Wieniawski is one of those Romantic composers beloved of violinists and tolerated by everyone else. Judging from the number of performances and recordings, his music’s allure is fading fast, which is a pity because much of what he wrote is very attractive and at least entertaining. This is particularly true of the Fantaisie brillante on Gounod’s Faust, full of good tunes and effective contrasts. Violinist Vadim Brodski has orchestrated the piece very idiomatically in the best sense: it’s actually better sounding than Wieniawski’s own symphonic writing. The two violin concertos suffer a bit from formal weaknesses in their first movements and from muddy scoring, but the themes in the slow movements and finales are first rate.
Brodsky plays all of this music beautifully. His dusky lower register, almost viola-like, makes poetry of the First concerto’s central Pregheira, and he’s dazzling in the Gypsy finale of Concerto No. 2. Having orchestrated the Fantaisie, he probably knows it better than anyone alive, and he blows through it with impressive command and virtuosity. The two additional short works make charming encores. Conductors Antoni Wit and Thomasz Michalak provide warmly sympathetic support, and the very reverberant acoustic somehow makes Wieniawski’s orchestration in the concertos sound less clumsy than usual if a bit glassy in texture. Still and all, this disc really did provide a great deal of pleasure that I truly hadn’t expected, and that’s really the point, isn’t it?
