EGON WELLESZ: Piano Concerto; Violin Concerto – Margarete Babinsky, piano/ David Fruhwirth, violin /German Symphony Orchestra Berlin/Roger Epple – Capriccio 5027, 53:16 – [Distr. by Naxos] ****:
Egon Wellesz (1885-1974) is known for being one of the first pupils of Arnold Schoenberg and for writing the first biography of that ground breaking composer. After receiving a doctorate from the University of Vienna, he successfully composed ballets and operas until he was forced to leave in 1938 in the wake of the Anschluss. He emigrated to Oxford, England and became a distinguished teacher and scholar of Byzantine music. After the war, at the age of 60, he started composing symphonies and completed nine of them before his death in 1974. His music before 1945 is severe but tonal, and becomes more conservative later in life.
Wellesz’s Piano Concerto (1933) is influenced by neo-baroque and neo-classical compositional techniques clothed in tonal but modern language. In the first movement, he alternates melodic orchestral passages with declarative piano passages, often ending in abrupt cadences. A nocturnal and solemn second movement is followed by an exciting finale. Pianist Margarete Babinsky meets the considerable virtuosic challenges of this episodic, percussive and dramatic work.
The Violin Concerto is a four-movement work that deserves to stand alongside the Berg and Schoenberg concertos as superb examples of the Second Viennese School. Although written in 1961, it belongs in the early twentieth century because of its bittersweet emotional tone, and its large symphonic tapestry that synthesizes modern and tonal musical styles. The first movement is serious, dramatic and resplendent with a memorable cellular theme. The emotional center of the work is the slow movement, with a violin passage similar to the prelude of the Berg Violin Concerto. It has a pensive and yearning character, searching and romantic in spots, with a beautiful conclusion that fades into the distance. The scherzo is a playful acerbic romp that’s interrupted by a lyrical, ghost-like segment that is uncharacteristically reticent. The finale opens with high orchestral drama that the violin answers emotionally, followed by a virtuosic cadenza.
Violinist David Fruhwirth has the measure of this challenging concerto and the German Symphony Orchestra’s performance and the spacious recording clearly communicates Wellesz’s rich and gorgeous orchestration. Anyone who loves early 20th century concertos bathed in the large symphonic textures of the Second Viennese School will find this disc of genuine interest.
— Robert Moon
