SIBELIUS: Violin Concerto in D Minor, Op. 47; 3 Humoresques from Op. 87 and Op. 89; PROKOFIEV: Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major, Op. 19 – Vilde Frang, violin/WDR Sinfonieorchester Koeln/Thomas Sondergard – EMI 6 84413 2, 63:56 ****:
A phone call from Jacob Harnoy of Doremi records alerted me to attend to Norwegian violin sensation Vilde Frang (b. 1986), a recipient of the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation scholarship and winner of the Norwegian State Prize. This collaboration with conductor Thomas Sondergard is her first inscription, although I auditioned her work in Chopin’s Piano Trio from EMI.
The eerie opening to the Sibelius Violin Concerto (11-13 March 2009) announces Frang’s wiry revisionist approach to the singularly Northern work, a combination of robust impulses and lyrical outpouring. Frang’s comfort with the grainy filigree and meditative cadenza appears so entirely seamless that we must include her in that pantheon of women whose association with the Sibelius has become legend: Guila Bustabo, Camilla Wicks, and Ida Haendel. Frang plays a Jean Baptiste Vaulliame instrument on loan through Mutter’s foundation, and its burnished tone adds no end of expressivity to Frang’s thoughtful phrasing. The flute tone alone is worth the price of admission. She performs with the gusto and abandon of Salerno-Sonnenberg but with more plastic discipline. The orchestral tissue from conductor Sondergard proves alternately muscular or diaphanous, as required. The B-flat Major Adagio di molto enjoys a sinewy girth that should not be underestimated for its cumulative power. Up-bow staccato double-stops mean little to Frang by way of technical execution, so the last movement, a polonaise that often becomes a frigid battlefield. Frang’s raspy intonation drives hard into the G string as ascends in D Major and down in D Minor, often in punishing octaves. More banshee than violin, the instrument soars and screeches, wailing in slurred harmonics in drunken reverie. Slashing, whining, leaping in jagged metrics, the solo weaves in and out among clarinets, basses, and tympani, an ice storm of heroic proportions. A breathless coda leads to a dead-stop final note that leaves us whipped and wiser at once.
The Sibelius Humoresques (c. 1915) first came to my attention via John Dalley of the Guarneri String Quartet in concert, and by way of Aaron Rosand on Vox records. The D Minor projects the sensibility of ballade in gypsy style. Frang imbues the piece with introspection and intimacy at once, yet still ardent and virtuosic. The D Major buzzes, a cross between northern Mendelssohn and Sarasate. The E-flat, Op. 89, No. 3 exploits antiphonal effects in violin and woodwinds; Frang takes the tempo deliberately slowly in the manner of prancing gavotte or waltz. The repetition in violin harmonics adds a special piquancy. Why we could not have the two other pieces from the Op. 89 set must be producer Stephan Hahn’s own secret.
More musical delights lie in the pages of the 1917 Prokofiev D Major Concerto, in a performance that has more in common with the classic 1935 Szigeti-Beecham rendition than the modern masters Oistrakh, Mutter, and Kremer. The stretched El Greco musical line floats and palpitates over woodwinds in the opening movement with lyrical elasticity to spare. The melodic content seems almost demure as it paces and struts gavotte-like in countless variants of itself. The orchestral tissue, rife with elements from the Scythian Suite, moves diaphanously but electrically in concert with the inflamed solo part. When Frang plays her guitar-like chords in quick alteration with the dizzy arco passages, the effect becomes quite Dionysiac, an erotic dream in Russo-Parisian colors. The recap in flute and harp, dolcissimo e pianissimo, wafts in a world not quite available to mere mortals.
The E Minor Scherzo might have been written for a demented cat, and a Cheshire breed at that. Even the usual peasant-march middle section poses irreverent strides and poses, a whirlwind on its own terms. The G Minor last movement returns to the land of dreams, albeit imagined by Salvador Dali and Henri Rousseau. The transparency of effect would impress Edgar Allan Poe for intimations of his Annabel Lee. Harp figures and violin trills move us to an exalted realm, the former tick-tock rhythm now transformed into those melted images of time that the surrealist considers his natural milieu.
–Gary Lemco
