ORCHESTRAL REVIEWS soaring rapture of the second movement or the lively finale. Throughout, there are few bars when the soloist is not playing. The concerto is followed by Stojowski’s delightful Romanze (6'40"), written at about the same time and dedicated to Jacques Thibaud. The premiere recordings of both works were recorded by the excellent Agnieszka Marucha in 2008. While her student orchestra is not quite the BBC Scottish and the sound is not Hyperion’s, she includes Stojowski’s not insubstantial (28'09") Sonata No 2 for violin and piano on a disc that is very much worth considering. The Hyperion programme is completed by the Fantaisie on Gounod’s Faust, a work by Wieniawski (a Polish composer from an earlier generation) which, unlike the Stojowski pieces, is an unabashed showpiece. It ends with an exquisitely challenging treatment (partly in harmonics) of the famous Act 2 waltz, featured by Liszt in his better known Faust Paraphrase for piano solo. Nizioł despatches this with the same jaunty good humour (but in a brighter sound picture) as Vadim Brodsky and Antoni Wit back in 1988. Jeremy Nicholas Stojowski – selected comparison: Marucha, Orch of the Elsner School, Warsaw, Wajrak (1/10) (ACTE) AP0221 Wieniawski – selected comparison: Brodsky, Polish RSO, Wit (ARTS) 47313-2
Tchaikovsky Symphonies – No 1, ‘Winter Daydreams’, Op 13; No 2, ‘Little Russian’, Op 17; No 5, Op 64 Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra / Vasily Petrenko Onyx M b 0/:9 s %%%
Vasily Petrenko’s gripping recording of Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic (Naxos, 1/09) tantalised listeners that a complete cycle may be in the offing. That was back in 2009. Seven years on – and jumping ship from Naxos to Onyx – that wish is set to be granted. It was worth the wait: this release of Symphonies Nos 1, 2 and 5 makes the best possible start to the projected cycle. We’re certainly not short of symphonic Tchaikovsky on disc. A number of UK orchestras headed by Russian conductors (Vladimir Jurowksi with the LPO, Valery Gergiev with the LSO) have been active on the Tchaikovsky front in recent years, along with the Ukrainian Kirill Karabits in – appropriately enough – the Little Russian 46 GRAMOPHONE AUGUST 2016
(No 2), but Petrenko and the RLPO emerge from the pack strongly. I’ve always shared a fondness for Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony, whose subtitle is usually translated as Winter Daydreams (although Winter Reveries is a more accurate translation of ‘Zimniye gryozy’). Petrenko’s approach makes me love it all the more. He sets brisk tempi – the first movement is a bracing troika ride through the snow, with pin-sharp playing and breathless excitement. The RLPO strings may not be as opulent as their LSO counterparts but their playing is crisp and lithe. This is an extrovert reading; listen to the lively timpani volley in the third movement’s closing pages (6'40") or the jaunty Cossack dance finale, where Tchaikovsky employs a genuine Russian folksong, ‘The garden bloomed’. Here the orchestra is at its exuberant, unbuttoned best, even outdoing Jurowski’s LPO for excitement. Folksong plays its part in the Second. Horn and bassoon are at their most cantabile in the mournful ‘Down by Mother Volga’ in the Andante sostenuto introduction before the Allegro vivo kicks in (3'21") with strenuous attack. Petrenko rattles through this movement considerably faster than Gergiev and Karabits and bustles the RLPO along in a skittering Scherzo. It’s only in the perky march in between (which Tchaikovsky originally composed for his opera Undine) that Petrenko drags his feet a touch. The variation-based finale (featuring the Ukrainian folksong ‘The Crane’) isn’t great music but Petrenko bursts the bombastic introduction deliciously, whipping up an exciting finale, punctuated by a doom-laden tam-tam before a joyous coda. Petrenko’s Fifth is terrific too, if not quite as blistering as Jurowski’s; that performance with the LPO remains the best of recent years. The Fate motto is quietly announced by the RLPO clarinets before being swept away by torrents of impassioned playing. There is a glowing nobility about the first horn’s solo in the Andante cantabile before massed brass bite hard in a chilling restatement of the Fate motif. The turbulent finale leads culminates in a stoic reiteration of the main theme, before the coda gallops away triumphantly. If future releases match these impetuous, glorious performances, Petrenko’s should be a cycle to be reckoned with. Mark Pullinger Symphonies Nos 1 & 2 – selected comparison: LSO, Gergiev (12/12) (LSO) LSO0710 Symphony No 1 – selected comparison: LPO, Jurowski (11/09) (LPO) LPO0039
Symphony No 2 – selected comparison: Bournemouth SO, Karabits (3/12) (ONYX) ONYX4074 Symphony No 5 – selected comparison: LPO, Jurowski (12/12) (LPO) LPO0064
Van der Aa Hysteresisa. Violin Concertob Kari Kriikku cl bJanine Jansen vn aAmsterdam Sinfonietta / Candida Thompson; bRoyal Concertgebouw Orchestra / Vladimir Jurowski Disquiet Media F %2. s %%%
Recorded live at the aStadsgehoorzaal, Leiden, June 11, 2014; bConcertgebouw, Amsterdam, September 20, 2015 a
Van der Aa acolytes may be surprised at the lack of a visual element in his new Violin Concerto (2014), especially after the ‘engrossing and unsettling’ (Richard Whitehouse, 4/12) experience that was his film-cum-cello concerto Up Close. In a sense, though, there is a visual element here, and it’s the dedicatee Janine Jansen: the way she holds herself in performance, the ‘theatrical’ nature of her delivery and the energy she transmits to musical collaborators, all of which, according to the composer, shaped the score. The concerto is unashamedly a showpiece: an often confrontational, sometimes compliant but always imposing discourse between soloist and orchestra. The work’s disquieting energy may be characteristic of the composer but there are only passing references to his proven ability to find the physical qualities in a phrase or gesture and examine them as if from every angle. In that sense, half of me thinks the concerto less distinctive than almost any other work I’ve heard by him; the other half is sucked in by the thrill of the ride. For that thank Jansen and Jurowski, who deliver a performance of immense presence, conviction and tonal lustre. Van der Aa has captured the violinist’s musical persona to the point where it can sound as if she’s improvising and the RCO relish his fascinating orchestrations. Like, for example, the sound of sand being brushed on a drumhead, which seems to open Hysteresis (2013) as well as the concerto. That sound has an electronic, static quality but only in Hysteresis do we hear actual electronics, specifically as sampled bits of soloist Kari Kriikku’s playing come back to troll him as his identity crises deepens. Kriikku plays wonderfully and finds all the theatre in that situation and others, the Amsterdam Sinfonietta with gramophone.co.uk