Hilary Hahn / Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France / Mikko Franck PARIS

 

PARIS

PIERRE HENRY La Dixième Symphonie - Hommage à Beeethoven

LA DIXIÈME SYMPHONIE - HOMMAGE À BEETHOVEN

Sayaka Shoji / Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France / Myung-Whun Chung TCHAIKOVSKY - MENDELSSOHN Violin Concertos

VIOLIN CONCERTOS

Vilde Frang BARTÓK Violin Concerto No. 1 ENESCU Octet

Bela Bartók and George Enescu were born in same Year - 1881, Bartók in the Austrian-Hungarian city of Nagyszentmiklos (today Romania), Enescu in the Moldovian town of Liveni-Botosani (today Romania). 

Both pieces on this recording are youth works of theirs - 1900 (Enescu's Octet) and 1907 (Bartók's first violin concerto). Both works were neglected - Enescu's Octet for nearly a decade due to the challenges of the piece (being premiered in 1909) , and Bartók's concerto was neglected by its dedicatee, the violinist Stefi Geyer (who was also his young love), and was published only after her death, in 1956 (being premiered in 1958). Bartók and Enescu both died in self-chosen exile - Bartók 1945 in New York, Enescu 1955 in Paris - yet both were respected and admired for being contributors to the development of their countries’ culture and art, particularly as great ambassadors for the folk music.

Renaud Capuçon RIHM - DUSAPIN - MANTOVANI

French violinist Renaud Capuçon is clearly relishing playing in live performance these twenty-first century concertos which were written specifically for him. Inspired by the number of commissions given by fellow violinists, notably Gidon Kremer and Anne-Sophie Mutter, when commissioning works Capuçon enjoys the privilege of being able to contribute towards expanding the repertoire of the violin. When working with living composers, Capuçon has stated that he enjoys the collaborative aspect of the project.

The earliest work here is Jeux d'eau from French composer Bruno Mantovani a work he completed in 2012. Like many composers before him, conspicuously Liszt, Debussy and Ravel, Mantovani has used a theme of water. With Jeux d'eau, Mantovani was specifically motivated by “the sound of clear water that flows from a mountain torrent.” It was Capuçon who premièred the score in 2012 at Paris. As the title suggests, the score to Jeux d'eau has an ineluctable aqueous quality marked by writing that feels clean, fresh and fluid. There is a variety of textures in both the violin and orchestra parts and noticeably broad dynamics.

Wolfgang Rihm is one of the pre-eminent composers working today. The winner of several prestigious awards, Rihm has been the recipient of numerous commissions. By my reckoning, Rihm has now written five violin concertos of which the best known is Gesungene Zeit (Time Chant) for Anne-Sophie Mutter who recorded the work on Deutsche Grammophon. Rihm’s violin concerto Gedicht des Malers (Poem of the Painter) was introduced by Capuçon in 2015 at Vienna. Rihm talks about the inspiration for the work coming from artist Max Beckmann, who painted Max Reger a year after the composer had died. Rihm has stated that he could visualise Beckmann painting virtuoso violinist Eugène Ysaÿe in the same way. It is as if the soloist has taken control of the artist’s brush on the canvas. Immediately, the aching intensity of the writing has a Bergian feel and the mainly high lying violin part strongly evokes celestial images. Two main contrasting impressions dominate the work first a mainly cool and shadowy often mysterious atmosphere and secondly episodes of coarsely-hewn agitation. The moods are disrupted by the quickly built screeching outburst at 9.23 and a sudden thunderous eruption at 12.40.

Another Frenchman, Pascal Dusapin, is represented by Aufgang, his concerto for violin and orchestra. In 2008, Dusapin was motivated by conductor Marek Janowski to write a violin concerto, but after some work on the piece, the project didn’t come to fruition. Subsequently a meeting with Capuçon led to the composer reviving the concerto that he completed in 2011. The first performance was given by Capuçon in 2013 at Cologne. Titled Aufgang, the word in English means Ascent, possibly meaning a staircase to the sky, relating to the high register where much of the violin part lies.

Dusapin talks about “emerging light” yet it is the contrasts that are striking. Evident in the opening movement is the very high lying register of the violin part against the orchestra, which becomes increasingly weighty and anxiety laden. Shadowy, infused with nervous tension in the movement two, the violin part gradually gains in prominence and assertiveness. Conspicuous in the third movement is the wild and fiery character at turns coolly expressive.

The liner notes include an essay by Marguerite Haldjian and a note from Capuçon which are helpful and interesting. Recorded live the sound quality across three separate concert halls is uniformly clear and well balanced. There is some minor audience noise but nothing too distracting, and applause has been kept in on two the works.

Playing with robust and impassioned lyricism, Renaud Capuçon is on exceptional form. This is the finest release of contemporary violin concertos I have heard in some years. (Michael Cookson)

Esa-Pekka Salonen / Barbara Hannigan / Anssi Karttunen / Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France DUTILLEUX Correspondances

The initial idea of the work consisted in making a choice of some letters from various authors and susceptible of engendering different forms of lyrical expression conveyed by the soprano voice and the large symphonic orchestra.

Short interludes are sometimes used as bindings between these letters, the first of them is preceded by a poem by the Indian author Prithwindra Mukherjee, "Cosmic dance", poem which may itself appear as a kind of address (ode), of message to Shiva…

The following episode is based upon the main passages of a letter from Soljenitsyne to Mstislav and Galina Rostropovitch (1984, February 9th), evoking his trials, the one in the camps, ten years before, and overcame thanks to the heroic support of his friends Slava and Galina, and to his own faith as well.

It is from the letters of Vincent Van Gogh to his brother Theo that excerpts such as: "I have a great need of religion, so I go out at night to paint the stars…" are drawn out. This episode is preceded by the evocation of a very short poem by Rainer Maria Rilke named Gong.

So different are these texts, in their form and in their content, in common they reflect an equal inclination toward the mystical thinking by their authors. Together with the idea of the Cosmos, this is what seemed a unifying element to the composer.

The work's general title, "Correspondances", beyond the different meanings which could be given to this word, refers to Baudelaire's famous poem, "Correspondances" and to the synaesthesias he himself evoked. On another hand, the "baudelairian" idea that in our world, the divine finds inevitably its image in a devilish world, catches up Van Gogh's thought when, from Arles, he wrote to his brother that "next to the sun (the good Lord), unfortunately there is the Devil Mistral".

Each of these episodes is object of a slightly peculiar orchestration privileging such or such family of instruments. So, the evocated images, colours in Vincent Van Gogh's letter will mainly find their echo in the wood timbres and in the brass section as well. Soljenitsyne's letter to Slava and Galina will be backed in a dominative way by the strings, especially by the celli, often in a celli quartet. As for "Danse Cosmique", it's the whole orchestra which will surround the singer. On the contrary, the piece III Gong, sort of interlude hardly includes half of the large orchestra.

Finally, a remark: at the very end of Soljenitsyne's letter, as a watermark, as in a mist is a quotation from "Boris Goudounov" when is heard the Holy Fool (Innocent or Simpleton)'s grief about the misfortunes of the Russia.

In the same way, in the centre of the pages devoted to Van Gogh's letter, the composer used, as a quotation, the main motive of his own score "Timbres, Espace, Mouvement ou la Nuit étoilée " written in 1978 under the influence of the famous painting "The starry Night". (Henri Dutilleux)