Bruch & Price - Violin Concertos
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Label: Decca
Cat No: 4854234
Format: CD
Number of Discs: 1
Genre: Orchestral
Release Date: 19th May 2023
Contents
Works
Violin Concerto no.1 in G minor, op.26Adoration (arr. for strings)
Violin Concerto no.1 in D major
Violin Concerto no.2 in D major
Artists
Randall Goosby (violin)Philadelphia Orchestra
Conductor
Yannick Nezet-SeguinWorks
Violin Concerto no.1 in G minor, op.26Adoration (arr. for strings)
Violin Concerto no.1 in D major
Violin Concerto no.2 in D major
Artists
Randall Goosby (violin)Philadelphia Orchestra
Conductor
Yannick Nezet-SeguinAbout
Randall Goosby performs Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto no.1 and both of Florence Price’s Violin Concertos, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin with the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Sound/Video
Paused
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1Bruch: Violin Concerto No.1 in G minor, op.26: 1. Vorspiel. Allegro moderato
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2Bruch: Violin Concerto No.1 in G minor, op.26: 2. Adagio
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3Bruch: Violin Concerto No.1 in G minor, op.26: 3. Finale. Allegro energico
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4Price: Adoration (arr. Jim Gray)
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5Price: Violin Concerto No.1 in D major: 1. Tempo moderato
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6Price: Violin Concerto No.1 in D major: 2. Andante
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7Price: Violin Concerto No.1 in D major: 3. Allegro
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8Price: Violin Concerto No.2
Europadisc Review
Two years ago, young American violinist Randall Goosby made quite a splash with his debut album on Decca. Entitled ‘Roots’, it paid eloquent homage to his black roots at a time when the Black Lives Matter movement was much in the headlines. Part of that ‘concept’ album was devoted to music by Florence Price: two Fantasies and her popular miniature Adoration (originally for organ). Now, for Goosby’s first concerto album, Adoration – one of his signature pieces – makes a reappearance, this time in a winning arrangement by Jim Gray for violin and strings. Although in the live concerts from which it was taken it appears to have been an encore, here it serves as a most effective bridge between a seasoned classic – Bruch’s First Violin Concerto – and Price’s own two violin concertos, still largely unknown to the musical public more than a decade after their rediscovery.
Regarding the Bruch, Goosby recently told Gramophone magazine that ‘It’s probably the concerto that’s been in my fingers and in my heart for the longest of all the major ones.’ That association goes back to the player’s pre-teen years, and you feel the depth of both technical and emotional engagement in this marvellously assured and big-hearted performance, recorded (unlike the Price works) in studio conditions. With superlative support from the Philadelphia Orchestra under Yannick Nézet-Séguin, this performance is clearly a meeting of minds, in which Goosby’s own evident charisma and generous playing style (you can tell he’s a Perlman pupil!) never overshadow the music itself.
If the central Adagio is the expressive heart of the work, with gorgeous shading and shaping of the solo line and even the silences invested with meaning, the ‘introductory’ Allegro moderato with its heartfelt solo entrance and dramatically virtuoso passages, and the fizzing Allegro energico finale are just as compelling. The alertness of the Philadelphia musicians under their music director and their responsiveness to the soloist’s playing is as much a part of the performance’s success as Goosby’s emotionally open and honest playing. He seems to have an intuitive understanding of when to give the music more time to breathe, to feel the notes under the fingers, and his tone and intonation throughout are simply gorgeous.
It's a shrewd idea to couple Bruch’s perennial crowd-pleaser with Price’s virtually unknown concertos, but these performances are also part of Nézet-Séguin’s larger project (begun on Decca’s sister label Deutsche Grammophon) to record all of Price’s orchestral works. The concertos’ relative unfamiliarity is certainly not evident in these accounts, which feel very ‘lived in’, taken from a series of four concerts in October 2022.
Composed in 1939, the Concerto no.1 is known for its nods to Tchaikovsky (particularly in the first movement coda), and is written in the same violin-friendly key of D major (as are Beethoven, Brahms, and many others…). But Goosby himself stresses the very American nature of the work, as a fabulous melting-pot of styles, with African-American spirituals and folk music never far from the surface, and even moments of bluesy inflections all part of the mix. Needless to say, both soloist and orchestra are alive to all these elements, projecting and melding them with consummate artistry into a highly convincing whole. Once again, the slow movement – an Andante – is the heart of the performance, but throughout it is Goosby’s wholehearted engagement and effortlessly sumptuous tone that raise the piece to great heights.
Written some 13 years later, Price’s single-movement Violin Concerto no.2 feels at first hearing to be a very different kettle of fish: ‘almost more like a tone poem,’ in Goosby’s own words. Yet there’s the same soulfulness (a key quality of Price’s music), albeit channelled into a very different and highly innovative form. Certainly the music speaks of greater compositional confidence, with telling touches in the orchestration (the deployment of a harp and celesta, for example) effected with greater assurance. The folk element is again to the fore, but within a distinctively mid-century ambience that is patently American in the most generous and all-embracing sense. Goosby and his colleagues turn in a performance that is, like the work itself, sui generis, fully engaged with every inflection right across its imposing 15-minute span.
These recordings are likely to win many new admirers for Price’s music, and are proof of just what difference a really first-rate team can make to the fortunes of unjustly neglected music, while the Bruch ranks alongside the best in the catalogue – a tribute, incidentally, to Goosby’s wide knowledge of the recorded repertoire from his great predecessors. The performances are captured by producer/engineer Andrew Mellor in excellent sound from Philadelphia’s Verizon Hall. All in all, this disc is a sure-fire winner!
Reviews
You can absolutely hear why Randall Goosby has been turning heads with his open-hearted, generous ‘school of Perlman’ delivery. There’s an honesty and modesty – about his playing that stands him apart. It’s so refreshing to note an absence of excess in either sound or feeling. This playing isn’t dressed to impress but to express. Edward SeckersonGramophone June 2023
Florence Price’s star continues to rise. Her two violin concertos were rediscovered among piles of old papers in 2009, when renovators entered her old Illinois summer house more than half a century after her death. Now they find an ideal champion in the US violinist Randall Goosby, whose recording of them follows on from his 2021 debut, Roots, exploring music associated with Black America. Erica JealThe Guardian 25 May 2023
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