Max Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy is the kind of piece that needs the first-class artistry of a virtuoso who possesses the extra “it” factor of star power. Violinist Maxim Fedotov does not show that he has this quality. Without the razzle-dazzle to mask the Scottish Fantasy’s inherent lack of imagination, the music in this performance sounds like a second-rate patchwork of tunes amounting only to a vain try to wow an audience with empty fiddle flashiness–including pointless trills, so-what double-stop passages, and why-bother left-hand pizzicatos. Fedotov has an admirably firm bowing technique, but when he pushes it in double-stops the sound is hard-edged and blocky. There are times when he can be heard correcting his intonation. His rapid, narrow vibrato never seems to vary, and this homogenizes the performance. By contrast Cho-Liang Lin, who has a similar sound, has much more diversity in his application of vibrato, and he also knows how to make Bruch’s fiddle tricks sound significant.
Conductor Dmitry Yablonsky has recorded performances that are much more committed than this phoned-in effort. The color of the orchestral accompaniment is gray, marked by uninvolved, colorless wind solos and an opaque sound that betokens humdrum playing, caught in bass-shy sound. (The bass drum is okay, but not the string basses.) First rate performances on disc include my first choice of Lin (in fine sound), David Oistrakh or Kyung-Wha Chung on Decca (sound only slightly faded), and Itzhak Perlman on EMI (recorded too close to the violin). The coupled work, the bland, rarely-heard Serenade, deserves its obscurity–or at least it appears to in a reading that here shows the same performance and recording faults as the Fantasy.
