Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
Violin Concerto in D minor (1822)
Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64 (1844)
Elvin Hoxha Ganiyev (violin)
Württemberg Philharmonic, Reutlingen/Howard Griffiths
rec. 2025, Württemberg Philharmonic, Reutlingen
Solo Musica SM546 [51]
The young Turkish violinist Elvin Hoxha Ganiyev, not yet thirty, plays with insight and skill beyond his years. (The skill perhaps isn’t so surprising: there seem always to be plenty of violin prodigies around.) Whether it’s enough to bring off this particular coupling, however, is questionable
The early D minor concerto for violin and strings has been a focus of attention ever since Yehudi Menuhin (re-)introduced it in concert in the 1950s, and I’m not sure why. It’s melodic, accessible, and formally tight – remarkably accomplished work for a thirteen-year-old – but none of it, to me, suggests an unheralded masterpiece. (Record companies’ reflexive pairing of it with the familiar E minor merely serves to highlight its shortcomings.)
The brief opening ritornello, which can sound stark and weighty, here goes with taut intensity, although attacks could be sharper. Ganiyev’s clear, shiny tone and intelligent phrasing, with a nice rhetorical timing for the pickups, bring the music to life, though he plays it straight, with little rubato. He handles the development section’s endlessly running semiquavers with aplomb. The central Andante sings almost too simply, but the soloist gives his leisurely triplets additional space; the finale, with a dashing Gypsy lilt, comes off best.
As for the E minor – what most people would call “the” Mendelssohn concerto – it’s good, but, mostly, not special. The moderately paced first movement doesn’t strike any sparks, though here Ganiyev phrases with the natural rubato he mostly eschewed in the earlier score. The surprise is the central Andante, where you can hear and feel the rocking 6/8 scansion from the start, producing a flow absent from most heavier renditions; unfortunately, the effect isn’t enough to sustain the entire movement, which runs out of gas.
Under Griffiths, the Württemberg Philharmonic – not the same as the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra that used to record for Vox – provides solid, musical support. Its sonorities aren’t particularly colourful – I suppose these scores doesn’t allow for much more – and, in the E minor’s first movement, a resonant ambience reduces the imprecise running basses to an indistinct, shapeless rumble.
And herein lies the problem with maintaining the record industry’s traditional “documentary imperative” today. Ganiyev’s work deserves to be showcased, and Solo Musica has taken the trouble to document him under controlled studio conditions, rather than slapping something together, willy-nilly, from concert broadcasts. But, especially in the face of all the fine earlier recordings of this repertoire, how much commercial traction can this release actually have? Perhaps this is where streaming saves the situation, keeping the artists visible and audible in a relatively tight market. At any rate, it’s something to be considered.
Stephen Francis Vasta
stevedisque.wordpress.com/blog
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