Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto (CD review)

Also, Bruch: Violin Concerto No. 1; Romance in F for viola and orchestra. Janine Jansen, violin; Riccardo Chailly, Gewandhausorchester. Decca B0007260-2.

It's hard to argue with success, especially when the successful person is a world-famous, attractive, virtuoso violinist like Janine Jansen. However, it's hard to tell just which of these qualities Decca is selling here, given that Ms. Jansen is featured seven times on the CD cover and in the booklet insert. Indeed, the sixteen-page booklet devotes nine of its pages to pictures of the artist, several of them two-page spreads. Well, you can't blame the company, I suppose. Selling classical albums is like selling anything else. Which in this case is some very well-played music.

Ms. Jansen approaches the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E minor in a traditional manner, with her dexterity and poetic touch well in evidence, the Concerto giving her ample opportunity to show her skills since it begins by introducing the violin from the outset. She says that for her it is not the familiar, grand opening movement or even the rousing finale but the slow second movement Andante that is at the heart of the work; so, naturally, it is here that she concentrates her efforts, bringing it off quite fluently and tenderly. Then after that moment of repose, she dazzles us with her brilliant technique in the closing Allegro.

She chose two accompanying pieces, one familiar, the other not. The familiar is Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1, a work that in many ways imitates, or at least pays tribute, to the Mendelssohn, and, as expected, Ms. Jansen brings it off well, too. But of more importance, perhaps, since most of us already have the Mendelssohn and Bruch Concertos in favorite performances, is her viola playing in the Bruch Romance. It is only about eight minutes long, but it is quite haunting.

The Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra is one of the oldest orchestras in the world, depending on how you measure such things, and it is the orchestra that premiered the Mendelssohn Concerto, so you could say the players have the music in their blood. The Decca engineers caught their relatively new chief conductor at the time, Riccardo Chailly, and the group in a live performance, although you would never guess it unless you read the fine print on the last page of the disc booklet. They miked the orchestra fairly close up, so you don't get any of that vague, distant, dullish sound that you do with many live recordings, with audience noises and applause at the end. Instead, you get what appears to be a good studio recording, with plenty of robust frequency range and dynamics coming from a dead-quite background, the applause apparently edited out. It's a good proposition all the way around.

Adapted from a review the author originally published in the $ensible Sound magazine.

JJP