MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2023
Approaching 60,000 reviews
and more.. and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


CD REVIEW

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

alternatively Crotchet

 

Antonín DVOŘÁK (1841-1904)
Violin Concerto in A minor Op. 53 (1882) [30:52]
Piano Concerto in G minor Op. 33 (1876) [38:49]
Waldesruhe (Klid or Silent Woods) Op. 68, No. 5 (1891 arrangement of the fifth piece from Ze Šumavy (From the Bohemian Forest) of 1883-84 for piano 4-hands Op.68 [5:20]
Christian Tetzlaff (violin); Czech Philharmonic Orchestra/Libor Pešek
Claire Désert (piano); Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra/Theodore Guschlbauer
Timothy Walden (cello); Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra/Libor Pešek
No recording details (1994-96)
VIRGIN CLASSICS 3913462 [75:17]
Experience Classicsonline


As I wrote in my review of Sarah Chang’s recording of the concerto, both her own and Christian Tetzlaff’s performances are newly reissued. Chang’s is unchanged but this Tetzlaff has undergone programming alteration. Gone is his Lalo and in comes Claire Désert’s traversal of the piano concerto and a makeweight in the shape of Klid. Be it noted, as they say, that the Tetzlaff performance is greatly to be preferred to the Chang.
 
He avoids the temptation to slow, as Chang and Davis fail to do, for the first movement second theme and he keeps things moving. He’s strongly helped by Pešek who ensures dynamics are naturally scaled and who also takes care to balance things in the sometimes tricky Rudolfinum acoustic. Tetzlaff has a tight bright tone and he cuts through the orchestration with real incisiveness. Pešek shows himself to be a far more watchful and astute Dvořákian than Davis as he builds and releases tension whilst maintaining strong rhythmic profiles. As a result the performance has an internal dynamism and a degree of radiance that Chang’s lacks.
 
There have been a number of recommendable recordings of the Concerto in the last decade and a half – let alone the classic Suk/Ančerl, Milstein (with de Burgos and Dorati) and the various surviving commercial and off-air performances by one of its greatest champions Vása Příhoda. Suffice to say that Tetzlaff is commendably quick on his feet – fast but not at all superficial - and plays with spirit, tone and imagination, well seconded by the orchestra.
 
But of course things aren’t quite that simple. I’d never even heard of this Strasbourg performance of the Piano Concerto, though Claire Désert is becoming better and better known as a soloist. She plays with musicality and finish but vital things are missing. The opening of the concerto is badly balanced - horn-swamped - and there’s an endemic lack of optimum string subtlety throughout the recording. I don’t know how often, if at all, Désert had performed this in concert before recording it but her entries can sound wooden and uninflected. The opening entry should generate tension and use rubato – see Firkušny, Maxian and Moravec who all, in their very different ways, launch the concerto with tension. And she is far too slow in the second movement; most Czech performers take it considerably quicker and bring a more touching sense to it. So this is a rather routine performance; not really recommendable.
 
Klid receives a pliant if somewhat nasal reading from Timothy Walden.
 
This is marketed as a “Dvořák Concertos” disc. The Violin Concerto scores highly amongst contemporary performances but the Piano companion won’t really do. I hope that Tetzlaff’s performance doesn’t suffer accordingly in the marketplace – the money saving booklet (three weedy paragraphs) and the supermarket style cover art do not at all reflect his intelligence and perception.
 
Jonathan Woolf 
 



 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.