Between 1875-1878 Tchaikovsky composed his major works for solo violin and accompaniment, although individual showpieces exist interspersed among the ballets and orchestral suites. Julia Fischer (b. 1983) and Yakov Kreizberg have assembled the major works “under one roof,” as it were, and fashioned a sonically potent surround sound disc, recorded April-June 2006. Sweet midrange miking by Polyhymnia International technicians has captured Fischer’s velvet or pungent Guadignini 1750 instrument in high definition. The big tunes, with their marvelous crescendi and fff passages, do not shatter at the top of the sound spectrum. Fischer makes the most of Tchaikovsky’s repeats in the last movement, and her suave approach and often dynamic, facile runs may remind auditors of what Nathan Milstein could accomplish in this concerto, although he rarely had the engineering so good.
A smart marketing ploy is to have the entire suite Memory of a Cherished Place, Op. 42 played as a kind of encore to the concerted works. The knotty Valse-Scherzo (1877), another Milstein specialty, receives a bravura reading from Fischer, arched and idiomatic at once. A serenely focused rendition of the Meditation from Op. 42 finds Kreizberg’s piano sound equal to the feisty collaboration he provides with the Russian National Orchestra. The neglected Scherzo enjoys hints of Slavic, even Dvorak’s, sentiment The more familiar Serenade, Op. 26 here finds a reading more sonically generous than the old Heifetz inscription and just as pointed tonally. Even those long sated by the market’s offerings of the Violin Concerto may gravitate to this handsomely mounted recording, given the scarcity of the other pieces, and the fact that Fischer has been hyped in a manner thoroughly competitive with Joshua Bell.
— Gary Lemco
