GRAMOPHONE AWARDS SHORTLIST 2021 A shade more generous in its time span than the Decca recording, this highly engaging performance by Rattle, the LSO and Renaud Capuçon has all the athleticism Elgar’s score demands (and that goes for the orchestra as well as the soloist), but it is also thoroughly imbued with the composer’s intimate yearning poetry, an attribute borne out especially by the elegiac interpretation of the slow movement (the melancholy with which Capuçon admits a special affinity in his short introduction to the disc). Perhaps more than anywhere else in Elgar’s orchestral output, this score is festooned with tempo and dynamic changes, a feature Parry once referred to as Elgar’s characteristic ‘spasms’. Rattle handles this constant flux masterfully, and the splendid sense of ensemble from the LSO supports the constant ebb and flow of the soloist’s elastic role with impressive felicity. It is also nice to hear some appropriate use of portamento, which was very much part of the Elgar ‘style’ in his Edwardian heyday. Capuçon is particularly imposing in the finale (arguably the most original part of Elgar’s vast structure), where his technical brilliance and lyrical intensity shine in the extended cyclic statement of Elgar’s accompanied cadenza – a supreme test for any virtuoso violinist, not least after the two previous movements. There are many great recordings of this work. Among the firmament of archive recordings are Sammons (1929), Menuhin with Elgar (1932) and Heifetz (1949), while the one made by Campoli with Boult in the 1950s is, to me, especially fine. Of more recent vintage, Nigel Kennedy (EMI/ Warner, 1/98) is expansive, James Ehnes (Onyx, 1/08) vivacious and wistful, and Tasmin Little (Chandos, 12/10) brings her characteristic care to phrasing and nuance. Capuçon’s interpretation is undoubtedly an exceptional one in its affection and sympathy for the long, plangent lines of Elgar’s score; it is also a reading intensified by the empathetic support and élan of Rattle and the LSO. Emanating from the end of the war, the Violin Sonata might seem to embody a different Elgar, shaped by the sadness of war, the illness of his wife and fear of a changing world. Yet as a piece it shares many similar aspects with the Concerto (if not the latter’s sheer size) in its superabundance of thematic ideas and its quasiorchestral identity. Indeed, the piano part, which Stephen Hough negotiates with insight and a menagerie of different touches and tone qualities, has the ambience of an orchestra manqué. Capuçon’s melancholic sympathies with this music never seem far away in the first movement (above all in the reverie of Elgar’s wonderful second subject played across the strings) and the mysterious ‘Romance’, but the elation of the last movement shows that he is equally capable of that bracing optimism that is so much a part of the last pages of the Concerto. Jeremy Dibble (April 2021) Martinů . Bartók Bartók Solo Violin Sonata, Sz117 Martinů Violin Concertosa – No 1, H226; No 2, H293 Frank Peter Zimmermann vn aBamberg Symphony Orchestra / Jakub Hrůša BIS F Í BIS2457 (75’ • DDD/DSD) Despite the eminence of the coupling of the Bartók Solo Sonata, the two Martin≤ concertos are the main event on this superbly engineered release. Their paths to public consciousness were markedly different from each other. The First Concerto was commissioned in 1932 by the PolishAmerican violinist Samuel Dushkin (1891-1976). Dushkin was fresh from his collaboration with Stravinsky for the latter’s Violin Concerto. Unlike Stravinsky, however, Martin≤ had been a professional violinist and knew what the instrument was capable of, but his view of the solo part was – and remained – sufficiently at variance with Dushkin’s for work to be abandoned in 1934. As Martin≤ had commented that ‘more work was needed’, the concerto was believed incomplete. The manuscript disappeared from view in the 1930s but found its way as part of the Moldenhauer Collection to the library of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where it was rediscovered by Harry Halbreich three decades later; the premiere – with Joseph Suk as soloist – followed in 1973. In the meantime, composer and commissioner worked awkwardly at a second commission, the Suite concertante, in 1939 but ended up with a second rather variant version five years later! What put Dushkin off the First Concerto? It is written in the fashionable neoclassical style of the day, not so far away from that of the Stravinsky, but expressively quite different from it. However, the technical challenges of Martin≤’s solo part are far greater, without necessarily appearing so. Any interpreter therefore needs to focus on 16 GRAMOPHONE 16 GRAMOPHONE SHORTLIST 2021 the music’s irresistible flow (rather than showy virtuosity) and Zimmermann does this – I hesitate to say with ease – with consummate artistry. This performance, again, does not sound like a challenge to be overcome: rather a vibrant and hugely enjoyable piece of music. So, too, with the Second Concerto (for long believed to be Martin≤’s sole contribution to the genre), a more genial and relaxed work commissioned at the end of 1942 by Mischa Elman and premiered at the end of the following year. Martin≤ maintained a strict distance between himself and Elman this time, which accounts in large part for the work’s straightforward route to the repertoire. I surveyed the available rivals for the two concertos when welcoming Thomas Albertus Irnberger’s competitive accounts two years ago. These new interpretations by Frank Peter Zimmermann, however, go straight to the top of the pile. Throughout both concertos he evinces a sympathy with Martin≤’s idiom that is, if anything, even stronger than Irnberger’s, a knowledge to rival Bohuslav Matou≈ek’s on Hyperion and a peerless technique. Those competitors were Czech recordings but the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra has a notable pedigree in Czech music: the orchestra’s origins lie in an orchestra formed in Prague, after all, and readers may recall their very fine cycle of Martin≤’s symphonies under Neeme Järvi (BIS, 9/87, 12/88). Their chief conductor Jakub Hr≤≈a (together they were awarded the 2020 Bavarian State Prize for Music) is also principal guest conductor of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and as fine a Martin≤ interpreter as anyone on the podium currently. What impresses most here, however, is the clarity and naturalness of Zimmermann’s performances, remarkable in combining an intimate knowledge of the music (the result of long study) with a freshness of approach. This is, for me, the top recommendation for these two works and, frankly, is how Martin≤ should always be played. An obvious coupling would have been the Suite concertante (in either version), but Zimmermann has form in coupling concertos with unaccompanied works, as in his wonderful Hindemith album (9/13). Since Martin≤ never penned a solo violin sonata, Zimmermann turned to Bartók’s instead (which presumably means he will not be recording the gramophone.co.uk