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The Russian School
has often espoused the Elgar Violin
Concerto, right from the days of the
pioneering Michael Zacharewitsch in
the teens and twenties, and Heifetz
who, it’s often forgotten because of
his much later recording, played it
in New York as early as 1920 when he
was barely nineteen. David Oistrakh
performed it a number of times in his
cycles of great violin concertos (perhaps
a recording survives) but it fell to
his son, Igor, to record it. Rising
star Ilya Grubert, noted for his recent
recordings of Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich,
was taped playing the Concerto in concert
in October 2001 when he was – I believe
– the same age as Heifetz. It seems
to have been Elgar Night in Moscow because
we also get Alassio and Pomp and Circumstance
No 1.
I have to admit a personal
prejudice against lingering in this
work. I suppose my idea of Purgatory
is a performance that takes over fifty
minutes and anything much over 46 minutes
stretches my sympathy. For this doubtless
Sammons and Heifetz (who went to consult
Sammons on the concerto a few days before
Heifetz’s 1949 recording) are to blame.
Grubert takes just under the fifty-minute
mark. As for the recording the acoustic
is rather flat and the winds not sufficiently
audible, certainly not pipy enough,
and the percussion booms alarmingly.
Whether it’s the recording or not it
catches a somewhat edgy tone to Grubert’s
playing and an occasionally over-sinewy
vibrato. The performance is rather fitful
and unconvincing. The slow, lurching
orchestral introduction invariably means
that the soloist’s first entry is not
one that completes the orchestral phrase
– as it should – but seems to embark
on one of its own – which it shouldn’t.
Some of the phrasing sounds rather forced
and prosaic as well. The slow movement
is however full of attractive lyricism
even though there is a "by rote"
quality to too much of Grubert’s playing
and some questionable slowings down.
The difficult finale – technically and
architecturally – is vitiated by a lack
of internal dynamism and momentum –
the moments of untidiness are there
but of more concern the rather unengaged
nature of the playing. I suspect all
concerned were learning their way into
the work. I see Grubert is playing the
concerto at this year’s 2004 Elgar Festival
– it will be interesting to see how
far he has come in the Concerto.
In the South (Alassio)
is quite brisk – though no-one is as
brisk as the composer himself in this
work (he’s unstoppable). Conductor Vladimir
Ziva pushes on here, in a way he perhaps
might in the Concerto if left to his
own devices. There is real vitality
if some brusqueness in phrasing – the
Canto Popolare for instance goes
for little and the ending is a bit fudged.
Pomp and Circumstance was presumably
an encore. The recording sounds a little
papery now but I’ve always liked the
Arthur Bliss recording of the set –
especially No.4.
A very uneven Elgar
Night in Moscow.
Jonathan Woolf
Ilya Grubert (violin) 