Elgar: Violin Concerto / Vaughan Williams: The Lark Ascending
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Composer: Edward ElgarComposer: Ralph Vaughan Williams
Conductor: Colin Davis
Orchestra: London Symphony Orchestra
Performer: Hilary Hahn
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language)
CD Release Date: 2004-09-28
Music Label: Deutsche Grammophon
Soundtracks:
- I. Allegro
- II. Andante
- III. Allegro Molto
- The Lark Ascending
Free Music Notes for Elgar: Violin Concerto / Vaughan Williams: The Lark Ascending
Free Music Review: Looking closer
Hit: 5 Stars
Reading through the many reviews of this recording submitted over the past months, I can't help wonder if all the writers were listening to the same release: The best... The worst... Ravishing... Flat... and on and on. I bought a full orchestral score and redd through the recording a number of times to try to sort it all out.
Stepping back for a fresh look at the whole thing:
This concerto by Elgar is one of the most emotionally intense compositions of the 20th century. At a time when many composers were churning out dry academic experiments in arhythmia and atonality, Elgar poured out his cold, sterile English heart into a passionate melodic outburst that reaches both back into pre-Renaissance English folk forms and forward into post-modern sensibilities. Any accurate and complete description must take into account both the emotional fluidity and the formal structure. We don't have space or time here for the formal structure--just a few words on the emotional.
The dynamic and tempo changes written into the score are almost dizzying. For example, in one section I read more than 80 changes within the space of about 30 bars--terms like espressivo, grazioso, animato, lento, appassionato, con fuoco, ritardando molto pile almost on top of each other--poco marcato, poco largando, a tempo, cantabile in three adjacent bars--markings such as dolcissimo and espressivo in the same measure followed closely by animato; a tempo con pasione followed closely by maestoso and strepitoso--often with different sections of the orchestra going in different expressive directions at the same time, and quite apart from the markings for the solo. Such as ad lib. or tenudo or espressivo appears frequently in the solo line even where the orchestra is marked a tempo.
In such a musical environment it would be easy to get carried away into emotional gushing. Hilary handles this with admirable and elegant restraint. She has obviously thought this piece through and decided what she wants to do with it, as a coherent whole, and she arrived at conclusions quite different from some other artists. That is her artistic prerogative. And she carries it off very well. Others may come to different conclusions. That is their artistic prerogative, both as performers and listeners, but a piece of music as complex and intense and varied as this can survive more than one interpretive approach.
Giving Yehudi his due (I knew him personally and admired his work back in the 50s), I also admire Hilary for her interpretation here--not the less for her technical excellence. It wouldn't hurt for anyone to own both versions and to go back and forth between them, relishing their differences.
Above all, please don't scorn those who refuse to climb into your own narrow little musical box.
While I also appreciate the quite different interpretations offered by some artists, I am sorry I can't give this particular recording at least seven or eight stars.
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