Search - Edward Elgar, Vernon Handley, London Philharmonic Orchestra :: Elgar: Violin Concerto

REINCARNATION

DAVID BRYSON | Glossop Derbyshire England | 09/28/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Nigel Kennedy has reinvented his image nearly as often as Madonna has. This performance dates from 1984 when, if I recall accurately, he was still in his punk phase, but on the liner he is referred to simply and grandly as `Kennedy', in much the way one might refer to Heifetz. In my own opinion he is just as entitled to this uninominal styling and, in my own opinion again, he plays this great concerto better than Heifetz himself does.



Quite possibly indeed he plays it better than anyone does. I continue to like and admire my LP version from Zuckerman with Barenboim and the same orchestra as Kennedy has here, but this account has something special about it. Moreover here it is on a budget label, and that finally propels it to the top of my own choices among current versions that I know. Elgar's violin concerto to me is a very great piece of music indeed. It is on an epic scale for a concerto - well over 50 minutes in length, with outer movements (particularly the last) as long as typical movements in the Mahler symphonies and a slow movement on the scale of the very largest by Beethoven or Mozart. Among concertos for the violin I personally rate it second only to Brahms's, meaning by that soberly and literally that I rate it ahead of Beethoven's. It is not an easy work from either the technical or the interpretative point of view. Its very length is one problem, notably in the last movement where the so-called `cadenza' taking more than half the duration of the movement - a quiet interlude at a slow tempo largely harking back to the material of the first movement - needs the right kind of player if it is going to make the right kind of impact. In this performance it goes off very well indeed, starting with the famous but quiet `pizzicato tremolo' effect clearer than it often is.



In fact it would be quite easy to work through the performance picking out highlights. The soloist's very first entry would be one - he has precisely 8 notes to make his mark, and I like Kennedy's way of doing it, businesslike I suppose in a sense, but self-assured. I also want to give proper due to the LPO under Handley, who has never, I suspect, been given quite the recognition he probably deserves. I know him in Elgar already, and I recommend his account of the Pomp and Circumstance marches warmly. Tempi throughout seem to me pretty well exactly right, most of all in the central andante which I think superbly judged, and drawing some particularly fine playing from the soloist. Whether any of this has anything to do with the English nationality of everyone concerned I simply couldn't say and prefer not to theorise about. This composer and this composition are big enough, surely, to transcend that sort of thing.



I like the liner-note, which is brief, simple and to the point. The recording strikes me as very good and well judged for Elgar's special sound, which is by no means easy to capture in recording, to judge by some such that I have heard at times. All in all, very recommendable indeed. If I were choosing a recording from the field that I know, I think this would be it at any price, let alone at this price. To any interested newcomers I'd say go right ahead. This disc could do you perfectly well for a very long time indeed."