Julian Haylock rounds up a glut of new Schumann recordings.
The
Schumann Violin Concerto
represents one of the greatest
challenges in the Romantic violin
repertoire. Even such devoted
exponents as
Yehudi Menuhin (EMI) and Henryk Szeryng (Philips)
didn't totally succeed in unlocking all of this late masterpiece's
interpretative secrets.
Whereas the majority of players approach
the work from a Joachim-based perspective as
the predecessor of the Brahms D major (quite reasonably, as
it was composed for the great
German violinist), Thomas Albertus Irnberger (Gramola
98834;
www.gramola.at) relates it more closely to the David-influenced
Mendelssohn E minor, playing with a light,
silvery touch and a dreamily phrased flexibility so intoxicating that at times
it feels as though one is listening to an
entirely different work.
As a result, even the notoriously diffuse finale
appears to float free of musical gravity as
Irnberger and the Spirit of Europe conducted by Martin Sieghart gently
inflect the lyrical episodes with heart-warming sensitivity.
As the perfect coupling, Irnberger
plays the Schumann-approved violin transcription of his Cello Concerto with an
unforced naturalness and poise that
have one almost forgetting the original.