Music : Bruch - Violin Concerto/Mendelssohn - Violin Concerto

Rating: - Two clean, clear-cut, transparent, classic
Clear? Utmostly classical if not classic violin playing that is so beautiful that it sounds like a visit at the museum, or, and I am afraid it is how I feel about it, like some perfectly sampled, rendered and tempered violin playing produced by a synthesizer. It is difficult to feel any personality in that too "perfect" music, and Bruch is perfect in his own turn to amplify that feeling with his first concerto which was composed following the most surprising method. It was rewritten several times under the solicited and welcome influence of several other people, to make sure in a way it would correspond to the ambient taste more than to the composer's unique feelings. And he must have disliked this opportunistic work enough to have sold it, all rights attached, to the publisher of the score, which deprived him of an important income due to the success of this violin concerto. But the impression I develop with this concerto is that it is consensual, in many ways un-emotional, cold. There is not one moment when I feel the wind coming up from the abyss of complete surprise or awe in front of the unheard. What's more the power of the orchestra is excessive, at times over-powering, Germanic some will way, in the line of Wagner's steamrolling intensity. We kind of feel like saying: "Please, what about tenderness? What about romantic delicate sentiments? Is life nothing but a martial march across space and time?" A touch of sweet softness would have deepened the orchestra's performance and enhanced the violin instead of crushing it. Schubert is another story as for the composed music, though the orchestra remains forbiddingly awe-inspiring. But how much would I have liked the violin to cry the tears of millions of eyes since this rondo is so sad, so transcendingly heart-breaking, but Nigel Kennedy is kind of dry and to drown in dry tears is difficult. So that the end that should sound joyful, kind of joyful, appears only as being intensely vivacious. Mendelssohn suffers from the same over-well-tempered temperament. And some chords or sequences I consider as deeply Jewish if not Yiddish evade that depth to sound just plain brilliant. In the famous banquet in the Bible where the guest who arrived without his wedding attire is undressed and thrown into a grilled underground dungeon to become rat-food, the joy of the feasting guests carries the after taste of the rat-chewed flesh of the outcast. Mendelssohn's concerto the way it is performed here is just the banquet's music without the ignoble delicacy of that naked body thrown alive to the rats. We would have seen it as Bohemian but then it would have become tear-shedding, tear-prompting from one eye to the other eye and over two million eyes confronted to some incinerating ovens somewhere in Poland.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines

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Rating: - Chocolate cake concerti
The bottom line with Nigel Kennedy's recording of these two classic concerti if that, if you like his style, you'll love this CD; if you don't, you won't. A full debate about the controversial violinist is well beyond the scope of an Amazon review but, basically, he has done to Mendelssohn and Bruch - the most common pairing of concerti to appear on a single disc - what he has already done for several of the violinist's repertoire, most recently the Four Seasons, which is reinterpret it in his own style. This either involves giving it new freshness and vigour or going totally over the top, depending on which camp you inhabit; there appears to be little or no middle ground.

Personally, I find Kennedy's style enjoyable only in very small doses - he does wring every ounce from the music, but it is rather like having chocolate cake the whole time: occasionally for dessert is nice, but one really wants something savoury for the other courses. One movement I can manage, two whole concerti give me heartburn and hyperglycaemia. So, if you like your classical music in yer face and on the max, this is for you; if not, can I recommend the technically brilliant and subtle Vengerov at less than half the price, the Hugget for those who want to know what it actually sounded like originally (nothing like Nigel, despite any claims to the contrary) or the sadly rare Zuckermann for those who want the definitive versions.

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Rating: - in my opinion the definitive recording
This cd really is a wonder. the mendelssohn and bruch concertos have never received such wonderful treatment as kennedy lavishes, in this all-round flawless cd. the pace of the pieces is just perfect, never rushed but never languid, and the technical skill of kennedy is, as ever, second to none. the intonation is absolutely spot on in all 3 performances. as for expression and tone, in my opinion no-one does it better than kennedy. just listen to the opening bars of the mendelssohn for evidence

those who dismiss kennedy as all image should listen to this and rethink. he really is a violin genius, and theres no clearer indication than on this disc. i cannot recommend it highly enough