Search - Igor Stravinsky, Aldo Orvieto, Andreas Meyer-Hermann :: Igor Stravinsky: Works for Violin & Piano

Familiar Stravinsky PIano/Violin Duos Crisply Performed

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 10/16/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Two of the three works presented here--Suite Italienne for Violin and Piano, and Divertimento for Violin and Piano--started life as orchestral pieces: 'Pulcinella' and 'Le Baiser de la Fée.' Each suite was written so that Stravinsky could have music of his own to play when he and American violinist Samuel Dushkin toured in the 1930s as a duo. This came about after Stravinsky had written his Violin Concerto for Dushkin and was much taken with the American's musicianship. The third piece here, Duo Concertant for Violin and Piano, is original music, also written for the Stravinsky/Dushkin duo. All three chamber pieces have served as the music for ballets, the latter two by George Balanchine.The music is well known enough that it does not require any discussion. The reason I chose to write this review is that the performances are nothing short of sensational. And this from artists of whom I'd never heard. The violinist is Dora Bratchkova, a Bulgarian who is currently the concertmaster of the Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra and a professor at a conservatoire in Mannheim. Her playing is crisply articulated--a real necessity in Stravinsky--and yet warm-toned, just the right combination for this tuneful but angular music.The violinist has a different pianist for each of the three suites: Aldo Orvieto, a young man, once a student of Aldo Ciccolini, in the Suite Italienne; Violeta Popova, a middle-aged Bulgarian graduate of the Moscow Conservatory who specializes in chamber music, in the 'Divertimento'; and Andreas Meyer-Hermann, a venerable professor at the Academy of Music in Frankfurt. All three are excellent and match their partner in their alert rhythmic sense. All three duos have a real sense of ensemble. So, here we have a recording of three wonderful violin-piano suites played in exemplary fashion by four (to me) unknown musicians who can hold their own with performances by the likes of Itzhak Perlman and Cho-Liang Lin and their partners, Bruno Canino and André-Michel Schub. The recorded sound is as good as it gets.Music worth knowing in performances worth hearing.TT=55:06Scott Morrison"