Franziska Pietsch, a one-time East German prodigy, has followed a fine, rather dark reading of Prokofiev’s two violin sonatas with an equally captivating version of the two concertos. Prokofiev’s popular violin concertos have nearly a hundred recordings. Aficionados will have their favorites, but this new recording deserves consideration as a leading choice.

In the first concerto, Pietsch soars lyrically from the outset, although with a touch of mystery. Her scherzo is rudely demonic, and exciting to hear. The final movement contains lots of lush, romantic music, which Pietsch plays with a knowing glance and not a hint of naiveté. Pietsch is a forceful musical personality. She doesn’t quite swagger, but plays with wonderful self-assurance. Her performance has more bite than the fine precision of that by Julia Fischer, and is better recorded than that of Arabella Steinbacher.

In the second concerto, Pietsch emphasizes the connections with Prokofiev’s contemporary Romeo and Juliet ballet. She captures Prokofiev’s unique blend of modernism and romanticism from the beginning. Her finale is sometimes spooky, but in a comic sort of way, again with a knowing wink to the listener. Her playing is wild enough to earn those castanets in this Spanish- inflected music (which received its first performance in Madrid). Among competing versions, Patricia Kopatchinskaja is musically fascinating, if too often unlovely to hear, despite wonderful accompaniment by Vladimir Jurowski. Cho-liang Lin’s sound is more beautiful, but Pietsch plays more fiercely, with bolder interpretive choices.

Christian Măcelaru’s direction of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin is in easy sympathy with Pietsch, playing with color and precision. Audite engineers turn in an impressive performance of their own, capturing wind voices with clarity, and letting us enjoy softly repeated figures in the violins.

Pietsch is a playful and musical virtuoso, making these concertos sound fresh, although she must have been playing them for much of her life.

Released in 2016 Franziska Pietsch with pianist Detlev Eisinger recorded Prokofiev’s two violin sonatas and cinq mélodies on Audite. On the same label for her new album, produced around a year ago in Berlin, Pietsch has returned to Prokofiev for the first and second violin concertos with Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin under Cristian Măcelaru. Written some eighteen years apart the pair of violin concertos mark the periods before the composer went into exile and the time he was concluding his nomadic lifestyle, deciding to resettle in his Russian homeland.

The first violin concerto is a relatively early work composed in 1916/17 and one of the last to be written before Prokofiev left Russia. Prokofiev ensures that the violin part is dominant although it is not pitted dramatically against the orchestra but more part of it. Nevertheless, it is an excellent score and I would like to see it programmed far more than it currently is. Undoubtedly Prokofiev’s works were a source of inspiration to a generation of composers. When I hear the Walton violin concerto (1939, re-orchestrated 1943) it reminds me strongly of these Prokofiev scores which the English composer must surely have known especially the first concerto premiered over fifteen years earlier in 1923. In the fascinating opening movement Andantino Franziska Pietsch creates a heavy and intense atmosphere that evokes an icy Russian chill which makes me shiver such is the passion of her assured playing. Admirable is the way the Halle born Pietsch accelerates through the movement’s propulsive climax. The music of the sardonic Scherzo just flashes along briskly with the committed soloist negotiating the wonderful contemporary writing and the mischievous sounding effects. In the Finale Pietsch creates an atmospheric world of inscrutability and introspection with Cristian Măcelaru directing the Berlin orchestra in an explosion of passionate lyricism. The shimmering violin line feels as if Pietsch has dipped her violin (made by Carlo Antonio Testore, Milan, 1751) in liquid gold such is the gleaming quality of the sound it produces. Pietsch imparts the potent elements of intensity and deep concentration creating a highly charged atmosphere seldom encountered in this work.

From 1935 the second violin concerto tends to be overshadowed by the first concerto. Certainly, a high-quality score Prokofiev’s writing is highly melodic and more overtly romantic than the earlier concerto. In the opening movement Allegro moderato one immediately notices the concerto has relatively lighter scoring. Pietsch continues her splendid form throughout the long and varied melodic line revelling in the vivid and deliciously warm colours. The central Andante movement sounds so meltingly lyrical in Pietsch’s hands and throughout the Finale: Allegro, ben marcato her spirit and verve stand out prominently.

Pietsch produces compelling and intensely passionate interpretations of both concertos complemented by accomplished support from Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin under Cristian Măcelaru. Excellent sound quality throughout this album from the renowned acoustic of Jesus-Christus-Kirche, Dahlem with the Audite engineers providing vividly clear and well balanced sonics. In addition, I really appreciate the informative and readable booklet essay by Habakuk Traber. My only grumble is with the available space on the CD, enough to have accommodated an additional work.

Franziska Pietsch’s recording of Prokofiev’s violin concertos rubs shoulders with the finest in the catalogue. My first choice and probably the best-known is the now ‘classic’ recording from soloist Kyung-Wha Chung and London Philharmonic Orchestra under André Previn. Recorded in 1975 at Kingsway Hall, London, Chung plays passionately displaying a wonderful tone and control with Previn and LPO highly sensitive partners. A generous coupling on this Decca album is Chung’s striking account of the Stravinsky violin concerto. Another rival version of the pair of concertos that holds the attention is from soloist Arabella Steinbacher with Russian National Orchestra under Vasily Petrenko. Recorded in 2012 at Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, Steinbacher’s coupling is the composer’s solo violin sonata, Op. 115 on Pentatone.

With Franziska Pietsch in such stunning form there is little reason to hesitate with this album of the Prokofiev violin concertos.

Was Elina Vähälä und Niek de Groot [...] abliefern, ist einfach nur atemberaubend. Nicht nur, dass sie sich als spieltechnisch über jeden Zweifel erhabene, souveräne, lust- und temperamentvolle Gestalter, ja auch Geschichtenerzähler erweisen, sondern als wahre Magier in Sachen Tonformung, als im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes Ton-Künstler.

Le chef libère l’orchestre par de subtiles fluctuations de dynamique qui enflamment l’œuvre, offrant ainsi l’une des plus belles expressions du romantisme allemand. Grâce à une restitution sonore d’exception, chaque détail devient perceptible. À la suite de la SWF (Société Wilhelm Furtwängler) et d’autres éditeurs officiels (Tahra) proposant les meilleurs documents possibles, Audite s’inscrit dans ce petit cercle de producteurs épris d’excellence.

The repertoire is all Liszt. Bolet was one of the finest of all Liszt players. Liszt was the composer who, as we have noted before, made his name internationally famous when he played for Dirk Bogarde in Song Without End (chosen, the booklet reminds us, in preference to the younger Van Cliburn). One’s spirits lift even before the ‘play’ button is pressed.

There are studio recordings of Bolet in the two concertos, both with David Zinman and an earlier one of No 1 with Robert Irving, but these Deutschlandradio recordings are live performances – and Bolet was always at his best in front of an audience. There may be flashier and speedier accounts of the E flat Concerto (recorded 1971) but few that are more powerful, magisterial and, ultimately, thrilling (Bolet whips up a storm in the final pages), even if the workaday Lawrence Foster is sometimes just behind the beat.

The A major Concerto elicits a similar response of noble magnificence, closer in tempos and character to von Sauer than de Greef (the only two Liszt pupils to have recorded both concertos), recorded in the same venue as the First Concerto but 11 years later and under the alert Edo de Waart.

The three Petrarch Sonnets provide an introspective interlude not markedly different from Bolet’s later account for Decca (6/84) in his recording of the second book of Années de pèlerinage. The Wagner-Liszt Tannhäuser Overture was one of Bolet’s specialities. This astonishing studio recording (RIAS Funkhaus, Berlin) was made in October 1973, three months after his RCA recording (not released until 2001) and four months before the unforgettable performance of February 1974 in the legendary Carnegie Hall recital that established him as one of the all-time greats. The command of structure, the judicious pacing and unleashing of those final torrential octaves under the main theme send shivers up the spine.

Sophie Rétaux zeigt damit einmal mehr, dass sie nicht nur eine intime Kennerin ihres Cavaillé-Coll-Instruments ist sondern auch eine vorzügliche Orgel-Orchestratorin.

Editor's Choice

In den vergangenen Jahren hat sich INA SIEDLACZEK einen...

Der Franzose Marc Coppey und sein St. Petersburger Klavierpartner Peter Laul musizieren voller Energie und Temperament und verleihen den populären Variationen und gewichtigen Sonaten unbestechlichen, glitzernden Klang. Die technische Perfektion der Musiker ist auch in der Livesituation beeindruckend.

Ein zauberisch und bunt klingendes Universum ist es, das sein [Bolets] Liszt–Spiel so auszeichnet und über andere erhebt.

[Siedlaczek] comes out as the winner on all accounts. She has the most beautiful voice, and she is by far the most stylish. She avoids vibrato, has the most convincing tempi, her articulation is excellent, and her dynamic shading is subtle, but effective. To date, her performance is one of the best available, only comparable to previous recordings by Emma Kirkby.