James Ehnes - Barber, Korngold, Walton: Violin Concerto [CD]

A fine violinist excels himself in an outstanding trio of romantic concertos It's an inspired coupling, as well as a generous one, to have these three high-romantic concertos together. James Ehnes gives superb performances, bringing out their full emotional thrust without vulgarity or exaggeration. His playing has always been impressive on disc, but here he excels himself in expressive range as well as the tonal beauty, with expressive rubato perfectly controlled. The concertos date from the late-1930s and '40s, and though at such time their romanticism might have seemed outdated, the strength and memorability of the musical ideas in each amply justifies the composers' stance. In the Barber, Ehnes more than usual brings out the contrast between the first movement - improbably marked Allegro when the impression is of a slowish piece - and the Andante slow movement, strengthening the work's impact. The Korngold, drawing its striking main themes from some of the composer's film scores, is just as richly lyrical, prompting from Ehnes some ecstatic playing of the many stratospheric melodies above the stave, using a wide dynamic range with wonderfully delicate half-tones. The Walton is just as memorable, for unlike most latter-day interpreters Ehnes has taken note of the example of the work's commissioner and dedicatee, Jascha Heifetz. Where the work is generally spread to well over half an hour, Ehnes takes exactly 30 minutes and the result is all the stronger. This is one of Walton's most richly inspired works, and Ehnes brings that out strongly, helped by the powerful playing of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra under its music director Bramwell Tovey. Textures are not always as transparent as they might be, but the power of the orchestral playing in all three works adds greatly to the impact of the performances. An outstanding disc in every way. --Gramophone,Feb 2007

More corn than gold, was the cruel put-down of the American critic Irving Kolodin after hearing the première of the opulent Violin Concerto by Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957), played by Heifetz. Korngold was 50 and his life had already mirrored some of the major political and social upheavals of the 20th century. Fifty is old for a child prodigy, he said, wryly looking back on the unpredictable and, to him, ultimately unsatisfying course that his life and music had taken. Success came early. At 10, Mahler declared the child prodigy a genius. The middle name of Wolfgang, bestowed by a pushy, over-protective father, seemed inevitable at the time, forward-looking rather than presumptuous. The Vienna Court Opera presented Korngold s precocious pantomime The Snowman, written when he was eleven. Operas and symphonic works flowed from his pen before he was 20. His music was taken up by the likes of Kreisler and Flesch, Schnabel and Cortot, Tauber and Lehman, Weingartner and Walter. It was crowned by Die Tote Stadt (1916-20), which became one of the most performed operas of the 1920s, reaching more than 80 stages worldwide. Korngold s success was defined by his operas and his operatic writing came to define his own musical style. In 1934, with Europe increasingly becoming a dangerous place for a Jewish composer, Korngold was drawn to Hollywood. I never drew a distinction between music for films and for operas or concerts, he said. A favourable contract with Warner Bros. followed and for the next 12 years, Korngold composed 17 major film scores, including two Academy Award winners. Now, Korngold s command of the late romantic musical vocabulary and his fluency in underscoring dramatic narrative blossomed from the stage into a medium that reached millions. Nostalgia, fantasy and escape were key ingredients of the Hollywood movies of the Thirties and Forties and Korngold s music captured the mood of the times to an extraordinary degree. Perceptively, Korngold had negotiated to keep his own copyright in his music written for Hollywood and this was to prove crucial when he came to write the Violin Concerto. From the last of his film scores, Deception (1946), starring his favourite actress, Bette Davis, Korngold extracted his Cello Concerto. It was concert music of a sort he had consciously ignored while exiled from Vienna. His Violin Concerto, too, turned inward to the lush melodies and plush orchestrations he knew so well from his work in the studios. It opens with a glorious melody that captures the very soul of the violin itself. It is borrowed from the music he wrote for the film Another Dawn(1937). The second theme is no less lyrical and nostalgic, drawn this time from the historical epic Juarez (1939). The sweetly singing violin line was a good fit for the work s earliest champion, Jascha Heifetz, who gave the première in 1947 and made a famous recording a few years later. The Polish violinist Bronislaw Huberman had frequently encouraged Korngold to complete the concerto, since seeing its first draft in 1937, but had left for Europe by the time it was finished. The wistful Romance takes its main theme from one of Korngold s Oscar-winning scores, Anthony Adverse (1936), a romantic tearjerker set in 18th century Italy. Its rapturous meditations high on the E string are sumptuously underscored by a shimmering, darkly hued orchestral accompaniment. Korngold once said that the concerto was written for a Caruso, rather than a Paganini. The Finale offers virtuoso variations on a theme from one of Korngold s finest movie scores, the Mark Twain classic The Prince and the Pauper (1937).