This recent volume in the Philips Duo 20th Century Classics series focuses on the violin concertos of the 1900s, specifically works by Shostakovich, Bartok, Elgar, and Szymanowski. In the second concertos of Bartok and Szymanowski Philips has resurrected two of the finest readings of either work, played by Henryk Szeryng, an artist whose uncannily stoical sense of individuality usually paid handsome dividends. For example, from a man who liked to play Busoni’s timpani-accompanied cadenza in the Beethoven concerto rather than Kreisler’s more or less mandatory one, here’s a stupendously beautiful reading of the second Szymanowski concerto, in which Szeryng is joined by the Bamberg Symphony under Jan Krenz. This 1972 account–one of the few completely satisfactory recorded versions–has been far too long out of circulation. The rapture and vulcanism of Szeryng’s playing seem effortless, even in some of the more labyrinthine passages of this highly elusive and difficult work. Szeryng is heard again in a 1969 Concertgebouw performance of Bartok’s Cconcerto No. 2. Again, it’s superb in all respects, as much for its astonishing technical finesse as for its wealth of imaginative touches, not least Szeryng’s fluid and natural use of rubato in the second movement (Passacaglia).
Viktoria Mullova’s 1988 performance (with André Previn and the Royal Philharmonic) of Shostakovich’s A minor concerto (No. 1) is a highly-charged affair, but it’s far from being the most deeply considered or eloquent version in the catalog, and there’s some pretty ugly-sounding playing from Mullova in the Burlesque finale. This is a reading that seems to hound and chase itself mercilessly; it’s certainly thrilling, in a superficial sense, but there’s little here of the intuitive musicality that Maxim Vengerov finds in the work.
Lastly, and to provide a tantalizingly different sound-world to the genuinely modernistic concertos on these CDs, there’s Kyung-Wha Chung’s 1977 Elgar with Georg Solti and the London Philharmonic. Generally, this is superb; only in the slow movement, and then only in passing, do you feel that Chung doesn’t quite manage to probe beneath the notes as the best interpreters (Heifetz, the young Menuhin, and more recently, Perlman) have managed, and as Elgar intended. Solti takes the opening very fast, but the urgency and power are compelling, and Chung is outstandingly good at matching his impetuosity. On balance, it’s still Perlman’s excellent DG account from Chicago that carries the day, but don’t miss this outstanding opportunity to acquire Szeryng’s Bartok No. 2 and especially Szymanowski No. 2. Fine sounding transfers and decent, if rather too general music notes complete this useful package.
