The
Naxos
laureate series of recent competition winners in a number
of fields shows an impressive commitment to the promotion
of new talent. This recording by the American violinist
Frank Huang shows a fine solo talent at the beginning of
his career. The programme centres on virtuoso music in the
form of Fantasies (in various spellings) from the 19th
and 20th century repertoire. The Schubert, with
which the disc opens, is certainly the most significant
work, and is also that of the greatest musical substance.
Huang’s command of virtuoso technique is assured and is
allied to a consistently beautiful timbre, without excessive
use of romantically “warm” vibrato. The disc starts a little
unevenly however, as the piano tremoli that flutter this
fantasia into life are less than perfectly well controlled
by Dina Vainstein. At least she settles later and shows
herself a pianist more comfortable with the vigorous moving
passages than with the conception of stillness that this
opening requires.
While
the violin is consistently beautiful the Naxos engineers have not done so well by Vainstein. Certainly
in most of this repertoire - less so in the Schubert than
in the other works - the piano is distinctly subservient.
The prominent opening piano chords of the Ernst “Otello”
fantasy come across as very harsh and lacking in body. While
this entire virtuoso repertoire is great fun especially
for the violinist and performed with no shortage of flair
by Frank Huang, musically this imbalance of importance makes
it less enjoyable than more serious chamber music. Herein
lies the problem with series such as this. Worthy though
the concept is, it would have been more satisfying to hear
what young Mr Huang can do with some of the serious violin
and piano sonata repertoire that requires more than just
dazzling technique. For all its flash and brilliance the
Ernst fantasy remains a fairly unmemorable work.
Without
doubt the most successful work in this recital is the one
that will have the least popular audience appeal. This is
the Phantasy by Arnold Schoenberg – one of his very last
instrumental works and rigorously applying serial techniques.
Although Schoenberg specifically styled it Phantasy for
violin with piano accompaniment, and while the piano
part is less virtuosic than the violin part, the musical
links between the two instruments are so much stronger than
in the other works. The result is a composition much stronger
and more intense than anything else in the programme. Both
players rise to this music as to the manner born. Any suggestion
of late Schoenberg being an angular and ugly cluster of
noises is mitigated by a convincing and expressive performance.
Although the shortest work on the disc it certainly comes
across as the most powerful, and the most convincing performance,
largely because here it is the music that is foremost, not
the performers.
With
the Carmen Fantasy by Franz Waxman we are back in the realm
of the virtuoso, and after the Schoenberg it seems a shame.
However, the origin of this particular fantasy is interesting
and it is not one of those Carmen elaborations heard all
the time. Waxman (originally Franz Wachsmann) was, like
Schoenberg, an escapee from Nazi Germany and ended up working
in the film studios of Hollywood, in his case, for Warner Brothers. This work was actually
written as film music, for the 1946 Jean Negrolescu film
Humoresque in which a wealthy Joan Crawford pursued
an indigent violinist played by John Garfield. Like the
other tracks, Frank Huang plays with beautiful sound, especially
rich in the lower registers when he is not playing too powerfully.
The piano has the usual forgettable accompaniment figures
and a short introduction from the toreador march. It is
all worth a listen once, apart from some patches of surprisingly
dodgy intonation, but one cannot be sure if this would really
warrant ownership.
At
Naxos’s
cheap price, this is possibly worth it for the interesting
and convincing Schoenberg alone. As for the other works,
there are more interesting recital discs out there.
Peter
Wells
Frank Huang (violin); Dina Vainstein (piano)
