The big discovery here is Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s Concertino of 1948. It sounds for all the world like a Russian take on Barber’s concerto: highly lyrical, with a touch of restrained melancholy and a bittersweet harmonic palette that’s very memorable. It also receives the finest performance on disc, though Sergey Ostrovsky (concertmaster of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande) is never less than musicianly in all three works. He sports a somewhat slender but attractive tone, and his intonation is spot-on. This serves the gently reticent Weinberg work perfectly.
In the Conus and Arensky concertos, which might be described as Tchaikovsky without the tunes, and the former of which is particularly heavily scored, Ostrovsky’s attempt at the Romantic grand gesture means a more prominent vibrato without a compensating richness of sonority. Compare his handling of the Conus concerto with, for example, Perlman’s, and you’ll hear the difference immediately. Naxos’ engineers balance this recording perhaps a bit too naturally–a more forward placement of the soloist might have been appropriate. Still, this is an enjoyable collection of rarely heard works, and the Weinberg in particular deserves a place in the repertoire of soloists and chamber orchestras everywhere.
