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5.0 out of 5 stars
Superb on all counts, April 9 2003
This can be a very short review. The music is splendid, alternately compelling and delightful. The performances leave nothing to be desired. The sound is in the demonstration class. This would be a wonderful CD at full price; at the Naxos price, it's a no-brainer. Don't miss this one.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Performances, Near-Great Music, Jul 9 2002
The Violin Concerto has a lot of great things going for it, in almost every passage; and both the soloist (Peter Quint) and orchestra (Bournemouth Symphony) here make a fantastic job of the piece - if anyone makes a case for this piece, it is this outfit. In fact, no finer violin concerto has ever been composed by any American. The first eight minutes of the piece make a brilliant claim for a lasting place in the repertory. Only, towards the end of the first movement (the last cadenza passage in the movement), the piece begins to lose its way, there is too little shape ... it certainly keeps going, there is drive, and material that is repeated, but it strikes me as a little too much of the same, without really going anywhere. The percussion whipping the movement to a close doesn't really help (and I am all too happy to hear good writing for percussion) ... it feels like a step backwards, in Percussionists' Rights, from (say) Stravinsky's "Svadebka" ('Les noces') and Bartok's wonderful Sonata for two pianos and percussion. We have devolved back to the rim-shot, here.Schuman is more than competent here, he is often very musical, there are some passages of sheer magic; it is only that I wish the gestural range were not so limited. In my opinion, this is the best American violin concerto to date; I only wish I could call it a truly great concerto. But it is certainly a good concerto, and Quint and the Bournemouth Symphony give it a great performance. The "New England Triptych" is really good 'light Americana'; Schuman has made "Be Glad Then, America" quite a miniature musical drama, to a degree which almost gainsays the exhortatory title. Musically, I find this the strongest of the three arrangements, although even here, there is an occasional lapse into "symphonic-band-ism." The Billings original for "When Jesus Wept" is exquisitely beautiful; with the field drum and double reeds of the opening, Schuman makes of it almost a funeral march, which jars a little with my acquaintance with the original; but inarguably well written. "Chester" is the least musical of the three, I think; a little too much like a lot of business-as-usual mid-century American brass writing, and rather superficial (music can really be bright, without being shallow); a little too much squeal for my taste. Again, though, this performance sets the piece in a most favorable light. Schuman's orchestration of the Ives is brilliantly done. Ives' variations themselves, for me, may be a little wise-acre-ish. This is what he wanted of them, of course, but musical nose-thumbing goes only so far in trying to carry a piece (funny that I revisit this piece now, after hearing the "barroom Amen" in Berlioz' "La damnation de Faust"). The "Man of La Mancha" character variation was a great discovery on Ives' part, though ... and rumors persist that Stephen Spielberg will use this in the soundtrack for a docu-drama of INS efforts to contain the California/Mexico border ....
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Schuman at His Best and Most Schumanesque, May 15 2002
By A Customer
I wish I could wax as enthusiastic about the Violin Concerto as other reviewers have done. As Serebrier says in his sympathetic liner notes, the concerto has all the drama--I'd say histrionics--of Schuman's symphonies, a drama that for me is much ado about--little. Though Schuman is clearly a fine craftsman and a great orchestrator, I can't buy into the rhetorical seriousness of much of his orchestral music. One problem is certainly that unlike his contemporary symphonists Aaron Copland and Roy Harris, he is "tune-challenged." Thematically, his work always seems impoverished to me, except of course in his finest and most popular orchestral work, "New England Triptych," for which William Billings supplied the tunes. Schuman supplies the drama, which here is marvellously apt, from the curious tension of "Be Glad then America" through the pathos of "When Jesus Wept" to the clamorous "Chester," over whose jingoism Schuman seems to equivocate in a most fascinating manner. This piece defines the phrase "cautiously optimistic" in musical terms; perhaps Schuman was thinking of the awful cost of patriotism in the 20th century. The orchestration of Ives' "Variations on America," originally for organ, is again Schuman in a populist vein, and given the younger composer's skills as orchestrator, this good-natured send-up of American patriotism is enormously entertaining. Serebrier delivers these works with all the requisite verve, and I can't imagine them being any better done. Indeed, past performances I've heard on disc pale besides these, especially in Naxos' beautifully engineered recordings. But, about the concerto: Though I may find its drama uncompelling, certainly Peter Quint and Serebrier can't be faulted. Quint, a Russian-American, seems very much a violinist on the make. Unless I miss my guess, he will have an exciting career. For Schuman lovers, his performance will certainly enthrall. For the rest of us, he makes the most of a work that isn't quite an American classic.
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