to earth. Of course this concerto has had some legendary performances over the years by some of the great violinists of the 20th century, and while this new one isn't likely to supplant them, there's more than just the fidelity of the manuscript to consider here. Hope's performance is finely judged, but it's the detail and clarity of the orchestral reading that's most telling, conducted by cellist Paul Watkins, Hope's sometime partner in chamber music.
It's the coupling that really counts though. The Britten Concerto still qualifies as a neglected masterpiece, despite the attentions of Maxim Vengerov and Rostropovich in a powerful recent recording. Hope and Watkins give up nothing at all to their Russian rivals; in fact this boldly expansive performance exposes the dark, painfully beautiful heart of Britten's Concerto in as searing a reading as any I've heard. There's a vulnerable edge to Hope's sound that's perfect for the final pages of the concerto, leaving the listener in a shattered landscape, emotionally drained.
The recording quality is excellent, the balance is natural, and the presentation is fine: fascinating notes. I'd be very surprised if the pairing of Berg and Britten Violin Concertos isn't tried again - it's mutually beneficial. But any newcomer will need something special not to be found wanting against readings as rewarding as these.
Like This? Try These:
Britten: Suites for Solo Cello (Paul Watkins)
Britten: Violin Concerto; Walton: Viola Concerto (Maxim Vengerov)
Webern: String Quartets (Artis Quartett) --Andrew McGregor
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Heartbreaking beauty,
By Contemp (Cambs, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Berg & Britten : Violin Concertos (Audio CD)
Bought this after hearing the Britten on BBC Radio 3, and I wasn't disappointed. However, I found myself listening more and more to the Berg. Hope's playing is wonderfully judged, and he is justly earning himself a great reputation. I can't fault the orchestra either. It's great to hear the influence of Berg's masterpiece on the young Britten, and I will definitely be keeping an eye out for Hope's future work.
12 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Inspiration of Daniel Hope,
This review is from: Berg & Britten : Violin Concertos (Audio CD)
This collection of violin concertos is of the highest standard, an inspirational album of hope, sorrow and mellow love. Daniel does not only play the strings of his violin but he plays the strings of any appreciative listeners heart. This deeply emotional album has deffinately got a hold on me, how about you?
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.8 out of 5 stars (5 customer reviews) 14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Solid Performances of Two 20th Century Violin Concerto Masterpieces,
By Grady Harp - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Berg & Britten : Violin Concertos (Audio CD)
Why Benjamin Britten's Violin Concerto, Opus 15 is not a staple of the orchestra repertoires around the world remains a mystery. It is seldom performed, is rich in inventive writing, contains passages of striking virtuosity for the performer, and contains some of Britten's most beautiful melodic lines. It may take an evening with a live performance (as recently with the Los Angeles Philharmonic , Midori as soloist) to stimulate classical music lovers to reconsider the excellence of this work, or it may take hearing a performance on recording as overwhelmingly beautiful as this coupling of the Britten with the better known and more often performed Alban Berg by the young Daniel Hope to lift the work to the public conscience. Whatever reason brings the listener back to this rather early work by Benjamin Britten is rewarded with an appreciation with just how extraordinary is this concerto.
Daniel Hope is an artist's artist, placing the composer's intentions first and 'showmanship' last. His reading of both the Berg and Britten are played with a clarity of tone and phrasing that allows him to move from the technically 'impossible' passages into the lyrical ones with complete ease. Of note is the manner in which Hope is in conversation with the orchestra (here the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Paul Watkins) during the Part II Adagio of the Berg where the orchestra is in Bach like chorale while the ornamentation is from the precise writing for the violin. Or both the opening and closing passages of the Britten when the silences and sustained lines are of paramount importance. Others may hail the impressive Vengerov recording (coupling the Britten with the Walton Viola concerto) as more exciting, but for this listener the intimacy Daniel Hope achieves here is overwhelmingly beautiful. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, November 08 10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Both works receive incomparable performances,
By Santa Fe Listener - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Berg & Britten : Violin Concertos (Audio CD)
I don't think this 2003 recording from Daniel Hope was much noticed on our side of the Atlantic. The catalog is full of notable versions of the Berg Violin Concerto, and the Britten is almost never played here. But in all respects this is an ear-opening experience. Hope and the cellist-turned-conductor Paul Watkins are protoges of the great Yehudi Menuhin, and they have picked up his enormous integrity and spiritual directness.
However they inherited their style, here is a perfect amalgam of conductor and soloist. They have set out to clarify the complexities of the Berg by merging violin and orchestra into a single vloice (the miking reflects this by not forcing Hope into the spotlight), and for the first time I found it possible to follow Berg's imagination from beginning to end. Not that the erading feels studied or academic. Hope, born in 1974, belongs to a generation of musicians for whom the work's thorny idiom comes as naturally as Bach. Compared to his free, flexible, lucid, reading, those from Stern, Perlman, and Mutter seem stilted and even confused. Hope brings similar revelations to the Britten, which he plays -- as he does the Berg -- much more inwardly than expected. Nothing is done for show, and yet every measure is totally involving. Britten wrote in harmonies that are modernist but more conventional than Berg's -- his violin concerto followed Berg's by three years. On hearing the world premiere in Barcelona in 1936, the young Britten described the Berg as "shattering" and "sublime." Without imitating it, Britten wrote a work that can be just as mysterious and almost as devastating. The two are linked by their unnerving, grief-tinged, at times harrowing reaction to the Nazi era. Berg was specifically motivated by the tragic death of an 18-year-old girl, the daughter of Alma Mahler and Walter Gropius: the concerto's two parts depict her in life and then in death, leading to an angelic transfiguration. Britten more generally captures the haunted atmosphere of a darkened Europe in the late Thirties. Both composers place disjointed styles cheek to jowl. In the Berg we get a Viennese waltz, Austrian landler, and variations on a Bach funeral chorale, "Es ist genug" (echoing Jesus's "It is finished" on the cross). Britten's juxtapositions are more puzzling -- there are quasi-tango rhythms in the first movement, Mahlerian drum taps, and a wide array of desperate outcries in the Passacaglia-form finale. In short, this isn't an easy listen, and I don't want to fall into the trap of recommending it to sound superior, as if one deserves a prize for getting through thick underbrush. The listening here is truly enjoyable and deeply emotional. Hope, like Menuuhin, has the rare, selfless ability to get to the very heart of music, as if he sees past the notes to the composer's most heartfelt mtivations. He made me feel that both these works really matter -- what more can one ask? 5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Review of the Britten Concerto,
By B. R. Merrick - Published on Amazon.com
I already have a recording of the Berg, so I didn't download it. I had never heard Britten's Violin Concerto until I purchased this version by Hope, Watkins and the BBC Symphony. I've heard the BBC Symhony under Slatkin and Wigglesworth, and here, once again, they prove themselves worthy.
Britten's harmonies and musical ideas can be subtle, even muted at times, so it is important not to forget to emphasize when emphasis is necessary. As it is played on this recording, his Violin Concerto can obviously stand with the greatest of the twentieth century, along with Bartók's Second. All the way from Britten's opening, inviting-but-eerily-strange chords, to the sonorous, bass-driven swirling climb in thirds near the end of the final movement, the orchestra is dramatically centered, never dull or plodding. And Hope is an able and fiery player. (You can hear him tackle the opening chords of the second movement with the music sample provided here.) Now that I've discovered yet another masterpiece of the Western art tradition, I doubt I will ever find a need to go searching for another interpretation. |
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