Neville Marriner seems to be doing some of his best work for Hänssler. His performance of the two suites from The Tempest is as good as any. He really digs into the storm music, relishing its fierce dissonances, and offers exceptional elegance and refinement in the string playing of the second suite. Elsewhere, his principal winds produce some very characterful sonorities where Sibelius demands them. He’s also spectacularly well recorded, no less so in the Violin Concerto, where every note of the solo is clearly audible but also realistically balanced against the orchestra. Here, Dmitry Sitkovetsky faces some stiff competition, not least from his own father, the legendary Russian violinist Julian Sitkovetsky, who died tragically young and whose superb performance of this concerto is available in good mono sound on Supraphon (with the Czech Philharmonic, no less).
Son Dmitry’s performance is broader than his father’s, very close in tone and treatment to Viktoria Mullova’s darkly brooding recording on Philips. He plays the music with a lovely tone that never coarsens, not even in the fastest passagework or wickedest double-stops, and his virtuosity is very impressive. Listen, for example, to the way he phrases the treacherous sequence of harmonics two-thirds of the way through the finale. Most violinists are content merely to get through this passage, let alone attempt to do something musically meaningful with it. Marriner’s accompaniment is first rate, certainly better than what he provided for Leila Josefowitz a few years ago. Particularly in the first movement he gives the orchestral interludes plenty of urgency, and if the general impression of the performance is more poetic than it is dramatic, it’s certainly fully realized, honest, and gripping. If the coupling appeals to you, this is a disc well worth owning. [7/3/2000]
