Bruch • Price Bruch: Violin Concerto No. 1; Price: Violin Concertos Nos 1 & 2; Adoration Randall Goosby (violin); Philadelphia Orchestra/Yannick Nézet-Séguin Decca 485 4234 72:26 mins
There’s much to admire in Randall Goosby’s debut concerto recording. This star pupil of Itzhak Perlman possesses a beautifully warm and tender sound, as well as delivering technically immaculate playing that easily surmounts the most challenging daredevil passagework in the two Florence Price concertos. More importantly, his interpretations are free from the kind of idiosyncratic mannerisms that can disrupt the natural flow of the music.
Such virtues are very much on display in a lovely performance of the Bruch Concerto, the expressive melodies of its central slow movement projected here without recourse to over-indulgence. It helps that the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin are so fabulously responsive in this live performance, bringing immense character and interest to the thickly scored accompaniment and delivering stunningly exciting whirlwind playing in the big orchestral tutti near the end of the first movement.
The commitment to promoting the previously overlooked music of Florence Price, already reflected in the award-winning Philadelphia/Nézet-Séguin recordings of her First and Third Symphonies, pays special dividends here with some sharply focused orchestral playing in the two Violin Concertos that keeps the listener fully engaged, even in the more discursive passages of the lengthy opening movement to the First Concerto. To my mind, however, the compactly designed Second Concerto, with its fascinating kaleidoscope of inventive orchestral textures, is the more successful work. But the haunting melody and slightly bluesy harmony of the slow movement to the First could well become a concert favourite in its own right.
Erik Levi
