Search - Leos Janacek, Dmitry Shostakovich, Marek Janowski :: Shostakovich: Violin Concerto No. 1; Janacek: Violin Concerto

One might think that, in the centennial Shostakovich year, his first violin concerto had been performed and recorded so often and so well that there were no new interpretative avenues to explore. To contribute yet another addition to the discography, a violinist would have to be very good, very courageous, and have something compelling and personal to say. The young Latvian violinist Baiba Skride possesses all these qualities in abundance. Born in 1981, first prize winner of the 2001 Queen Elisabeth Competition, she is embarked on a major international career as soloist and chamber musician; this is her third recording for Sony Classical. She uses her effortless virtuosity entirely in the service of the music, never for display, and her tone is strikingly beautiful: expressive, variable, warm and pure in every register. Her approach to the Shostakovich is very much her own: unusually inward, lyrical, and expansive. Her emotional concentration and identification with every mood are extraordinary. The slow movements are mournful, bleak, and desperate; carefully paced, inexorable build-ups sink back into forlorn resignation. The fast movements are brilliant but controlled and clear, the tempi never excessive; the climaxes are unbridled but not raucous. Janácek's Concerto, begun in 1926, remained a fragment (and its title a mystery), but he incorporated much of its material into his opera From the House of the Dead. In the 1980s, the Czech musicologists Milos Stredon and Leos Faltus reconstructed it, creating a short, dramatic piece full of Slavic dance- and serenade idioms, passionate declamation, soaring melodies and colorful orchestration complete with Janácek's beloved bird-songs. The brutally difficult solo part stays mostly in the stratosphere; the playing is terrific. Of the two orchestras, the Münchner, recorded live, sounds better. --Edith Eisler