Sensitive, Knowing & Generally Worthy

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This year has seen a crush of Shostakovich recordings, and one of the latest gives us Leila Josefowicz.With the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sakari Oramo, she plays the Violin Concerto No. 1.The disc comes from Warner Classics.

Why so many Shostakovich CDs? It’s his centenary, don’t you know, the composer’s dates being 1906 to 1975.

Just about every major violinist has recorded the First Concerto, and many minor ones have too. Sarah Chang came out with a recording earlier this year, in the company of Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic (EMI Classics). The concerto is both one of the greatest of all violin concertos, and one of Shostakovich’s best works. Written in 1947-48, it should have fear, chaos, and mania, among other qualities. Ms. Josefowicz does the job, and so do Mr. Oramo and his orchestra.

In the first movement — Nocturne — the performers keep a lid on, not spending emotion early. The music is as tense as you would want. And in the ensuing Scherzo, the performers are precise, spiky, and cackling. The third movement — the Passacaglia — is maybe not the deepest you have heard, but it is far from superficial. And the cadenza, leading to the Burlesque, builds excruciatingly, just as it should.

When the Burlesque breaks out, it is weird and wild — but not over-the-top. Violinist and orchestra are aggressive without losing control. This is intelligent, well-judged music-making.

Chances are, you would not want to trade your Oistrakh recordings for this one. Nor would you want to trade the young — indeed, teenage — Maxim Vengerov, with Mst islav Rostropovich on the podium. But there is always room for good Shostakovich First recordings, and Ms. Josefowicz and her partners have made one.

Normally, the First Concerto is paired with either Prokofiev’s First or Shostakovich’s violin sonata. Ms. Josefowicz plays the latter, with the pianist John Novacek. This performance is sensitive, knowing, and generally worthy.

***

If this is a “Shostakovich year,” it is also a “Mozart year” — oh, is it. “Wolfi” celebrated his 250th birthday back in January. And the German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter has been advancing what she calls her Mozart Project. She has released the concertos, the sonatas, and now a trio of trios – piano trios. All of these discs come from Deutsche Grammophon.

Her partners in the trios are her husband, the pianist André Previn, and the cellist Daniel Müller-Schott. Mr. Previn, of course, is also a conductor, composer, and writer. If he wanted to build rockets, he would probably do well at that, too. As for Mr. Müller-Schott, he is a talented young German of increasing prominence.

The Mozart piano trios played by these three are Nos. 4–6. Ms. Mutter is on and off in Mozart, as she is in other composers — but she is very much on here. She employs her variety of tones, talking with her violin.

Mr. Previn is his usual self: graceful and modest, but not unenergetic; nimble, clear, and ever tasteful. Maybe a little autumnal.One of the things he is best at is simplicity, which these trios certainly call for.Try him, for example, at the beginning of the slow movement of K. 542 (in E major). Simple and exquisite.

And Mr. Müller-Schott — whom Mozart gives less to do than he does the others — makes a fine contribution.

These musicians play in coordination with one another, and that playing is consistently lyrical, Mozartean. These performances are marked by subtlety and understatement, and also by attention to rhythm. Besides which, they remind us of how great these works are — and how great the birthday boy who composed them was.

Amidst the hype and the overkill, one can forget: Mozart really is delicious.

***

Only a few people in the world make a go of the guitar — classical guitar — and Christopher Parkening is one of them. Mr. Parkening has always given the impression of being a young man, but he is about to be 60. And from Angel/EMI Classics, we now have a disc called “Grace Like a River.” It is a life’s survey, billed as a “companion album” to Mr. Parkening’s autobiography of the same title.

As this title suggests, Mr. Parkening is a spiritual man, and his playing reflects that. This is a man of considerable musical powers. And he has an excellent technique with which to express them. Mr. Parkening knows his instrument, has made it his own.

The recordings on this disc date from 1963 to this year. Some of the repertory is quite familiar — a movement from the Rodrigo concerto, of course — and some of it is most unfamiliar (a movement from a concerto by Elmer Bernstein, best known as a film composer). There are many transcriptions, of course, because transcriptions are a guitarist’s bread and butter. And there is much Spanish, or Latin American, music — for a guitarist subsists on that, too.

The music that means the most to Mr. Parkening is Bach’s.(I know this because he told me once, in an interview.) In this compilation, we have the Chaconne, and “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” (which Myra Hess — one of the piece’s best transcribers — always called “Jesu, Joy”). Of particular interest is a Ravel piece: “Empress of the Pagodas.” It’s not often that you hear French Impressionism on the guitar, and Mr. Parkening brings it off nicely.

Another item of particular interest: In the CD booklet, there’s a photo of Andrés Segovia, the old and eternal master, patting the 16-year-old Christopher on the cheek. If that’s not approbation and affirmation, I don’t know what is.


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