Spirits Works by Brahms, Debussy, Elgar, Falla, Gluck, Kreisler Daniel Lozakovich (violin), Stanislav Soloviev (piano) DG 486 2492 (digital only) 27:03 mins
The baton – or rather, bow – is passed across the decades in Spirits, violinist Daniel Lozakovich’s latest digital-only recital album. This celebrates some of the greatest interpreters of recent centuries: the silk-spun sound of David Oistrakh is channelled in Debussy’s Clair de lune; Jascha Heifetz’s biting zest cuts through Gluck’s Mélodie from Orfeo ed Euridice; and Elgar’s La Capricieuse is imbued with the soulful character associated with Josef Hassid. Each miniature is carefully considered and all are exquisitely recorded.
Lozakovich’s own timbre (he plays the 1727 Stradivarius loaned by the Louis Vuitton Foundation’s museum and cultural centre in Paris where Spirits was recorded) is sweeter and fuller-bodied than Oistrakh’s; Falla’s Danse espagnole No. 1 (from La Vida Breve) is spikier than Christian Ferras’s. Brahms’s Hungarian Dances (Nos 2 and 6) are rather less free-flowing than Leonid Kogan’s. But in Kreisler’s Liebesleid (from Old Viennese Dances) Lozakovich recreates the violinist-composer’s rubato, and hints at his unfussy beauty in curt phrases. Now it’s time to hear these repertoire stalwarts as Lozakovich himself would play them.
Claire Jackson