Antje Weithaas in Beethoven. Capuçon and Caussé in Mozart

I am frequently amazed at the recorded quality of much music broadcast and available over the Internet; in particular, broadcast engineers often reveal a great talent for recording balance. Two new concerts recently gave me special delight. From Leipzig on 10^th February, Antje Weithaas gave a superb performance of the Beethoven violin concerto, excellently backed by the MDR Sinfonieorchester Leipzig under the young Klaus Mäkelä. For a change, the orchestra made a real contribution to the proceedings, and this became genuinely a concerto for violin and orchestra, helped by exemplary balance and recording quality. Ms Weithaas has a slender tone that may not be ideal in Bruch or Brahms, but was admirable in the filigree arabesques that characterise so much of the Beethoven concerto solo part. I was not enthralled with her choice of cadenzas – Busoni in the first movement? After Beethoven's day, pretty well all composers preferred to write out their own cadenzas to prevent show-off soloists from going on and on and trying to make their own contribution. However, all in all this performance, from the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, pleased me greatly with its soloist, tempi, orchestral contribution, and recorded quality and balance.

On to a second concert, this time from a church near Gstaad in Switzerland on 26^th January where Renaud Capuçon and Gérard Caussé were the perfect combination in Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola. What a perfectly matched pair, and the recorded balance between the two was again demonstration class. The small band (Les Siècles) was conducted by François-Xavier Roth. Two minor flaws were the sound of the full band in a church acoustic, where the sound sometimes tended towards cavernous, plus a lot of noise that sounded like the Swiss army on the march, on occasions. However, all in all a perfect rendition of Mozart's miraculous score, and good sound. Commercial recording companies have some pretty tough competition nowadays.