Two masterly musicians on top form in an unusual pairing
THE STRAD RECOMMENDS
The Strad Issue: August 2024
Description: Two masterly musicians on top form in an unusual pairing
Musicians: Janine Jansen (violin) Oslo Philharmonic/Klaus Mäkelä
Works: Prokofiev: Violin Concerto no.1. Sibelius: Violin Concerto; Water drops
Catalogue number: DECCA 4854748
This is a remarkable CD, a magnificent display of technical brilliance at the service of great musicianship. It is also good fun. Jansen is delicate and vulnerable in the opening of the Sibelius Concerto, building steadily in intensity of sound and emotional power, with strong playing up the G string to the first mini-cadenza and the thrilling climax. In the second subject she is warm and dynamically expressive, her phrasing fluent and eloquent. In the great central cadenza she combines flamboyant power with poetic intimacy in a gripping narrative. The final section is an invigorating sprint. She plays the beginning of the slow movement with great nobility, her tone rich and velvety, and shows operatic powers of expression as the music grows to its climax. The opening of the finale has a touch of caprice, the dotted rhythms clipped and decked out with punchy accents.
Read: Janine Jansen on playing twelve Stradivari violins
In Prokofiev’s First Concerto the supple flow of the opening melody develops into scintillating richness as Jansen swoops up to the heights and snaps and snarls through the later acerbic semiquaver passages. She skips her way through the Scherzo, light and driving, a mischievous will-of-the-wisp, and provides a good deal of creamy legato in the finale, with spacious melodic playing.
The Oslo Philharmonic with Klaus Mäkelä are fine partners, and the recording is close and rich. As a final bon-bon there is Sibelius’s very short Water drops for pizzicato violin and cello, written when he was nine. It gets no mention in the booklet, but the cellist is presumably Mäkelä.
TIM HOMFRAY
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