Bach's concerto for two
violins BWV 1043 is a popular work, especially for violinists. The
earliest of the 19 recordings I possess dates from 1915 (Kreisler and
Zimbalist). A friend recommended a YouTube performance
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leTVfMb2uME)
given by Arabella Miho Steinbacher and Akiko Suwanai,
filmed at a concert in the Louvre in Paris in 2010. A truly
delightful rendition, with the two young women plainly enjoying their
dialogue and choosing, to my mind, exactly the right tempi in all
three movements. Their “period instruments” (“Booth” Strad of
1716, and “Dolphin” Strad of 1714) sound superb played, thank
goodness, in a thoroughly modern manner. The slow movement almost
merits the over-used epithet “heavenly”. And not forgetting the
accompanying band of Sergey Khachatryan, Manrico Padovani, Yuki
Manuela Janke, Kazuhide Isomura, Danjuro Ishizaka, Maggie Cole. This
goes to the very top of my 19 recordings of the work, despite the limitation of
compressed YouTube sound. This is how Bach's double concerto
ought to sound. Coincidentally, the work was composed within a few years of the date the two Strad violins played here were made in Cremona.
Friday, 30 January 2015
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