Search - Davidovich :: Jubilee Concert for Bella Davidovich

Music from a Profoundly Musical Mother and Son

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 08/31/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This CD commemorates the 80th birthday of one of the music world's most beloved pianists, the Russian Bella Davidovich. I well remember her Carnegie Hall debut in 1978, greeted as it was with rapturous critical appraisal. She had emigrated from the Soviet Union, a year or so after her violinist son, Dmitry Sitkovetsky, had come to the US and soon found herself with a burgeoning concert and recording career in the West. Interestingly, the concerto on this disc, the Mendelssohn G Minor, Op. 25, was not often among her concert pieces. In the notes for this booklet Ms Davidovich indicates that she came back to the concerto after many years and discovered it was not, as is so often said, 'childlike.' Although Mendelssohn wrote it when he was 21 and although it has often been a debut piece for young pianists, it is indeed a romantic concerto in the same mold as, say, the Schumann. Davidovich, here playing with the Moscow Chamber Orchestra under American conductor Constantine Orbelian, clearly still has technique to spare as well as unfailingly musical instincts. She sings the second movement as if it were one of the Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words, and she tosses off the coruscating runs and arpeggios of the finale with all her wonted flair. This is a brilliant performance worthy of comparison with the lauded recordings by Murray Perahia, Stephen Hough or Rudolf Serkin.



The other work on this disc is the Chausson's 1889-1891 Concerto in D Major, Op. 21, for Violin, Piano and String Quartet, arranged for string orchestra by Dmitry Sitkovetsky, who both plays the solo violin part and conducts the strings of the Moscow Chamber Orchestra. Sitkovetsky has made a number of string orchestra arrangements of familiar works, most prominent of which is his magnificent transcription of Bach's Goldberg Variations Bach: Goldberg Variations (Transcription for Strings); he has also made a string trio arrangement of that work Johann Sebastian Bach: Goldberg-Variationen, Version for String Trio. He is one of the leading violinists of our day, as well as being a lauded conductor. He is the son of Davidovich and the tragically short-lived violinist, Julian Sitkovetsky The Art of Yulian Sitkovetsky, Vol. 5. The Chausson actually gains something, in my opinion, by being transcribed for string orchestra, although I still love the original version. Somehow the dreaminess, the proto-impressionism of the work is accentuated in this transcription. As for the playing of Sitkovetsky and Davidovich, it seems perfectly attuned to the work's character. It is worth noting that Davidovich has had the work in her repertoire since 1973 when she played it in its first Russian performance, partnered by David Oistrakh and the Taneyev Quartet.



For those of you who have admired Ms Davidovich's playing all these years, be assured that even at age 80 she still has the goods. And if you don't know the playing of her son, you have a treat in store for you.



Eager recommendation.



Scott Morrison"