An illuminating take on two American masters
THE STRAD RECOMMENDS
The Strad Issue: August 2024
Description: An illuminating take on two American masters
Musicians: James Ehnes (violin) St Louis Symphony Orchestra/Stéphane Denève
Works: Bernstein: Serenade. Williams: Violin Concerto no.1
Catalogue number: PENTATONE PTC5187148
For anyone whose familiarity with John Williams doesn’t stretch far beyond his movie scores, his 1974 First Violin Concerto might come as a bit of a shock. It’s far closer in musical language to Berg, even sometimes Schoenberg, than to his Jaws soundtrack, which he’d compose the following year. But its rich, dark, mostly atonal soundworld of turmoil and yearning feels like an entirely appropriate response to the sudden death of Williams’s wife: he has revealed that the piece stands as a memorial to her.
If the concerto requires a degree of commitment and insight from the listener, those are more than matched by the fiercely charged, deeply felt reading it receives from James Ehnes. He has played the piece for around a decade – and worked with Williams on it – and that profound understanding of its complexities and restlessly shifting moods is immediately evident. It’s a magnificent performance, and a deeply moving one, too, especially as Williams seems to allow in light and hope in the concerto’s closing moments, qualities conveyed by Ehnes with buoyant spirit.
Ehnes’s remarkable gift for sculpting a phrase, judging vibrato and richness of tone, while making his communication simple and direct, is evident from the opening of Bernstein’s Plato-inspired Serenade, which is delivered with fiery pyrotechnics at times, cool contemplation at others. It’s tempting simply to wallow in Ehnes’s astonishing playing, but the St Louis SO under Stéphane Denève is just as compelling, and captured in warm, close sound whose ringing clarity picks out every instrument. A joy!
DAVID KETTLE
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