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             

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

REVIEW Plain text for smartphones & printers


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

 

Support us financially by purchasing this from
Karl FIORINI (b. 1979)
Concerto for violin and chamber orchestra (2006-7) [24:52]
Emanuel Salvador (violin)
Violin Concerto No. 2 (2011-12) [25:04]
Marta Magdalena Lelek (violin)
Sudecka Philharmonic Orchestra/Bartosz Zurakowski
rec. 30 May – 2 June, 2012, Sudeten (Sudecka) Philharmonic Concert Hall, Walbrzych, Poland.
METIER MSV 28533 [49:56]

Living and working in Paris, contemporary composer Karl Fiorini was born in Malta in 1979. With humility, eclecticism and a keen sense of harmony, Fiorini’s music retains the attention of the listener, often taking challenging and unexpected twists and turns, but retaining cogency and coherency.
 
Karl Fiorini’s Concerto for violin and chamber orchestra is curious and intriguing as Fiorini expands, augments and even distorts the sound of the orchestra. With a percussive opening, eclectic passages and neo-romantic tones, this is pure and fearless in its sprawling expressiveness and recalls the works of Shostakovich and Bartók. Portuguese violinist Emanuel Salvador is capable enough to realise Fiorini’s imagined sound-world. This certainly comes to life as Salvador battles against the stormy double-basses and explosive percussion in the third movement (quarter note = 126). Each note is coloured with intense feeling and embedded in a quilt of varied orchestral timbres. This is most evident in the interplay of pizzicato and percussion towards the latter half of the third movement. Altogether more estranged, yet eerily lyrical; the opening to the fourth movement (Chorale, Canone & Passacaglia) contains elements of suspense, heightened by Salvador’s musky and sometimes pungent tone. As if standing to attention at the sound of the horn in the fifth movement (Finale), the orchestra disbands its otherworldly sound and morphs into a panic-stricken crowd, jostling and colliding. All is then calmed by a klezmer-accented clarinet solo, accompanied by the strings and then echoed by the violin.
 
Starting slowly then blossoming into a natural wilderness, soloist Marta Magdalena Lelek’s sound is virile and breathtakingly intense as she drives Fiorini’s Schubert-Brahms style neo-romanticism into something altogether more bold and complex. In this spellbinding concerto, orchestra and conductor are attentive to the convoluted amalgamation of angst and mystery. Technically exceptional, Lelek creates both glassy and gritty sounds to evoke the peculiarity and tension evidenced by Fiorini’s composition.
 
In these virtuosic pieces the two soloists have precise and apt intonation and courageous performing styles. These concertos require power and momentum as they alternate between dissonance and tonal progressions. The players embrace this coming together of different themes and musical ideas with endearing sass and electrifying pyrotechnics.

Lucy Jeffery