MOZART: Violin Concerto No. 2 in D Major,. K. 211; Violin Concerto No. 3 in G Major, K. 216; Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Major, K. 219 “Turkish” – Vadim Repin, violin/Vienna Chamber Orchester/Yehudi Menuhin – Maestro

by | Feb 23, 2009 | Classical Reissue Reviews | 0 comments

MOZART: Violin Concerto No. 2 in D Major,. K. 211; Violin Concerto No. 3 in G Major, K. 216; Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Major, K. 219 “Turkish” – Vadim Repin, violin/Vienna Chamber Orchester/Yehudi Menuhin

Maestro 2564 694516, 75: 20 [Distrib. by WEA] ****:

Recorded in Vienna 21-23 October 1997, these perennially lovely works, conceived (if we include K. 207) when Mozart was between seventeen and nineteen-years-old, enjoy incisive, plastic realizations by Vadim Repin (b. 1971), here accompanied by master violinist-conductor Yehudi Menuhin (1916-1999). Repin plays a Stradivarius 1708 “Rudi” violin lent him by the Stradivari Society of Chicago, an eminently sweet-toned instrument that captures the elegant, often Francophile, affects Mozart imbibed from his travels outside of Salzburg.

The D Major, K. 211 Concerto recent scholarship attributes to 1775, a lovely Gallic exercise published in 1802 under the title “Concerto facile.” The last movement, a French rondeau, Repin and Menuhin articulate in stately, genial collaboration, high spirited, rife with the addition of Viennese charm.  The G Major Concerto, which opens the disc, jumps several light years ahead, stylistically, its level of melodic and rhythmic invention altogether grander, more harmonically variegated, the textures–of oboes and pizzicato low strings–quite diaphanous in the magical, central Andante.

The happy ensemble culminates in the Turkish Concerto, an exuberantly buoyant interpretation, which has that disarming six-bar, adagio violin entry in the Allegro aperto, as though we catch the soloist musing in solitude before he decides to join the royal festivities. Repin alternately floats and weaves his way through the broadly conceived first movement, his ornaments deftly negotiated between razor-thin filigree and sequences that constantly dance with light feet. The studied cadenza proves intense enough to stand in the aura of Bach’s Chaconne without embarrassment. The central Adagio possesses a maturity we associate with the slow movements of Mozart’s late symphonies; and Repin and Menuhin bask in its mercurial sonorities with devotional relish, the sonic balances perfect. The otherwise lilting or gamboling French rondeau that concludes this epic concerto falls into three episodes, the most arresting of which is its third in A Minor, a janissary march in the manner of the composer’s later sojourn to the Seraglio, the cellos and bassi tapping their instruments col legno.  Repin and Menuhin trip lightly through this bravura forest, perhaps a touch of (Mendelssohnian) impishness already in these Viennese accompanists.

–Gary Lemco
 

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