These are beautiful works, very well played by two passionate string soloists. Both violinist Anastasia Khitruk and cellist Andrey Tchekmazov have more than the chops necessary for Miklós Rózsa’s virtuosic writing, and despite forward balances they offer attractive tone and blend nicely together in the Sinfonia concertante. The accompaniments aren’t quite as polished as on Telarc’s competing version of the Violin Concerto and the central Theme and Variations from the Sinfonia concertante (coupled also with the Cello Concerto), but I don’t think most listeners will find any cause to complain. This is vivid, attractive music making and fans of this composer need not hesitate for a minute, particularly at the attractive price.
However, I do have to register a minor reservation concerning the music itself. Rózsa was a very talented composer of much more than film music, but his range in these works is somewhat limited in that it relies almost entirely on a pleasant, Hungarian-inflected modal melodic style akin to that which opens, say, Bartók’s Second Violin Concerto, or the Divertimento, only without the contrasting dissonance. These tunes really are very pretty, and extremely atmospheric as Rózsa scores them, but they all tend to sound melodically similar from movement to movement. Certainly Rózsa has no problem capturing the listener’s interest; whether or not he sustains it each listener will have to decide individually.
