Georg Friedrich Händel, and Johann Sebastian Bach

Georg Friedrich Händel was born in Halle, Brandenburg on 23rd February 1685. A few weeks later, Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, Thuringia, on 31st March. When I drove from Eisenach to Halle it was around 200 km and took approximately two hours; the route takes you past the memorial to the Buchenwald concentration camp. From Halle to Leipzig (where Bach spent his later life) is some 46 km. A small world. Bach stayed in his small world; Handel moved restlessly from Halle to Italy to France and to England. He settled in England, with side trips back to Halle and to Italy. Handel and Bach never met, though Bach tried a couple of times to catch up with the elusive Handel in Halle when Handel was on brief visits home.

1707 saw Handel, not yet 22 years old, in Rome; a mere 1400 km away on the other side of the Alps. Handel was looking to compose music in return for ducats. A new CD brings together three of the Roman cantatas Handel composed in that year, including the well-known Tra le Fiamme, and Armida Abbandonata, both truly excellent works. The singer is Nardus Williams who has an appropriate young and enthusiastic voice. Though I'd never heard of her before, I greatly enjoyed her singing here, and she copes admirably with Handel's many virtuosic passages. She is backed very ably by the Dunedin Consort directed by John Butt. First class all round. This music has been enjoyed for over 300 years. The CD booklet tells us that the Dunedin Consort "is an enthusiastic champion and commissioner of contemporary music". Let us hope that some of the contemporary music it champions gives pleasure over the next 300 years. But, somehow, I have my doubts.

Switching to Handel's past neighbour, the excellent pianist Vikingur Olafsson has produced a strange mini-CD lasting around 18 minutes on which he purports to play six Bach cantatas. In actual fact, he plays six musings on themes from six Bach cantatas, arranged in the style of J.S. Bach. Not unappealing (four of the six arrangements are by Olafsson himself) and the mini-CD certainly pleased me more than the pianist's Mozart arrangements on a recent CD.

My love of music started over 70 years ago with Bach and Handel. They are still going strong.

First Class Britten from Isabelle Faust

Isabelle Faust with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks conducted by Jakub Hrusa give a truly magnificent performance of Benjamin Britten's violin concerto (first-class live recording from 2021). In this concerto, the orchestra is almost on an equal footing to the soloist; it really is a concerto for violin and orchestra. The work has had a chequered history since 1938, mainly ignored until recently when performances have really burst into bloom. My shelves now hold 23 recordings of the work; I rarely give three stars to a recording, but my 23 Britten concerto recordings show a record ten three-stars out of 23! Isabelle Faust, Kerson Leong, Augustin Hadelich, James Ehnes, Baiba Skride, Frank Peter Zimmermann, Simone Lamsma, Vilde Frang, Arabella Steinbacher are among the 3-star winners. An extraordinary turnaround for a recently rarely heard work that is now among my favourites of all violin concertos.

Not that I am a fan of Britten's music in general. In my younger years I dutifully enjoyed two orchestral serenades with tenor, the War Requiem, and the opera Peter Grimes; but my enthusiasm faded with time. Faust fills her CD with bits and pieces Britten wrote for violin and piano; all instantly forgettable, except maybe the concert study for violin and piano "Reveille".

I cannot recall off-hand all 23 recordings I have of the work, let alone the 9-10 three-stars. Ida Haendel is the only "oldie" to feature in my collection (1977). Whenever I want to re-listen to the concerto, it is probably Ms Faust who will come off the shelf because of the truly excellent combination of violin playing, orchestral contribution, sensitive conducting, and a well-balanced recording. Stars all round.

Johan Dalene plays "Souvenirs"

I have been listening to the violinist Johan Dalene accompanied by Peter Friis Johansson, on a CD entitled "Souvenirs". A medley of well-known pieces for violin and piano. Dalene is a Norwegian in his early twenties at the time of this recording. Positive things first. Dalene really has technique to burn. Some of his playing, for example at the end of Waxman's Carmen Fantasia, would have seen even Heifetz's jaw drop. And then: the sound he draws from his Strad violin is some of the loveliest violin sound I have ever heard.

All wonderful so far. If I have a criticism, it's that too much of Dalene's playing sounds studied: he plays a lot from the head, and not too often from the heart. It's as if almost every bar he plays bears his written instruction on how to play it. Ravel's Tzigane suffers greatly from this trait. And the recorded sound suffers a bit from the modern desire for the fullest dynamic range, which means that on much home equipment, if the volume is set so you can hear the violin playing pianissimo in the upper register, the full sound forte will blow your socks off.

Souvenirs is a nice collection of old favourites: Tzigane, Massenet's Méditation, Tchaikovsky's three pieces from Souvenir d'un lieu cher, Saint-Saëns' Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, De Falla's dance from La Vida Breve, Kreisler's Recitative and Scherzo. Franz Waxman's Hollywood Carmen Fantasy is played, though I would have much preferred that by Sarasate. All the pieces are ultra-familiar. I'll remember "Souvenirs" for the incredible technique and wonderful violin sound. But there are more heartfelt versions of pretty well every piece on this CD.

Vilde Frang plays Elgar

Edward Elgar's only violin concerto is echt late 19th century romantic music, superbly written for the violin (Elgar was a violinist ). Arguably, it is over-long at around 45 minutes and suffers from the late-Romantic bloat that afflicted many works of that era; the solo violinist must demand overtime payment for playing it, especially since the long cadenza comes right at the end of the finale. It is one of only three notable British violin concertos, the others being by Walton and Britten (though I have never cared for the Walton concerto, written with Heifetz). Now, in my late years, it is one of those concertos where I find the music over-familiar, and I listen to the work more for the soloist than for the music itself.

The latest incarnation on my shelves does not disappoint: Vilde Frang is at one with the work. I love listening to her playing, and she gets everything right, not over-sentimalising the sentimental passages in the manner of Igor Oistrakh who made the work sound like Puccini in a melancholy mood. Ms Frang obviously likes the concerto, and this is the third recording I have in which she plays the solo part. Here, she is accompanied by the Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester Berlin conducted by Robin Ticciati. Previous recordings saw her with the Oslo Philharmonic conducted by Vasily Petrenko (to which I gave three stars) and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra conducted by Krzysztof Urbanski. Obviously a concerto for which Ms Frang feels an affection. I can't remember the previous two recordings, but this third is perfectly satisfactory and I enjoyed the violin playing immensely, especially in the second movement where the violinist exhibits real feeling and empathy. Balance between soloist and orchestra is excellent in this recording.

Marie Cantagrill plays Tchaikovsky

It transpires that I have around 70 different recordings of Tchaikovsky's violin concerto on my shelves. Not my favourite concerto, but a great vehicle for violin playing. My latest recording comes from Marie Cantagrill (born 1979), a violinist I hold in great esteem. There are musicians -- such as Heifetz or Milstein -- who worked out over time how to play a piece and they played the music (superbly) with their heads in charge. Then there are violinists such as Cantagrill (or Ginette Neveu) who play superbly, but with the heart leading the head. I greatly admired Cantagrill's playing in Bach and Brahms, and I greatly admire it here. Technically, she is right on top (of course). She plays with an impressive range of dynamics, from ff to pp. Like her late compatriot, Ginette Neveu, she puts her whole heart into what she is playing.

I have no idea where the recording comes from, or when it was made; someone discovered it somewhere on the Web (Spotify?) and copied it to a friend who copied it to me. The excellent orchestra is the Budapest Concert Orchestra, and the conductor Tamas Gal. The recording is excellent, with an ideal balance between soloist and orchestra. My admiration for the playing of Marie Cantagrill was already high after her recordings of the Bach solo works, and of the three Brahms sonatas for violin and piano. With this Tchaikovsky recording, she confirms my feeling that she is a violinist to whom I will always listen with pleasure. I hope that, some day, someone will discover a recording of her playing the Beethoven violin concerto. That would suit her playing-from-the-heart way with music.

Akiko Suwanai and Evgeni Bozhanov in Brahms

I have known and loved Brahms' three sonatas for violin and piano for over seven decades now, and they have entered the canon of works that are, maybe, just too familiar. When I listen to them again, it is predominantly the violin playing that interests me, since I know the music back to front. I have 49 different recordings of the three sonatas; my highly subjective three stars have gone to: Ning Feng, Marie Cantagrill, Gerhard Taschner, Lisa Batiashvili, Boris Goldstein, Arthur Grumiaux (two different recordings),

The 49th recording I have just added comes from Akiko Suwanai, a violinist I greatly love and respect. She is a very sane player, playing music she has known and loved for many decades now. Her pianist here is an unknown Bulgar, Evgeni Bozhanov.

Akiko is her usual intelligent, accurate and admirable self, and I give her three stars; her playing in the slow movement of the third sonata is particularly lovely and intelligent. I give Johannes Brahms three stars for the music. I knock one star off of the new recording as a whole, because the pianist annoys me and seems to believe he is the star of the show. I found him often distracting, particularly his staccato playing. No need to go to the extremes of Heifetz with Emanuel Bay, where the pianist is a discreet background support. But also no need for the pianist to attempt to hog the limelight; I listen to this music for the music and for the violinist. Not for the piano part.

Robert Schumann's Dichterliebe and Opus 39 Liederkreis

Both my parents came from poor homes, and both left school at 13 years old. Both of them were fervently musical and were determined that their five children would have the best possible education, so we found ourselves learning French, German, and Italian. Very fortunate for music lovers; this evening I reacquainted myself with Schumann's Dichterliebe. What wonderful music! But with no knowledge of the German language, and little knowledge of Heinrich Heine's 19th century Germany, I don't know whether this sublime music would have had the same effect on me. Anyway: A real masterpiece, and another great pillar of European music. I am no great fan of most of Robert Schumann's music; but his Lieder really are something else.

I enjoyed the Dichterleibe so much, that I went on to listen to the Opus 39 Liederkreis, with poems by Joseph von Eichendorff. Decades ago, I learned the words by heart, even copying out the texts into old school exercise books. Some things one does when young are of immense benefit later on. I greatly enjoyed renewing my acquaintance with Op 39. Singer in the Eichendorff poems was Werner Güra; in the Dichterliebe, Christian Gerhaher. In German Lieder, you really need German singers (just as, in French mélodies, you really need French singers).

Janine Jansen plays Sibelius and Prokofiev

With 42 recordings of the Sibelius violin concerto, and 25 of the first Prokofiev violin concerto on my shelves, one would have thought this was quite enough. I have grown up listening to Ginette Neveu and Heifetz in the Sibelius for over 70 years now. During the rare occasions I re-listen, I find I am concentrating more on the violin playing than on the too-familiar music. Of the two concertos, the Prokofiev has survived best for me; it is highly inventive and grips attention right to the end, even after some 70 years of listening.

If I did not have a satisfactory recording of either concerto, my current addition of Janine Jansen (with Klaus Mäkelä and the Oslo Philharmonic) would be my ideal. Jansen is a superb violinist, and even though classical music is international (except in Africa) there is something that feels right with North Europeans playing music that is 100% North European. A truly excellent CD that will probably see me ignore the 41 rival versions in future. Well done Ms Jansen.

Arthur Grumiaux and Clara Haskil play Mozart

There is no better duo partnership in Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert than Arthur Grumiaux and Clara Haskil. An off-air recording of the duo playing four Mozart sonatas for violin and piano has come my way; the performance took place in Strasbourg on 19th June 1956. This is true partnership playing, with both Grumiaux and Haskil on top form. What was also greatly appreciated by me is the recording quality and balance. 1956 mono it may be, but you can hear every note from the violin, even when playing pianissimo with the piano. Two top players playing Mozart in an exemplary recording; what more can one ask for? Thank you Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française for the recording.

Ernest Chausson and Guillaume Lekeu

I have always had a soft spot for the music of both Ernest Chausson (1855-99) and Guillaume Lekeu (1870-94). Dying the day after his 24th birthday, Lekeu was one of the major composers who never had a chance (like Pergolesi). I was therefore delighted when a good friend sent me recordings of Chausson's "Concert for violin, piano, and string quartet" coupled with Lekeu's evergreen sonata for violin and piano (an old, old favourite).

Participants are Gabriel Le Magadure (violin) with the always welcome Frank Braley as pianist, plus the Agate Quartet in the Chausson. What an admirable coupling! Both works -- particularly the Chausson Concert -- are audibly post-Wagnerian, and fin de siècle. Both receive thoroughly idiomatic performances from the French team and are well recorded (recording a violin, piano, and string quartet must have been quite a challenge, particularly since there is a fair amount of bass sound in the Chausson). This is an obvious coupling that should have been done before many times. (I have six other recordings of the Chausson, plus eight of the Lekeu, the best of which in the past was that by Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien).

A most welcome addition to my bulging CD shelves.

Beethoven from the Smetana String Quartet

One can easily overlook the music of Ludwig van Beethoven. I have had his only opera, Fidelio, on my shelves for nearly 30 years now, and never listened to it. And I would feel no loss if I never heard his fifth symphony again, nor the bombastic finale of the ninth. All his life, he had no long-term patron or employer, and was forced to earn his living from crowd-pleasing music. Occasionally, as in his 'old age' (he was only 57 when he died) he wrote music just for himself.

I have just been re-listening to his string quartet opus 130 in B flat major. Surely the Cavatina followed by the Grosse Fuga finale are among a chosen few at the summit of all music? In these two movements, Beethoven raises music to new heights. Music to which I am never tired of listening.

My chosen CD this time round was the Smetana String Quartet, Czech string quartet players playing Beethoven and really well recorded and balanced by Supraphon, my favourite company for string quartet recordings. Contentment all round.

Acquaragia Drom

Decades ago, in a record store in Paris (in the days when there were such things) I picked up, out of curiosity, a CD by a group of Adriatic gypsies who called themselves Acquaragia Drom. The group appeared to travel around in a tour bus and consisted of three men and two women. Instrumentarium was guitar, accordion, violin, clarinet, bass clarinet, and 'tromba de' zingari'. The music alternates between European, Indian, and 'Arab'. Throughout over two decades, this one CD has given me immense pleasure. Listening to it again today, I could not help but reflect on just how far popular / folk music has deteriorated with the advent of all-embracing American/African popular music, with its omnipresent guitar strumming, beat, and bongo drumming, all in relentless 4/4 time. No violins, no clarinets, no accordions, and everything synthesised and amplified via advanced electronics. Modern music has a lot to answer for. Modern folk (or "people's") music is to music what Bach is to Stockhausen. "Stockhausen? I think I once trod in some" quipped Thomas Beecham.

Pavel Haas Quartet in Shostakovich

I have always had a soft spot for Dmitry Shostakovich's music. He is almost alone in 20th century composers in speaking directly to me. I have just been listening to hs 2nd, 7th and 8th string quartets played by the wonderful Pavel Haas Quartet. Terrific, personal music. Wonderful, committed playing. And, as one would expect, a demonstration-class recording by Supraphon, a company that appears to have mastered the art of balancing and recording string quartets. I wish the Pavel Hass Quartet would record more; I have loved them in Schubert, but await with impatience to hear them in Mozart and Haydn.

Georg Friedrich Händel in Italy

There are few of the great composers I would have wanted to meet in person; certainly not Mozart, nor Beethoven. But I would like to have met Georg Friedrich Händel, if only to hear about his travels as he flitted, seemingly effortlessly, between Germany, Italy, France, and England. He must have had some travel tales to relate! His period in Italy when aged only 21 or so would have been particularly interesting. He was in Florence, he was in Rome, he was in Venice, composing music on commission for various members of the nobility as he went. The cantatas and duetti that he composed at that time gave him ample material for exploitation in his later works, particularly his operas.

In a Handel marathon, I listened to eight Glossa CDs, recorded in Italy with all-Italian participants around 2005. The principal singer is Roberta Invernizzi (soprano). The band is La Risonanza, and the director is Fabio Bonizzoni. Around ten hours of listening to Handel's cantatas and duetti; quite a feast. The music varies in quality from excellent routine, to really first class. Sometimes Handel had a talented band of musicians at his disposal; at other times he appears to have been down to a harpsichord and basso continuo (probably also a result of the amount of ducats offered for the commission). Sometimes the band really goes to town: viz the extensive violin solo in the cantata Un'Alma Innamorata of 1707 in Rome that suggests that Arcangelo Corelli was in the band for that performance, as well as playing in the cantata from Rome Il Delirio Amoroso.

My ten hours went by swiftly. There is a lot to be said for having Italians singing Italian texts (also French for French texts, Germans for German texts, etc). The Glossa collection really takes one back to Italy in the period around 1707 (when Handel would have been just 22 years old). I have a vast collection of recordings of Handel's music; and I would not part with a single piece.

Baiba Skride: Britten and Bartok

I have never been a fan of the music of Benjamin Britten, bar a few works. I have just listened to a recording of his double concerto for violin, viola and orchestra (completed from drafts). Except for a few passages in the second and third movements, it seems to me to be music written without passion. It was played (very well) in a recent recording by Baiba Skride, with Ivan Vukcevic (viola) and Marin Alsop conducting the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra. I have only one other recording of the work (Anthony Marwood and Lawrence Power, with Ilan Volkov conducting the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra). Apart from the Bach D minor concerto for two violins, I don't think duo concertos work too well.

How different is Britten's one and only violin concerto, written in 1938-9 and frequently revised. I have many recordings of the piece on my shelves, including violinists such as James Ehnes, Julia Fischer, Augustin Hadelich, Janine Jansen, Simone Lamsma, Arabella Steinbacher, and Frank Peter Zimmermann (the latter with three different recordings). The concerto breathes passion, much like Shostakovich's first violin concerto of a few years later. The Britten concerto has come into its own only recently but, to my mind, it is a better piece of music than the ultra-popular concertos of Mendelssohn and Bruch (G minor).

The Latvian violinist Baiba Skride gives a magnificent performance of the violin concerto, with the same backing as with Britten's double concerto. She brings out all the dark passion of the violin concerto and is technically impeccable. Orchestra, balance and recording quality are all excellent. I recently praised the recording of the work by Kerson Leong. Skride is on the same level.

To complete my Baiba Skride listening, I heard Bartok's two Rhapsodies for violin and orchestra (WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln conducted by Eivind Aadland). Not bad, but not music I will return to often, like most of Bartok's music.

Phillippe Graffin plays Eugène Ysaÿe

Put 100 randomly selected people in a room and ask them about the music of  Eugène Ysaÿe and one can almost guarantee total silence. Ysaÿe (1858-1931) was born in Liège in Belgium and was a wonderful violinist. Like Fritz Kreisler, he wrote extensively for the violin, with many well-loved morceaux for violin and piano. His is not great music, but it's for relaxed listening for those who love the violin and music for violin written by a violinist.

A recent CD from the French violinist Phillippe Graffin gives us two large-scale works for violin and orchestra, and three salon pieces for violin and piano. The Poème Concertant is labelled as a world premier recording. The E minor violin concerto has been pieced together from odds and ends of manuscript. In the orchestral works, the Liverpool Philharmonic plays valiantly, conducted by Jean-Jacques Kantorow.

It's a while since I last heard Philippe Graffin, but he is an excellent violinist and probably one of the very best choices possible for Eugène Ysaÿe's music. The music with orchestra is excellently crafted, but is an exercise in craftmanship rather than a product of emotion and imagination. As might be expected, the violin predominates; Fritz Kreisler was wise to have eschewed trying to compose large-scale works for violin and orchestra. For lovers of violin playing, however, even the concertante works are of interest though, on this CD, I particularly enjoyed the two mazurkas, plus the well-known Rêve d'enfant; the pianist in the three morceaux is Marisa Gupta. Recording quality and balance are excellent.

Alena Baeva and Vadym Kholodenko

The latest new CD to hit my CD player features Alena Baeva, a violinist from Russia and the Moscow Conservatoire, and Vadym Kholodenko, a pianist from the Ukraine. Both are excellent musicians and form a good duo. They play Schubert's Fantaisie D.934, a lovely work of which I already have 19 other recordings. It's a wonderful work for the pianist who has the lion's share of the music, a little less so for the violinist who is often asked to assume the role of an obbligato instrument whilst the pianist has all the tunes. No matter: Baeva and Kholodenko give an excellent performance here.

They go on to play Stravinsky's Divertimento for violin and piano, arranged by Samuel Dushkin. Stravinsky's star has faded since the 1960s; at one time some critic called him "the greatest composer of the twentieth century", but those days have passed. His Divertimento is fine, but it's very much bread-and-butter music, designed to bolster Igor's finances. Baeva and partner give it their best go. Then come Schumann's four Märchenbilder. I revere Schumann for his Lieder, but otherwise he has rarely appealed to me. The Märchenbilder are no great shakes, and it's not surprising they feature little on programmes.

The final Fantasie in this programme so titled is one by Olivier Messiaen. I feared the worst, and my fears were doubly confirmed; the work is seven minutes of tuneless and theme-less note spinning, and why the artists elected to play it here, I cannot think. Maybe it was the only other work they could find with Fantaisie in its title. To be avoided by all lovers of music. The balance and recording of the CD are acceptable. When played via my Spendor loudspeakers -- that always emphasise the bass range -- the piano completely overwhelmed the violin for most of the time in the Schubert Fantaisie. Listened to it again via my Sennheiser wireless headphones, the balance was OK, with the bass less dominant.

Not, then, a "must-have" CD. Thinking of the Messiaen piece: why is it that a century that could boast composers such as Rachmaninov, Sibelius, Debussy, Ravel, Elgar, Britten, Stravinsky, Puccini, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and others, could produce pretty well nobody of note after around 1960? There are many composers of classical music post-1960, but few whose works are ever played more than once.

Bennewitz String Quartet in Dvorak

Having greatly admired the playing and recording of the Bennewitz String Quartet playing Haydn quartets, I decided to invest in the quartet playing Dvorak (10th and 13th string quartets). As a great fan of string quartets, I could not understand why, in my giant collection of recordings, I had only one CD of Dvorak string quartets (recorded in 1984 by the Panocha Quartet). Antonin Dvorak wrote a lot of music, including numerous string quartets, sonatas, trios, symphonies -- and concertos for violin, piano, and cello (of which the cello concerto became famous). His Slavonic Dances are ubiquitous. To my taste, much of his reams of music speaks of a superb musical craftsman, rather than of someone inspired.

Like later Beethoven and Shostakovitch, Dvorak appears at times to have regarded his string quartets as a personal musical sandbox; many passages and harmonies of the 13th quartet, for example, lean more towards the harmonic language of the 20th century, rather than the 19th. The quartet was composed in 1896 -- just on the cusp. The sandbox was not for those who wanted "easy listening". The 10th quartet contains more memorable material; for me, the 13th quartet has its material spread thinly, with a little going a long way.

The Bennewitz Quartet does not disappoint. The quartet's dynamics are again excellent (as in its Haydn CD) and the recording of the Dvorak (SWR Music in Baden-Baden) faithfully reproduces the sound of the four players, though the recording perspective is not up to the high standard of the Czechs when they recorded the Haydn. I hope that the Bennewitz will record more Haydn, plus Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Shostakovitch. I am waiting, chequebook ready. It appears I am a big fan of the Bennewitz Quartet, but not of much of Dvorak's music. Now I have two CDs of Dvorak string quartets on my shelves: that is enough.