Joshua Bell, Matt Haimovitz: Thomas de Hartmann Rediscovered

The Strad Issue: October 2024

Description: Two star musicians rehabilitate a neglected Ukrainian

Musicians: Joshua Bell (violin) Matt Haimovitz (cello) INSO-Lviv SO/Dalia Stasevska; MDR Leipzig Radio SO/Dennis Russell Davies

Works: De Hartmann: Violin Concerto; Cello Concerto

Catalogue number: PENTATONE PTC5187076 

Ukrainian-born composer Thomas de Hartmann (1885–1956) is treated to a star line-up and sumptuous recorded sound to showcase his violin and cello concertos. His training under Arensky and Rimsky-Korsakov lends melodious and shimmering qualities to the music which has some similarities to the style of late Romantic composers such as Korngold.

Joshua Bell delivers an outstanding performance of the Violin Concerto, which brims with burnished intensity, each note exquisitely shaded as he soars to the highest registers, offering piquant inflections to the melodies. The technically challenging fast passages are elegantly shaped and despatched with panache, while a charged intensity fuels the playing of the Lviv Symphony Orchestra, which travelled to Warsaw to record this music by its compatriot. Underlying the sumptuous richly Romantic style is a melancholy that betrays the suffering of persecution, the work having been written in France under Nazi occupation. This sense of loss is once again relevant to the current political situation, and defines the fervour of the performance.

Matt Haimovitz provides an equally committed rendition of the Cello Concerto, the Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra under Davies partnering him with precision and verve. It’s an earlier work and, although sharing a similarly accessible melodic invention to the Violin Concerto, with its hints of klezmer and other folk-music idioms, it feels more discursive structurally speaking. Nonetheless, this is a very successful project which should help to restore de Hartmann’s undeservedly neglected music to the concert platform.

JOANNE TALBOT