This recording is back to front
mainFrom the Lebrecht Album of the Week:
The one thing that keeps me from awarding this album the full five stars is that it is upside down. It opens with a perfectly decent performance of Bela Bartok’s first violin concerto by the Norwegian virtuoso Vilde Frang, with the Radio France philharmonic orchestra conducted by Mikko Franck. Frang, who is 32, has been performing since she was ten years old. Everything she does is perfectly lovely and agreeable. The first Bartók concerto, a youthful effusion of innocent love, is not going to change our lives.
The octet, on the other hand, might….
Read on here.
And here.
Enescu’s octet is a masterpiece! Good to hear it being well played and appreciated once more, though several other fine recordings exist.
Enescu’s Octet is wonderful. I think of it as having the consistent power and lift of flight. Amusingly and endearingly, I have seen it described as a “summer blockbuster.” Janine Jansen, whose prize win we celebrated yesterday, led a great performance in Utrecht, available on YouTube. The CD recording by Christian Tetzlaff et al. is also beautiful. Based on the snippets, I cannot wait to hear the full Vilde Frang/Radio France recording. Thank you for bringing it up.
…then you’d have hated an LSO/Celibidache concert I went to in the 1970’s. He started with a Schumann symphony, went on to Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faun, started the second half with Rhapsodie Espagnole and finished with the Tannhäuser overture. What an evening that was…
Oh, yes … and Solti, who played the Elgar Second Symphony at the RFH in the 1980s and couldn’t bear to end the concert quietly, so played the Tannhauser overture as an encore. I managed to escape just in time!
I only discovered Enescu recently. What a stunning composer!!!!
Utterly phenomenal.
Vilde Frang is the best. An utterly wonderful artist. Her Britten recording was revolutionary and she’s a dream on the concert platform. Can’t wait to hear this recording.
Pretty impressive that you find this recording both back-to-front and upside-down. All we need is it to be rotated 180 degrees on a horizontal axis, and it is back to its starting place.