It's not often I listen intently to
every bar of Elgar's violin concerto from the beginning until the end
50 minutes thereafter. But this evening I did, deeply moved by an
August 2019 broadcast from Oslo where Vasily Petrenko
conducted the Oslo Philharmonic, with Vilde Frang as the
soloist. Elgar's concerto is deeply passionate and romantic, and that
is what came over with Frang and Petrenko.
Vilde Frang makes a lovely sound, and
one notices here Elgar's love of the lower reaches of the violin (he
should have written a viola concerto, as well as those for cello and
violin). Frang and Petrenko (who work hand-in-glove in this work)
are not afraid of extensive rubato, and the music benefits. The
off-air sound is excellent, marred only slightly by a somewhat recessed
contribution from the string section during forte moments. I
have 22 recordings of this concerto (including another one by Frang
in San Francisco earlier this year). But this combination of Frang
and Petrenko in Elgar gets my gold medal. It's warm, passionate and
loving. It would be good to hear Frang and Petrenko collaborating in Shostakovich and Glazunov.
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