Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
Violin Concerto in B minor, Op.61 (1910)
Thomas Adès (b. 1971)
Violin Concerto ‘Concentric Paths’ (2005)
Christian Tetzlaff (violin)
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra/John Storgårds
rec. 2024, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra Studio, Dock 10, Salford, UK
Ondine ODE1480-2 [61]

This is a recording that has been informed by two great performances of the past and it’s something that the soloist Christian Tetzlaff addresses explicitly in his booklet notes. Those performances are by Albert Sammons in 1929 and Jascha Heifetz two decades later and the link between them is speed. This new recording takes 43-minutes and let me be crude about this – he takes Heifetz tempos for the outer movements and a Sammons one for the central one. If that were all, it would be of some interest but not a compelling example of informed listening and absorption of historic models but actually I think it’s a good deal more than that. I know there will be those who will find it too dynamic and thrusting and unwilling to smell Elgarian roses, but I happen to think musical flora and fauna are subservient to the overall design of the concerto.

Let’s start at the beginning. Tetzlaff and John Storgårds set a forward-driving tempo but there is metrical flexibility within it, and the soloist has sufficient rubato to ensure that nothing sounds mechanical. Passagework is taut, orchestral counter-themes are always audible, sometimes surprisingly so, and there is considerable tenderness in Tetzlaff’s phrasing and finely deployed vibrato usage too – those reflective moments ‘sound’ as they should, just as much as the volatile ones. The slow movement sees Tetzlaff cannily adopting Sammons’ influence thus avoiding Heifetz’s miscalculation – excessive speed – and he catches the rise and fall and interior nature of it, its reflective intimacy conveyed without any unctuous phrasing. Tetzlaff has a fine tone but it’s not opulent which means he needs to vary vibrato speed and if he lacks that big, expressive tone he compensates in other ways. One of his virtues is his adherence to dynamic markings not least in the finale which is where many starry names come unstuck. Not Tetzlaff and Storgårds. They provide the muscular energy the finale needs whilst allowing the music to expand in the accompanied cadenza.

It certainly doesn’t hinder Tetzlaff’s cause that Storgårds is an ex-fiddler and they played the Elgar together as long ago as 2019. The BBC Philharmonic has long been versed in the concerto as they have in so many areas of the repertoire and though you wouldn’t confuse their string section for that of the Chicago Symphony (Perlman/Barenboim) they are alert, precise, as well as temperamental and provide ardent support for Tetzlaff.

I realise that the tempos Tetzlaff takes and his over-arching conception of the work suit my own tastes almost exactly and that disposes me in his favour but it’s not simply for these reasons that I find this recording so compelling and so immeasurably superior to those many other recordings I’ve encountered (or reviewed) of late – Vilde Frang, Nicola Benedetti, and Michael Barenboim among them. Your tastes may incline you to more overtly expressive, much slower and heart-on-sleeve performances, in which case you will seek alternatives.

For his coupling Tetzlaff plays Thomas Adès’ Violin Concerto (‘Concentric Paths’), which is now twenty years old and written for a big orchestra given its 19-minute size. Its opening is a taut and compact perpetuum mobile, incessant and Ligeti-like. The slow movement is the focus of the concerto, a long, graphic movement in which the soloist’s expressive, lyric voice is initially crushed by orchestral hammering and during which it has to fight its way to assert itself (shades of the central movement of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto, perhaps?) Gradually it seems to do so, with an evolving chaconne of great latent intensity. The finale (‘Rounds’) has some of the most conventionally exuberant violinistic music and the orchestral tapestry offers plenty of rhythmic tautness and shamanic intensity.

Anthony Marwood recorded the concerto with the composer and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe on Warner, Augustin Hadelich and Hannu Lintu with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, coupled with the Sibelius Concerto, on Avie whilst a soon-to-be-released disc with Leila Josefowicz and the Minnesota Orchestra under Thomas Sondergard on Pentatone couples it with The Exterminating Angel Symphony – short measure at 39 minutes, though fine, I suppose (just about), if you’re just on an Adès kick.

So, the summing up. The Elgar is superb and the Adès is great. As a coupling? Well, they’re both British, so if you’re flying a flag, that might work. That said, they’re stylistically so dissimilar some people might baulk at the modernism of the latter concerto. They shouldn’t. Buy it for the Elgar and allow the Adès to insinuate its way into your bloodstream, as it assuredly will.

Jonathan Woolf

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