Plenty to engage in an album by turns challenging and entertaining
The Strad Issue: April 2025
Description: Plenty to engage in an album by turns challenging and entertaining
Musicians: Oscar Bohórquez (violin) Frank Braley (piano)
Works: Music by Bolcom, Copland, Guarnieri, Mower and Schoenfield
Catalogue number: GENUIN GEN25917
The nagging worry with a recording of hitherto little-known or neglected repertoire is that – well, there might be a reason that it’s not more regularly played. There is, however, not a bit of that in this revelatory disc from German violinist Oscar Bohórquez, himself of Peruvian and Uruguayan ancestry, which sets out to shine a light on another musical America, one that’s surely far less familiar to Western classical listeners.
Bohórquez does that with abundant passion and commitment, and some remarkably adaptable playing. He swoops and shimmies his way through the eclectic dances from north and south of the continent of Schoenfield’s Four Souvenirs and offers a beautifully hushed, breathy response to Bolcom’s unashamedly sentimental ragtime tribute Graceful Ghost. Copland might be the best-known name here, but his tender, strange Nocturne is an early work from his student days, and Bohórquez gives it an appropriately dream-like, otherworldly reading. The standout piece, however, is the swaggering Violin Sonata no.4 by Brazilian composer Mozart Camargo Guarnieri, which bracingly combines driving energy, jazzy harmonies and Latin exuberance in a thoroughly distinctive voice, and draws breathtakingly fiery, extrovert and thrillingly detailed playing from both Bohórquez and French pianist Frank Braley, who’s an unfailingly vibrant presence throughout the disc.
DAVID KETTLE
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