Leila Josefowicz says in her booklet note for this release that her “tone is everything”. Indeed, it is her tone that impresses most on this new Philips CD. Her playing in the opening of the Mendelssohn concerto is achingly sweet, if not especially searching. It’s only when the violin breaks into the first allegro passage that we hear the tone of an extremely confident and daring young virtuoso. Josefowicz doesn’t probe too deeply beneath the surface, but then again there’s only so much depth to plumb in this piece. After a rhythmically taut Andante, she takes the Finale at an unusually relaxed tempo, evoking Mendelssohn’s earlier Midsummer Night’s Dream. Tchaikovsky’s Valse-scherzo is a delightful miniature chock full of dangerously wide interval leaps taken at high speeds, all of which Josefowicz hits with dead accuracy. There’s a smile in her playing that communicates her enjoyment of the challenge. The Glazunov concerto finds Josefowicz displaying her warmer qualities–she tenderly phrases the opening solo line and imbues it with a darker violin tone. But the highlight of this performance is the marvelous cadenza that connects the Andante to the Finale. Here Josefowicz’s playing takes on a despairing edge that looks forward to Shostakovich’s first violin concerto. The recording places the soloist too far forward, making her instrument sound gigantic and diminishing the impact of Charles Dutoit and the Montreal orchestra. Naxos’ recording of the Glazunov concerto with Ilya Kaler presents a more natural balance between soloist and orchestra that enhances the musical experience. However, this will not deter violin aficionados from enjoying this uniquely planned and arrestingly played coupling.
