formally parting company in summer 2002, includes this impressive tribute to Brahms and the violinist Joseph Joachim made at the Philharmonie Berlin in May 2000. The Violin Concerto in D and the Double Concerto in A minor were both composed for Joachim who is incarnate here in the steely, finely economical tone of fiddler Gil Shaham. His powerful first-movement certainties are tinged with timid introspection in the beautiful adagio, but burst into urgent exuberance in the finale. Naturally he plays Joachim's first-movement cadenza and does so with polished ease, clearly demonstrating the fruitfulness of the composer's and dedicatee's relationship.Shaham is joined by cellist Jian Wang for the Double Concerto. Their intercourse veers between loving reciprocity and sparring antagonism, as did Joachim's with his wife who divorced him and with Brahms who censured him. Dramatic, volatile tension drives the first movement like a threatening family row. Abbado steers the wrestling like a manipulative referee, cajoling the orchestra into a ringside crowd. The thoughtful slow movement moves like an agile heavyweight while the thrilling four-round rondo finale begins with tentative jabs before a tutti onslaught of syncopated blows and grinding interspersed themes makes of it a canvas-pounding knockout that calls for an immediate replay.--Rick Jones
Advantages: Mutter's eloquence and sensitivity in older recording are enhanced here. Disadvantages: None at all!
...As a fantastically talented eighteen-year-old, Anne-Sophie Mutter already awed me with her sensitive and thoughtful eloquence in her 1981 recording of the Brahmsviolinconcerto (with Herbert von Karajan directing the Berlin Philharmonic). However, there’s an even deeper understanding in Mutter’s reading of the Brahms piece on this newer disc.
This performance was taped live at the Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, New York City, in 1997. Kurt Masur conducts the New York Philharmonic in particularly inspired fashion. A difference of fifteen years separates the two recordings. In the time between, she married, had children, and then was widowed at a very young age.
When Mutter returned to her instrument, she would bring a greater strength, emotional depth and insight to her playing, lending a maturity and assuredness to her...
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Advantages: Two outstanding peices of chamber music for an unusual combination of instruments Disadvantages: On the surface quite contrasting works, listener must be openminded
...The work of Ligeti has been at the forefront of Western avant-garde since his escape from the oppressive communist regime of Hungary in 1956, and he is widely appreciated as one of the most outstanding contemporary composers. The Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano because it was born out of a three-year period of illness and writer's block after the completion of Le Grand Macabre in which time he laboured over a piano concerto but completed only two short harpsichord pieces (Continuum and Hungarian Rock), yet the result in 1982 was the Trio, one of the finest and most complex pieces written so far. His career up to this point had included such sucesses as his Requiem, Atmosphères and the soundtrack for Stanley Kubrick's film 2001. Tiring of his own cluster-textural techniques and the avant-garde, Ligeti refreshed his compositional...
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Advantages: The Romances; concerto's third movement. Disadvantages: Tempo, pitch and volume quirks in Concerto.
...concerts as Music Director of the NYPO. Thoroughly enjoying the exquisite rendition of the BrahmsViolinConcerto * by Mutter, Masur and the NYPO (1997), I naturally had my hopes set high for this outing.
So what’s happened here? Not a lot of good, I’m afraid. Mutter has decided to inject her very individual concepts of tempo and phrasing into the work--unwisely so, methinks. Rather than deepening the experience for me, her changes instead sound self-conscious, as if she were trying to get our attention with a yell saying, "Hey, you! Aren't my drawn-out notes and odd meters simply lovely?"
No, I say, they're not. Mutter acknowledges the need for "maturity" and "humility" in the musician who wishes to tap into the tragic side of Beethoven (as the liner notes put forth in a self-congratulatory piece disguised as an interview...
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
helpful 18.09.2003
Compare Brahms: Violin Concerto to other similar Classical
This product has not yet been reviewed. 
27.08.2003
29.08.2007
