Tuesday 5 February 2008

Very good dinner this evening: frommage de tête, cornichons, Spanish tomatoes, côte de veau, small leaf salad, Livarot and vieux Cantal cheeses, bread from Quayles in Tetbury, fresh mango, 2005 St Emilion ("Chevaler Collier"). Very contented.
Then Philippe Jaroussky singing Vivaldi; I could listen to him for hours – and you can hear every consonant and vowel of every word he sings.
Finally, the new CD of Janine Jansen. Her performance of the second unaccompanied partita is exemplary. For the two-part inventions, she is joined by Maxim Rysanov (viola) and, for the three-part inventions ("sinfonias") they are joined by Torleif Thedeen (cello). To my mind: Bach as he should be played, with intelligence, feeling and subtlety. A great relief to hear Bach without "authentic" string playing. It just sounds so much better!
Definitely a CD to keep beside me to play whenever the world becomes too much. Bravo Janine and colleagues!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

The only Janine Jansen CD I have is the Mendelssohn & Bruch VC 1 with Chailly. Sounds very good indeed with a great supporting orchestra in the Leipzig Gewandhaus, which played better here (under Blomstedt) in Malaysia than the NYPO under Maazel even! A friend gave me a copy of her debut CD but she was more immature then!

Harry Collier said...

I have a great admiration for Janine Jansen's playing. She is not afraid to dig into the violin, and she is not afraid to be subtle, as in the Bach disc here. We are, fortunately, a long way from the more "one sound" playing of a Tasmin Little, Joshua Bell -- or Isaac Stern.

Cheng Hooi Lee said...

A very heavy digger amongst the modern players is ..... Vengerov - a case of over-digging here. Bell had more levels of sound in his live Brahms VC here a few years ago - a superior violinist to T Little. As for the old belated I Stern, he is Mr Robust-Sound personified when I saw him live once in the Beethoven VC with the Philharmonia & Ozawa.

Harry Collier said...

I am not a fan of the "heavy digger" school. Violinists such as Janine Jansen, Leila Josefowicz, Leonidas Kavakos, Alina Ibragimova, etc are more my cup of tea. For the ultimate in subtle violin playing and colouring, however, one has to go to ... Jascha !

Anonymous said...

Of that list, I have seen Kavakos live here in Malaysia several times - Brahms, Beethoven, Bruch Op 46, Gypsy Airs, St Saens Op 28 & 83, Paganini La Campanella & Ernst Hungarian Airs. All magnificent playing from LK!