Danny Elfman (b.1953)
Violin Concerto, Eleven Eleven (2017)
Adolphus Hailstork (b.1941)
Piano Concerto No. 1 (1992)
Sandy Cameron (violin)
Stewart Goodyear (piano)
Buffalo Philharmonic/JoAnn Falletta
rec. live, 18-19 October 2019 (Elfman), 18-19 February 2022 (Hailstork), Kleinhans Music Hall, Buffalo, USA
Naxos American Classics 8.559925 [65]

There is a time-honoured tradition of film composers turning their hand to the composition of a violin concerto, which goes back to the Hollywood Golden Age of Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Miklos Rózsa and extends to the present day in the example of John Williams (who has written two) and now Danny Elfman. Of the various concertos, only the Korngold has succeeded in establishing itself in the mainstream repertoire (or at least making its appearance on concert programmes on a fairly regular basis), but the concerto form seems to retain its appeal and popularity for composers seeking to establish themselves outside the realms of the film studio. Korngold indeed plundered his film scores for material which he employed in his concerto, although perhaps we tend less to notice these borrowings nowadays; but John Williams, for example, having written one of the most memorable of cinematic violin themes for Schindler’s List, perhaps regrettably adopted a less approachable style in his concerto outings. Elfman’s score falls somewhere between those extremes. None of the material here has the immediate attractiveness of his music for (say) The Simpsons or Edward Scissorhands, but the atmosphere is recognisably from the same pen as the composer of the darkly brooding Tim Burton Batman films for which he provided the scores. The conductor here, JoAnn Falletta, clearly recognises the parallels when she describes the music as “a voyage through a dark cityscape.”

The score is unusually lengthy for a violin concerto, and falls into four rather than the usual three movements. The first is an extended rhapsodic exploration of a dimly illuminated urban landscape; this is followed by an extended cadenza leading into a scherzo-like second movement, a chilly and remote slow movement, and a final outburst of energy which slowly subsides back to the uneasy atmosphere of the beginning. The whimsical subtitle (a literal translation of the German Elf-Elf, with its punning reference to the composer’s name) refers to the fact that the score is exactly 1,111 bars long – hence, one imagines, the extended nature of some of the individual movements. Although the booklet note seems to regard this length as being a matter of happy coincidence, it was surely a fairly easy matter to adjust the lengths of the bars to match the exact figure, and would have been so even if the work itself had been shorter.

My initial reactions to the opening movement were indeed focused on my suspicions that the music itself was too extended for its material, but re-listening to the work over a period of weeks has effected a considerable conversion. I do not now see how the menacing atmosphere which Elfman undoubtedly evokes could possibly have been as successful if it had been abridged; and the vigorous violin figurations that surround the material certainly do not allow any sense of lack of forward movement and progress. The tempo indication describes the second movement as “cold blooded” but this epithet might perhaps be better ascribed to the slow movement, where the glacially muted orchestral strings continue the sense of unease that has been evoked beforehand. And the final movement, with its gradually emerging warmth and sense of resolution before the relapse into the coldness of the beginning, works stupendously well. I can imagine in a live performance the audience would find themselves gripped.

The solo part is intended by the composer to be amplified throughout; this not only allows the player to project their virtuoso fireworks over some pretty heavy percussion-laden orchestration, but also allows the solo ruminations in quieter passages to make their mark without the need for the violinist to lean into the line for added emphasis. Nor, in this recording, does the result sound in any way unnatural, seeming indeed to echo the normal practice to allow the soloist to make themselves heard over the orchestra as in any other recorded performance. I am sure that it should work equally well in live conditions; this recording is indeed taken from such an outing.

The concerto is coupled with another modern American work in the central tradition in the shape of the piano concerto by Adolphus Hailstork, yet another one of the seemingly endless flock of transatlantic composers who studied with Nadia Boulanger in the 1950s. This was originally commissioned back in 1992, and is here apparently receiving its very belated first recording (although Naxos cautiously make no such claim). It makes a good companion for the more substantial Elfman score, although its underlying tone is more light-hearted. The note on the cover perhaps leads the listener to expect a more ethnically African-American score in the lineage of Gershwin, but certainly in the first movement such jazz influences as there are seem to reflected through the prism of Ravel, and moreover through the more impressionist influences of his concertos than the more ostentatiously jazz elements. By the second movement the scales have shifted more towards the sphere of Rachmaninov – the slow figurations over the string melody certainly echo the slow movement of his second concerto – but the finale then lets rip in a romping display of bravura worthy of Prokofiev or Shostakovich. There is nothing here to frighten the horses, but Stewart Goodyear seems to have great fun with the results and Falletta responds with verve even when the actual orchestral sound seems slightly recessed in the finale (perhaps panicky level adjustments under the circumstances of the live recording?).

This is a clever coupling by Falletta and Naxos, combining as it does two modern American concertos that will certainly be unfamiliar to the vast majority of listeners, who will thoroughly enjoy themselves with the results. At Naxos price this is an experiment they should certainly be prepared to undergo. Sandy Cameron has recorded the Elfman concerto previously with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under John Mauceri (as at the première); but this comes at full price on Sony coupled with Elfman’s piano quartet, and this present Naxos coupling at bargain price will clearly have its own appeal.

Paul Corfield Godfrey

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Previous review: Rob Barnett (June 2023)