Up until now, the French violinist Fanny Clamagirand has appeared on my shelves only in French music by Camille Saint-Saëns and Eugène Ysaÿe, so I was happy to receive a CD of her playing the Beethoven violin concerto, with the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Ken-David Masur (Mirare). This is a performance I greatly enjoyed, starting with the recording balance. Beethoven's concerto is not written for a super macho soloist; the concerto is intensely lyrical and soloist and orchestra play the music together. This is Beethoven in a relaxed mood (the concerto is Opus 61 and the Pastoral Symphony Opus 68). The violinist and orchestra are well integrated, with the violin not having a distracting spotlight as it weaves its arabesques around the orchestral part.
Ms Clamagirand makes a somewhat tentative start at her very first entry, but thereafter things go exactly as they should. The orchestra makes an excellent partner for the solo violin. A big plus: Ms Clamagirand plays Kreisler's cadenzas throughout. There are dozens of cadenzas for this concerto, many of them somewhat preposterous and written for a different kind of soloist. After Beethoven, composers became wiser about leaving cadenzas to soloists and either wrote them out themselves, or with a virtuoso adviser (David for Mendelssohn, and Joachim for Brahms). Well done all concerned here: Beethoven, Fanny Clamagirand, orchestra, and Mirare.
