Solo violin recitals
are not easy to programme. This one
goes to the heart of the twentieth century
repertoire with the Sonatas of Bartók
and Ysaÿe’s E minor, adding a piece
by the dedicatee of the latter, Kreisler’s
Recitativo and Scherzo Caprice. Commitment
to the contemporary literature is evinced
by works from Davidovsky and Harbison,
so this is a well-balanced programme,
idiomatically played and rather closely
recorded.
Frautschi, quite rightly,
has her own ideas about these works.
So the Kreisler is not as rhapsodically
phrased as by, say, Oscar Shumsky nor
is she as tonally luscious as he. She
tends to be more vertical; to adhere,
as it were, to the bar lines and not
to phrase over and through them. She
is straighter, less fanciful and romanticised.
I enjoyed many aspects of her Ysaÿe;
I liked her songful introspection and
feminine lyricism in the Sarabande,
though I did feel that her relatively
sedate tempo for the opening Allemanda
rather robbed it of its explicitly Bachian
ethos. By contrast Ricci’s classic recording
drives through it evoking the E major
Partita. There is of course stiff competition
in the Bartók, not least from
the still vibrant Menuhin (commissioner
of the work) and Gitlis recordings.
In this respect – and in an analogous
way to the Ysaÿe, I missed in her
Ciaccona opening movement the sheer
visceral sweep of Gitlis as well as
the range of tone colours he elicits
in the Melodia at a swifter and more
agile tempo. But she certainly commands
the broad sweep of the work well.
Davidovsky’s work is
for violin and electronic sounds – the
composer’s words. In effect these range
from quasi-marimba sonorities to more
abrasive ones. The violin line courses
above them at a Passacaglia-like tempo
with moments of declamatory violin writing
taking their place in the dramatic articulation
of the eight-minute work. Harbison’s
Four Songs of Solitude were written
in 1985 for the composer’s violinist
wife. I was particularly drawn to the
third, which seems to embody elements
of old American song and hymnody in
a most attractive and expressive way.
Frautschi proves a
commendably communicative exponent of
this repertoire. And whilst I can’t
say that in any of the major works she
is a front-runner she is clearly a talented
musician from whom we shall doubtless
hear much more in the years to come.
Jonathan Woolf
Jennifer Frautschi (violin) 
