You’d expect the composer
of the celebrated Cavatina to have something
of an affinity with the violin and it’s
certainly true that his concertos for
that instrument have more personality
and dash than those he wrote for cello.
The First dates from 1870-71 and was
re-worked by its dedicatee, the distinguished
figure of August Wilhelmj. Reading Tudor’s
notes and actually listening to the
music rather brought me up short. I
thought I was listening to the wrong
concerto. The first, said to be rather
Mendelssohnian, sounds to me a much
more robust affair; and the second,
said to be a product of Raff’s Lisztian
impressions, strikes me as altogether
a more Mendelssohn-and-Spohr affair.
Still, given that my responses may be
off the mark, I should say that the
First takes in a poetic patina in the
first movement, alternating vigorous
tutti assertion and a welcome withdrawal
as a means of producing tension. The
slow movement is a becalmed one, almost
an andantino in fact both in tempo and
in mood but the finale is a bold, rather
martial affair. I enjoyed its operatic
projection; not at all distinctive,
really, but a violin scena of fine construction.
The later concerto,
the one I find Mendelssohnian, was written
for Sarasate who backed off from performing
it. Sarasate was notorious for artistic
misjudgements of this sort but here
he may have had a point – if all he
was looking for were pyrotechnics and
plumage. As ever with Raff the soloist
pitches in from almost the first bars
and the passagework is certainly slightly
reminiscent of Mendelssohn, the more
showy technical aspects perhaps also
recalling Spohr. Warmth suffuses the
slow movement – a song without words
in effect with a ripe orchestral cushion
to support the soloist, the adroit American
born Michaela Paetsch Neftel. The finale
causes some intonational problems –
it takes the soloist ungratefully high,
but also has a fulsome rather martial
air as well.
He concertos are supplanted
by the Ungarischer, which as its name
suggests is a little slice of Hungariana,
orchestrated by Raff in 1877, and by
the Cavatina where Neftel uses far too
much vibrato and over-emotes.
I’d place the violin
concertos above those for the cello
in respect of orchestral incident and
polish – they’re rich and enjoyable
works, derivative to an extent, and
maybe not especially memorable thematically.
Which doesn’t sound like much of a recommendation,
except to add that they’re rarely found
on disc, that these performances are
adept and attractive, well recorded
and offer an entertaining seventy-minutes’
worth of music-making.
Jonathan Woolf
Michaela Paetsch Neftel (violin) 
