Search - Nikolaj Znaider :: Elgar: Violin Concerto

Breathtaking!

A Minstrel in the Gallery | Portsmouth, New Hampshire USA | 01/20/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Shortly after this recording was made, I had the opportunity to see Nicolaj play this magnificent piece by Elgar with the BSO and Sir Colin Davis at legendary Symphony Hall in January 2010. It is important to note that Znaider plays the SAME violin which was used by Kriesler to debut this concerto in 1910. What a spectacular performance and a must-have recording for your collection! I must admit I was not really familiar with this work, but now I cannot stop listening to it. Only in his early 30s, Znaider is already one the finest classical artists in the world today. This disc is a steal at this price!"

Nikolaj Znaider, Colin Davis, SKD: Elgar V Cto: Brilliant, s

Dan Fee | Berkeley, CA USA | 04/17/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Just looking over the menu for this new red book CD disc, one immediately gets a sense that Sony BMG intended this release to be something of a headliner. First off, we have the incredible Nikolaj Znaider as violin soloist. He's playing the famous Guarnerius del Gesu of 1741, nicknamed the Kreisler - after the famous violinist who premiered the Elgar in the first place, on this very fiddle. Our band is absolutely first-rate and a musical legend in its own right, the Staatskapelle Dresden. The depth of tone and technique among these players across the several instrumental departments is enough to cast deep shade on many a classical band, all around the planet. The only real risks we take with a band this capable is that, sometimes, professionalism trumps musical involvement. Our conductor is Sir Colin Davis; he has chops, generally, as a thinking listener's conductor, and as an Elgar musician in particular.



Cutting right to the chase? I strongly recommend this disc as among the top readings. Personally, I put it right up there - with, say, James Ehnes and Andrew Davis, Nigel Kennedy and Rattle, Shaham and Zinman in Chicago, Menuhin and Boult.



The recording venue is something of an acoustic plus, too. We are settled very nicely into the Lukaskirche in Dresden, where some of the very best red book analogue and PCM recordings have been captured over the years since an eastern Block (aka, 'behind the iron curtain') church became a secularized recording studio. Sound is deep, rich, and full frequency. Stereo only, alas, and no multiple channels of super audio resolution and tonal presence.



I confess a few impatient blind spots in passing when it comes to hearing this violin concerto right through. Unlike the calling card variety in focus displayed by the Enigma Variations, I find the concerto to get a bit garrulous and meandering in its gestures and attitudes. One cannot speak against its passionate narratives exactly - any more than a friend unburdening himself or herself can be interrupted too sharply, too quickly. Still, ...



This reading simply pours out huge reams of sheer tonal sensuality in seeming infinite color, impact, and abundance. The fiddle, the band - all elements which in lesser hands might have gone too sticky, too sweet, too much - are nearly unnerving in amazing yet belated aural recognitions of finesse, strength; as if simply all the players involved have such immense musical resources available that nobody is anywhere near to breaking a sweat. The sense of power in reserve, content to exist, to be, powerfully: lends this reading in retrospect a certain subtle aural profile, outlining an overall musical monumentality that is nowhere unduly evident or mannered at any point in any movement, romantic grand manner worn threadbare on empty modern musical sleeve.



Znaider is one of those rare fiddlers who can hint at meanings, just by the ineffable communication he opens up in the ways he moves from one note to another, often gesturing the larger-phrased shape he discerns among all the notes. He is phrasing, if you will, at an immediate micro-motion level, as well as powerfully or expressively shaping the larger music. The conductor and band partner and accompany Znaider in more than one good dimension, matching the sense of immense musical powers held and illuminated by high musical intellect, yet never displacing Znaider, never competing.



If I have any quibbles, I would just suppose that - maybe - Adrian Boult or Andrew Davis communicates a slight tad more of structure than Colin Davis manages here as leader. But this is hardly even a quibble. If we want the music to sing, sing, sing,sing - Sir Colin Davis must be among our top choices. Even more than not, all involved sound very happy to be making music together.



I'm running out of space, so let me just remark on each movement's felicity. Well, a general quality is the deep tonal lushness and finesse of both the fiddle and the band. Znaider's Guarnerius instrument simply yields up an abundance of musical treasure when played by a fiddler of this outstanding caliber. Add to that foundation, the equal tonal richness of each department of the Dresden Staatskapelle Orchestra, and, well, a listener gets high tonal depth, combined with astounding technical finesse, topped off with intimations of particularly oceanic strength and power.



In the first movement, soloist and band and conductor strike an effective balance between (among?) the competing elements - drama and narrative, grand reach of Late Romantic gesture embodied in Elgar's post-Brahmsian musical textures, and sheer beauty of sound. Something in the clarity of this balance suggests we are moving right along, into and towards and through the Sense of Modernity that will supersede the nineteenth century milieu, often casting sharp glances askance upon traditional western classical music materials and customary manners. At the very least, we can hear a committed modernist value in the constant clarity with which band and soloist move through the otherwise richly layered Late Romantic Elgarian narratives. One achievement among many will be that Modernity seeks expression and substance, often apart from sentimentality and wild, over heated emotional flooding; drilling pretty much constantly down into Wagner's endless-continuous melody-variation principle like a Sierra Nevada Gold Rush miner looking for mother lode.



The Andante middle movement is all about song, typical. Yet we luxuriate in Elgar's grand manner, the lyrics unfolding in paragraphs, now focused on the melancholy musing solo violin (ah, Nikolaj Z.), now flowing along in the orchestra with the solo violin partnered in a seeming challenge to renew its aristocratic voice. Znaider's magical ability to assert himself without ever gushing will perhaps recall Jascha Heifetz?



The faster third movement closes our tour of the Elgarian world with something like a classical music hybrid of scherzo and rondo attitudes. The established habit of polished, aristocratic manners in this reading never relaxes, however - never goes unbuttoned; giving an effect rather like watching Fred Astaire cover the wide, Depression-Era film stage in top hat and tails - Ginger Rogers doing it all backwards, of course, and in heels. The intensities of Znaider's violin-playing are almost always more like Olympian gymnastics routines, rather than bulk power lifting; that is to say, even the highest athletics on his fiddle remain quintessentially graceful in ways that seem to suggest nearly infinite fiddle and fiddler capacities. The more reflective-songful sections are as amazing as when we seem to watch the greatest of male ballet stars as he rises and floats at the top of his impeccably leaped arcs.



Is all this Elgar way too cool, too refined? You may have to listen and make up your own mind. My take is that I rank Znaider right up high, in company with Menuhin-Boult, Kennedy-Rattle, Ehnes-Davis, and similar readings. Five stars."

A Perfect Performance

Donald James | London | 03/19/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"An amazing performance. Poetic, thoughtful, infinitely touching. The greatest living Elgar conductor, the most perceptive and sensitive of soloists, and an orchestra with the weight and clarity I am certain the composer would have loved. I doubt this epic piece has had a more heartfelt and searching performance. It feels fresh too, and entirely without mannerisms. I've listened to it over and over again. Bravo!"