This is one terrific CD. It’s interesting that German violinists seem to be taking on the Szymanowski concertos: we have recent releases from Zehetmair, Tetzlaff, Steinbacher, and now Frank Peter Zimmermann. He may well be the best of them all. The First concerto is more popular than the Second, though they are equally attractive. Of the two, the First is perhaps the tougher work to play well. It’s a genuine “hothouse flower” of a piece: lush, luxurious, atmospheric, and passionate. It requires a soloist with a beautiful basic tone, absolute security above the staff, and great care in matters such as vibrato and portamento: it should sound enticingly decadent but never vulgar.
This is exactly what Zimmermann provides. His intonation is impeccable, his pianissimo exquisite, and his use of portamento is always expressively apt. In the slower music he phrases the long, lyrical lines with unaffected songfulness, and where Szymanowski says “marcato” the rhythms turn precise but never stiff, the tone never rough.
All of these qualities carry over into the Second concerto. Its folk inspiration and more rugged rhythms allow for a more gutsy attack on the instrument, and Zimmermann obliges, particularly in the last two movements. He also has, in Antoni Wit and the Warsaw Philharmonic, the world’s best interpreters of Szymanowski’s orchestral music. So it really doesn’t get any better than this.
Zimmermann moves to Sweden for the Britten concerto, an interesting and apt coupling that’s just as successful as the two Szymanowski works. It’s not that there’s any stylistic similarity between the two composers–merely that both wrote successful modern violin concertos that sound well together and make for a varied and attractive program. This is a beautiful performance. Manfred Honeck and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra accompany with complete confidence, and Zimmermann sounds totally at home in the music. He offers plenty of virtuosity in the central Vivace, and the final passacaglia builds to a powerful climax. The quiet coda is pure poetry. In the first two movements Zimmermann and Honeck are fractionally quicker than in Britten’s own recording–excitingly so–and virtually identical in the finale.
The engineering is also excellent, different recording venues notwithstanding. This disc may not be available in all territories: evidently it was too interesting to be deemed worthy of international release, so if you can’t find it locally, do what I did and order it from a good German online retailer.
