COMPOSERS: Mozart
LABELS: Avie
ALBUM TITLE: Mozart
WORKS: Violin Concerto No. 1; Violin Concerto No. 2; Violin Concerto No. 3; Violin Concerto No. 4; Violin Concerto No. 5, Sinfonia concertante in E flat for violin & viola, Concertone in C for two violins
PERFORMER: Shlomo Mintz, Hagai Shaham, English Chamber Orchestra, Schlomo Mintz
CATALOGUE NO: AV 2058
Even without being a devotee of
period instruments, it would be
hard to listen to these performances
without feeling caught in a time warp.
Shlomo Mintz’s playing is rich-toned,
and though his vibrato is carefully
controlled, it’s almost always present to
some degree. His first entry in the First
Concerto, after the ECO’s expertly
blended, plushly recorded tutti, says
it all – with its warming of some notes
more than others, and the emphasis
on smoothness of line. It’s just too
comfortable, and the slow movement
sits down rather than moving
forwards. In the Second Concerto, the
dotted rhythms of the first movement
lack tension and there’s none of the
urgency that Thomas Zehetmair (also
playing with modern instruments)
conveys at a faster speed.
Going back over 40 years to
Grumiaux in the Third Concerto,
there’s a lightness of touch which
Mintz completely misses in his
leisurely amble through the first
movement, and in the Fourth the
ECO’s opening tutti, as so often,
seems undercharacterised and
directionless. It’s not simply a matter
of having no conductor – Menuhin
single-handedly brought much
more thrust to the music in 1962.
Mintz’s playing is always beautiful,
but he over-Romanticises things,
and in this he’s aided and abetted by
Hagai Shaham in the Concertone,
which can’t take it, and the Sinfonia
concertante, whose darker colours
survive better. All right if you like
Mozart as a wallow, but short on
musical nourishment. For that go
to Zehetmair in the concertos and
Gidon Kremer and Kim Kashkashian,
lean but not mean, in the Sinfonia
concertante. Martin Cotton