TCHAIKOVSKY: Violin Concerto; PROKOFIEV: Symphony No. 5 – Erica Morini, v./ Orch. de Paris/ Jascha Horenstein – Archipel

by | Apr 20, 2012 | Classical Reissue Reviews

TCHAIKOVSKY: Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35; PROKOFIEV: Symphony No. 5 in B-flat Major, Op. 100 – Erica Morini, violin/ Orchestre de Paris/ Jascha Horenstein – Archipel ARPCD 0534, 73:28 [Distr. by Qualiton] ****:
This “Archipel Desert Island Collection” CD combines appearances by the conductor Jascha Horenstein (1898-1973) in Paris, both of which have appeared via the Music & Arts label as CD-1146 (Prokofiev) and CD-1116 (Tchaikovsky). The collaboration in the Tchaikovsky Concerto (19 December 1957) with Viennese virtuoso Erica Morini (1904-1995) captures her at the peak of her form, her Stradivarius in blazing color and rasping definition. Some claim that her technique had fallen into disrepair by the late 1950s, but you won’t find fault in her driven playing, and the audience wants to go crazy after every major caesura. Typical of the period, Morini performs a cut version of the Concerto. Morini had a particular affinity for the Tchaikovsky Concerto, which she recorded commercially a second time for Westminster with Rodzinski and the Royal Philharmonic, since she had already committed this work to disc on RCA in 1945 with Desiree Defauw in Chicago. Adding this account to Morini’s legacy in the Tchaikovsky only intensifies her repute as a past master of her inimitable style.
The Prokofiev Fifth (22 November 1956) has the Orchestre de Paris in molten heat under Horenstein, who could always be depended upon to seek out the agony in any score. Perhaps not so eccentrically driven as Celibidache’s renditions of this fine symphony, the Horenstein maintains an identifiable Russian ethos in the course of its often lonely meanderings. The F Major Adagio achieves exquisite grandeur and pathos, without affectation. The tension, high and low, becomes almost voluptuous in its power to convey extremes of love and abysmal despair. The discipline of the French ensemble holds together beautifully, especially in the cello choirs in the first and last movements. The mania Prokofiev expresses in his D Minor Allegro marcato (Scherzo), rife with syncopations and metric pitfalls, Horenstein negotiates with spirited panache. The Allegro giocoso, when it finally erupts, evinces that Russian “wind sound” endemic to Slavic ensembles while any number of silken agogic twists and turns in the winds, strings, and battery raise the performance to virtuoso dimensions.
—Gary Lemco

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