Repertoire: The BEST and WORST Mozart Violin Concertos
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 มิ.ย. 2021
- Only nineteen when he composed his five violin concertos, Mozart's remain the earliest works of their kind in the modern repertoire. Most major violinists have recorded at least a few, and a very large number have done the whole set. Here are many of the best, and just to keep things interesting, some of the worst.
Musical Examples courtesy of Brilliant Classics, Haenssler, Orfeo, Oehms, and Naxos Records - เพลง
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In a move that would please my physics teachers, I'll show some resistance to the Oehms.
Oehm sweet oehm
I like the early Anne-Sophie recordings of 3&5 with Karajan and then 1,2&4 with Muti…there’s a youthful quality about them and while yes you don’t need a conductor, when you DO get a world class maestro, you get some extra special moments.
Love the audio examples.
Thanks Dave!
Thanks for mentioning recordings I actually have.
@@OuterGalaxyLounge I listened to the 3rd concerto today, She really gets that lyricism is the early recording. I like the new set fine and all, but like I said, I like her recordings with great conductors. She’s my favorite violinist and I’m unabashedly biased in loving everything she does…especially the Brahms concerto with Karajan, that’s as good a Brahms as anyone has ever made. The Mendelssohn is gorgeous and lyrical, and the Beethoven is the anti-Heifetz (who I also LOOOOVE) very much the romantic approach.
Mutter's No 1 is with Marriner
YES, MUTTER/KARAJAN IS FANTASTIC
A great review (and overview). Grumiaux is truly the King of the Mozart concertos. Needless to say, the five authentic violin concertos with him and Colin Davis and LSO are marvellous, yet the Sinfonia Concertante with the same forces and Arrigo Pelliccia on the viola is an outstanding achievement and to me the best after having listened to several versions of this great work. It gives Grumiaux plenty of opportunities to display his wide palette of tonal colors and his fantastic ability to vary the intensity of his vibrato, qualities Henryk Szeryng greatly admired and all working to the great benefit of the music. The Andante is searingly moving. Pelliccia is every bit well matched with Grumiaux in intensity and tonal color and Davis provides alert and dynamic accompaniment to complete a deeply satisfying account of the score. As Reinhard Goebel and Mirijam Contzen, Goebel had said he hates all music composed after 1749 and it shows in the excerpt played - the beautiful Adagio is turned to a kind of travesty.
can't agree more, Arthur Grumiaux's mozart are very smooth and natural
I'm in complete agreement on Grumiaux, BUT I like the 1956 "Mozart anniversary" set (with two different conductors and the Vienna Symphony , in good mono) even more. I was surprised when they were reissued. A patrician violinist, if ever there was one.
Dave, even though we both know how utterly minuscule my contribution was to your latest fashion line, I appreciate the shout out nonetheless. That, along with some very fine music selections, sure put a silver lining on my day. For that I thank you.
Thanks again to you!
Add "aberrant" to the list of adjectives. Thank you, Dave, for the brief critique of modern music sopranos. A magpie can imitate sounds to the same effect.
I’m looking forward to your video of the best Sinfoina Concertante recordings! Hope that comes soon.
Marvelous overview! In the slow movement of Mozart #3, Baráti for me. Chacun à son goût! "Horribleness" is an understatement for that atrocity of a performance that must not be named. Thank you for finally calling out Kremer's unlovely tone; I have NEVER understood the fawning idolatry of most music critics for him, although perhaps in Schoenberg or Stockhausen he might be worthy. Not a fan of Faust, either, in anything. There are a few too many anti-music performers around these days. Grumiaux is nonpareil. Love your reviews, a highlight of my days.
I love the Mozart violin concertos precisely because they are lyrical and lovely rather than virtuoso showpieces. There have been dozens, probably hundreds, of truly excellent violin concertos written in the Romantic period and ever since where technical pyrotechnics are the point. Sometimes it is nice, however, to listen to something gorgeous yet relatively uncomplicated.
I don’t listen to the Mozart violin concertos (or any violin concertos) with any regularity, but I have stumbled across the Naxos/Nishikazi/Gunzenhauser recordings you mention and they are elegantly delightful. I’ll keep on listening to one or two of the other classic boxes you mention, and of course, contrarian that I am, I’ll give one of the stinkers a go. The most exciting bit of this video is that Classics Today tees hit the market soon!
Re: Mirijam Contzen performance: I thought I had my YT playback speed set at 1.5 ... but found it was normal 1.0. So the performers' speed here is Allegro. That said, for those on a tight schedule and who want to listen to a 25 minute concerto in about half the time, this might be the performance for them.
17:56
The moment you all have been waiting for.
It’s really as dreadful as he built it up to be.
For me number 3 is head and shoulders above the rest, but then as Dave says the sinfonia concertante is better still and makes a case I think for being Mozart'sgreatest work. The coupling of that work with the S. Concertante for wind with Bohm is well worth tracking down, it makes an hour of sublime music!
Great set of reviews and I really enjoyed the depth of the review of the mozart concertos and your great sense of humor. BTW is that a real gong . If so wow . Cheers David
Of course it's real.
Well glad to hear it !
Speaking of Menuhin and the "singing" needed in #3, his EMI recording with the Bath Festival Orchestra is about as dialed in for pitch and taste as any of those you mentioned Dave. Glorious. Great to see so many excellent contemporary recordings among your picks, but one can't argue with Grumiaux.
Hopefully you make some videos about cadenzas. Some can make or break a performance. For Mozart, I didn't like Perlman's with Levine so I never play those recordings. In Beethoven's violin concerto, I prefer the one Tetzlaff uses way more than the standard Kreisler. Cadenzas are worth exploring.
Great review (and overview). Happily, I have the Grumiaux on what is, I gather, a rare Grumiaux Mozart box set, which, needless to say, includes the Symphonia Concertante (which I own on vinyl also). That said, I'm interest in Ehnes and Tetzlaff--both of whom are available via my streaming service along with Anne Sophie Mutter. I got it made.
Thank you Dave for another brilliant chapter. The side-by-side comparisons are especially rewarding, and it's a pity that the big recording conglomerates don't grant you permission to sample even seconds of their precious tracks.. (Yet - he-he - we can hear them all freely on TH-cam!)
I also would buy that T-shirt. Grumiaux! I remember my first set. The LP box with David and Igor Oistrakh. It also had the Concertone! And Igor played viola in the Sinfonía. The orchestra was the Berlin Philharmonic and David Oistrakh conducted.I don’t know if I have the LP anymore but I just pulled it up on Apple Music. It will be fun to go back and listen to that and see how it holds up compared to Grumiaux And Fischer. I was never a huge fan of the Issac stern recordings or the Heifetz recordings.
I hope that Noah Bendix-Balgley will record these concertos at some point. Did you hear his No. 1 at Carnegie Hall last November? Thanks again for this precious bag of recommendations.
Years ago my Mom found Grumiaux no 2 at Safeway for $2 thinking I should like it…Such a favourite!
On period instruments you didn't mention Zehetmair/Bruggen and Standage/Hogwood. There's also Manze/English Concert but they only did concertos 3-5.
Dave, will you make a video of the best Mozart Violin Sonatas? And Beethoven too, please.
Tetzlaff is a great artist, no doubt. One of the greatest of his generation on any instrument.
Grumiaux was a super elegant violinist and a musician first, violinist second - which is not meant as a slight.
He recorded the Bach concertos superbly as well.
Isaac Stern recorded all the Mozart concertos beautifully, partly with Szell, partly with Alexander Schneider. But it's not better than Grumiaux. But it's surely better than listening to people play without vibrato.
About no. 4 specifically - there is an absolutely wonderful 4th concerto by Kreisler with Malcom Sargent on Naxos. It's from the late 30s, and the sound is really top notch - it was well recorded in the first place, and the Naxos remastering is great. Unfortunately, the rest of the stuff on that CD is less recommendable in my opinion. But the Mozart concerto alone is worth getting. Bel canto violin!
Hello Dave, I just wonder what you think of Wolfgang Schneiderhan recording with Berlin Philharmonic.
I just love his No. 5 A Major with Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt and NDR Sinfonie-Orchester - unfortunately
it is a single concerto, that I prefere to the one with Berlin Philharmonic conducting by Schneiderhan himself.
Great presentation - so far! Have to say - Yuk! to the OEMS Classics CD. Dire, dire! Equal in badness to Currentzis Beethoven's 5th and 7th symphonies.
A set I like very much indeed, is Pinchas Zukerman and the St.Paul Chamber Orchestra (Sony)
Thank you for another excellent talk. I managed to get the Zimmermann and Tetzlaff from the Amazon marketplace for @ 26 USD, the Tetzlaff only @ 10USD. I am looking forward to listening to them. I must admit to a guilty secret, I do like the Oistrakh full fat recordings, though of course Grumiaux is king.
Oistrakh is great too.
As always, thank you for the reviews! Not mentioned is Rachel Barton Pine with Marriner/ASMF. All five concerti and the Sinfonia Concertante. I stumbled on it accidentally and love it.
I like Rachel Barton Pine's recording, too! But, as David pointed out, lots of musicians do these pieces well; he probably could have named a dozen other recommendable recordings, if he had unlimited time. Funny thing about these being "easy" concertos -- a lot of musicians say that the clarity and comparative simplicity of Mozart's concertos leaves the soloist terribly exposed and "unable to get hide anything". Any detail that isn't just right stands out. I remember an interview with a Russian violin virtuoso who named Mozart's Fourth as the most challenging concerto in his repertoire (worse than Shostakovich's outrageously difficult First!). I also heard a radio interview in which the seemingly fearless pianist Charles Rosen was asked which concertos were more difficult than the public realized, and he said "ALL Mozart Concertos!".
Agree, this is the only version I have so I can't speak comparatively, but I think Barton PIne is superb and I especially enjoy the ASMF accompaniment. Marriner must have been about 90 when this was recorded, so I imagine it was among his final recorded works, maybe even the last, who knows? For the Sinfonia Concertante, nothing against this one but I always loved the version by Itzhak Perlman & Pinchas Zukerman with Zubin Mehta conducting the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
Dave, I have yet to develop the rudiments of taste, despite being 73. Not having seen this vid, I bought the Faust, for reasons to complicated to explain. On your recommendation I've just bought the Carmignola, and the difference is astonishing. I'm very happy. Thank you!
Thank YOU.
@@DavesClassicalGuide Somehow I'd failed to watched this video in its entirety. That's rectified, and now I have the Grumiaux. I'd never even heard the guy's name before, but my god, his performances are enthralling. Thank you AGAIN Dave.
I have all of the set you mentioned and more. IMO you miss one of the best recently, Znaider (on 2CDs). Steinbacher also recorded a gorgeous 3 concertos (3-5)few year back, and she will soon complete it.
For the classical violinists, one should also consider Oistrakh/BPO and Suk on Eurodisc.
I really don't care for Skride, the orchestra sounds heavy to me.
What do you think about the Menuhin ones?
I find them great, and worth mentioning
Well then, you just did!
Yes, I love Skride in Mozart. So sensitive, sensual, and a hint of vulnerability which I think adds something to the music. That Swedish Ensemble are something else. So unfussy and makes a perfect partnership.
I needed this to select an alternative to the Pearlman/Levine set. Maybe its Pearlman’s vibrato, but I found it overdone, bordering on sappy. My preference is always for expressive & intense, but the Pearlman approach is not working for me. I’ll probably try the Mutter set, and maybe the Baiba Skride set based in the snippet you played. Thanks as always. I always appreciate your perspective.
15:36, yes!
The bad example on Oehms sounded like a 33 played at 45. Viewers under fifty probably won't have experienced this. It's tragic what Faust has done to her playing, she managed to destroy one of the most joyous movements ever written, the finale of the Franck sonata, with a horrible wiry tone all in the service of HIP. However we have recordings of Ysaye, who sounded nothing like Faust.
Confession: I have owned the Faust/Antonini discs for years and have listened to the set twelve times (!). I've scheduled a thirteenth (yes) in October. Not once have I found Faust's performances enjoyable, in spite of all such attempts. I am spirited to hear here that I'm not the only one that has found her take on these marvels to be perversely epicene and sterile in spirit to Mozart's intentions, his father's teachings, and the terrific band that accompanies her here. Antonini and Il Gardino are delightful and in their rousing accompaniment only make Ms. Faust sound more isolated and peculiarly chaste. It is true that K 216 is both the most beautiful of the concerti and the one chosen by Ms. Faust as a bully pulpit to thrust down our ears what she believes to be historical practice . If one reads Leopold's "Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule," which should be considered authoritative to what his son intended in these concerti, one clearly finds that a discreet vibrato, a singing tone, and expressivity are all paramount. Faust is a fine violinist but seems to go out of her way to be to ignore her better instincts. Unfortunately, as well, that Adagio is not always on pitch. So, thank you for allowing me to scratch my thirteenth upcoming listening. I will enjoy the visceral and elegant Szeryng performances from the old days.
If you hate it so much why do you keep listening to it?
The only explanation might be, not SM, but MM (Musical Masochism) - maybe our co-listener just treats himself to the tortureous joys of musical selfharm once in a while?! 😉
One of the worst things about Contzen is the way she plays the trills. Each one seems to drop out just before the last note of the phrase. This is not just lack of phrasing, it's criminal negligence!
Loved your "Mozart was teething." HAHA
I'll stay with the big guns: Grumiaux and Oistrakh.
The Kristof Barati set on Brilliant Classics includes applause after every concerto plus the extra pieces which adds up to 8 rounds of applause on two CDs. For me this completely ruins the set but if you're OK with that then the performances certainly sparkle. Personally I love Henryk Szeryng on Philips 🙂
Contzen/Gerbel UGH! I hope the cat wasn’t in the room. David, what’s up with the 5 v 7 ? How do ‘they’ come up with 7? “Mozart was teething when he wrote it “. LOL!
Or is that "Gerbil"? Hehehe...
Congratulations. You just justified critics very convincingly by way of example (not that I always agree with you, but something is not just a matter of personal taste, but a matter of (complete lack of) understanding of the music performed). No mention for Szeryng?
I’m not knocking Grumiaux: he has the last word in terms of elegance and style as well as a certain ownership of these concerto as a whole. But didn’t Szigeti and Beecham actually make the first recording of #4? Love your talks! Thanks, WFS
You're probably right. I must have gotten something confused.
The D major concerto was a staple of the repertoire throughout the 19th century, as is attested by the numerous editions by prominent violinists such as Joachim or David. And of course David Hurwitz forgot to mention one of the absolute best recordings of it, which is Kreisler's.
Yes the Town Musicians of Bremen are excellent
Is it just my sordid ears or is Zimmermann's version the first one in which the soloist actually plays in tune? Both Skride an Barati, so my ears, appear to play rather sharp. I'd go for Szeryng/Gibson any day, with Grumiaux a very close first-and-a-hundredth.
Szeryng/Gibson is also my first choice, but I also acknowledge Grumiaux/Davis as excellent.
I'm a big fan of period instruments and I enjoy most of the HIPster recordings that get dunked on here but that Contzen performance was too much even for me.
A small favor, pls. Could I leave up the graphic of the artists longer so we can get the spelling right. Many thanks.
I will try, but feel free to freeze the video!
When I'm in a perverse mood, I'd like to give the old recording of two of the "spurious" concertos a spin, the one from the early 30's with Menuhin. Fabulously played, but god, how could anyone ever think these things were written by Mozart? It's like looking at Han van Meegeren's infamous "Emmaus" painting with those ugly post-expressionist faces and wondering how anyone could have been so stupid as to ascribe it to Vermeer.
The "7th" (where's the 6th?) KV 271a is a clumsy piece and at best a bastardization of something Mozart may or may not have written, while the "Adelaide" concerto is a hilarious forgery cobbled together by Marius Casadesus in the best Fritz Kreisler tradition. And doesn't sound like Mozart at all, but back in the day it even fooled Hindemith, who wrote cadenzas for it.
Luckily there's authentic Mozart on the disk (EMI References) too, in the form of the 3rd concerto. I just listened to the adagio again, and Menuhin uses much more vibrato and even portamento than I remember. A bit over the top. Still beautifully played, and with sensitive accompaniment by Georges Enesco, who was such an underrated orchestral conductor.
Josef Suk and David Oistrakh are intriguing absences from the pile...
Yes, aren't they?
What ever happened to my beloved David Oistrakh?
He died.
@@DavesClassicalGuide Gee, sorry to hear..rumor has it he was a pretty good fiddle player
Thomas Zehetmair’s account of the concertos with the Orchestra of the 18th Century under Frans Brüggen is my favorite on period instruments. I hope Vilde Frang makes a second disc because her first disc, with Maxim Rysanov in the Concertante, is outstanding. Still, all second to my first cd’s of these works with Grumiaux & Davis (lonely at the top).
Zehetmair has such a singing tone and sensuous vibrato, which I find perfect for Mozart. His rendition of Beethoven's concerto, also with Brüggen, is outstanding. His Bach is absolutely forgettable to me; he doesn't get it.
Not unlike the dead parrot in Monty Python, Contzen's Mozart is totally bereft of life.
I just have to point out the hilarity of that Contzen album cover. What is the conductor supposed to be doing poking the violin like that?
You could probably tie his pose together with your comment about how this music is supposed to be sexy, to create some dirty joke, but I'll leave it at that.
I love the shirt David. "Gender neutral Mahler lover" would have been really good, but yours works as well!
Mahler makes love to the ears of all of us....
From the title of your episode I was really hoping instead of comparing performances you were actually going to rank the violin concerto from best to worst LOL was looking forward to dissing Mozart
Now wait a minute. You are a gong banger not a violinist. The Mozart concertos are required for the first round of auditions. They have to be so clean and singing. Even some of the best , I won‘t mention names, have had some really rough moments, especially with number 5.
Could not agree with you more about Reinhard Goebel's and Mirijam Contzen's atrocity of a Mozart recording. But that's Goebel. His whole musical mo·dus vi·ven·di is to adopt the most perverse interpretive approach possible and dress it up as artistic originality. If you want to hear something even worse than the Mozart, try digging up an old Reflex recording of 17'th century German violin sonatas he recorded ages ago with Musica Antiqua Köln. It is absolutely the ugliest recording of violin music I've ever heard. 40 plus minutes of fingernails scrapping across blackboards! For the masochistically minded, it's available through Amazon Prime.
Now, on to more important matters. What the devil happened to David Oistrakh's EMI set? I'd take his Mozart over Grumiaux's any day of the week. I love Grumiaux's art, but his Mozart concertos always struck me as a bit too streamlined and modern, much like the glass a steel skyscrapers built around the same time period he made his recordings. Oistrakh's set has more heart and just a touch of East European schmaltz. That's why it will always be an evergreen performance for me.
Ask Warner.
@@DavesClassicalGuide Actually, I was wondering why you didn't mention it in your overview. You can still get the recordings themselves on CD.
@@anthonybeavers995 Not that I have noticed, and I did check.
@@DavesClassicalGuide It's available on Amazon. Either individually as used stuff or in a big box of Oistrakh concerto recordings. EBay has a lot of reasonably priced used stuff as well.
Isabelle Faust is almost as overrated as Patricia Kopatchinskaja. I've heard her play the Beethoven violin concerto, and there were many passages where she was incredibly unclean. My parents (both classically trained musicians) were also a bit disappointed with how unclean she often was. I have her Bach recordings in good memory, but her live performances and the stuff she is recording for Harmonia Mundi these days are ... not exactly terrible, but there is no lack of students playing as good as her if not even better than her these days.
She kinda represents the downfall of Harmonia Mundi, I guess: from a label that was so elite and high quality that you could buy their CDs and tickets to the concerts of their artists blind ... to a label that almost seems to go for shock value when hiring artists like Kristian Bezuidenhout creating ... noise-like soundscapes rather than music, lol. Everything is just getting weirder and stranger, everyone is just trying to do things "differently" simply for the sake of them being different. And unsurprisingly, this attitude results in a kind of laziness and in people not even managing to play cleanly and precisely anymore.
MY GOD, GOEBEL IS BAD, BAD, BAD, VERY BAD. SORRY