BERNSTEIN: Serenade after Plato’s “Symposium”; BLOCH: Baal Shem – 3 Pictures of Chassidic Life; BARBER: Violin Concerto Op. 14 – Vadim Gluzman, v./Sao Paulo Symphoy Orchestra/John Neschling – BIS multichannel SACD BIS-SACD-1662, 70:31 [Distr. by Qualiton] *****:
A cleverly-combined trio of superb works for violin and orchestra, in exciting and compelling multichannel performances. The Bernstein concerto, which marked his return to serious concert music after the success of his Broadway show Wonderful Town, has no literal program, but should be regarded as a series of musical statements in praise of love – stimulated by the composer’s re-reading of Plato’s The Symposium. He decided not to actually call it a concerto in order to be freed from a three-movement structure. Its five sections portray dialogs by the different persons at the symposium, including Aristophanes and Socrates. The final and longest movement is interrupted in the middle by the arrival of Alcibiades’ band of drunken revelers, giving Bernstein a chance to cut loose with some of the more jazz-influenced music in the Serenade. Gluzman’s performance is much more enthusiastic than that of Isaac Stern on Bernstein’s own recording, and the hi-res sound is of course 100% better.
Ernest Bloch’s Baal Shem is from his later period, when his style reflected Jewish’ liturgical and folk music, with less of the Debussy and Richard Strauss influence of his earlier works. It was originally written for violin and piano and years later orchestrated. The first picture is titled Contrition and uses the traditional text of the deathbed confessional prayer. The second – Nigun – may be the composer’s most familiar music; based on the Jewish mystical idea that a proper melody can elevate a person to a transcendental level. The last movement is titled Rejoicing, and evokes a celebration at the end of Sukkot.
Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto of 1939 has a firm place in the concert repertory and fully deserves it. Its bumpy path to performance involved a commission from a Philadelphia soap magnate for his violinist son, who found it unplayable. The father then asked for a refund of the commission, and Barber had to prove the work was playable by having students from the Curtis Institute perform it, and he later rewrote it somewhat to make it more virtuosic. While the soaring lyrical subjects of all three movements are lovely, it is in the finale – a perpetual motion structure – that the brilliant and virtuosic nature of the violin is most fully explored.
— John Sunier
