12 July 2010

Janine Jansen Beethoven Violin concerto

This is one of the most remarkable Beethoven Concertos I've heard. Järvi's conducting is the most intense and dramatic I've EVER heard, and that includes Harnoncourt's. In accordance with prevalent HIP custom, his tempos are swift - but no more than Harnoncourt's (and, in the finale, well within a norm established long ago by Szigeti-Walter) - and his rubato limited, but there is enough drama for them not to seem pressed. His trumpets blare like percussion, his timpanis pound (the opening timp sounds more like a call to battle than the soft ushering in we are used to), his woodwinds crisp, his accents always forceful. Yes, they do relate to sf and sfp written by Beethoven in the score, only he whips them up more than we are accustomed to hearing. But I will grant that I counted four, between 9:35 and 9:39 in the first movement, that are NOT from Beethoven. With his highly intense conducting, Järvi also unearths details that I saw in the score but never heard: in the first tutti at 1:17, horns play legato quarter note values but trumpets play snappy eighth-notes like the timp thuds: and for the first time I've heard it here.

Is that too dramatic and forceful for Beethoven's essentially lyrical Concerto? I can understand that some would find so. But I don't stick with the notion that Beethoven's VC is an "essentially lyrical" composition; like its composer, it is Janus-faced: heroic/dramatic AND lyrical. I love the raging energy brought to it by Järvi.

And Jansen? She is emphatically NOT the meek and demure fiddler that some of the previous reviews led me to expect. What she has to say she drives home with plenty of authority and fire, always beautiful tone, and a remarkable attention to Beethoven's minuscule details of articulation: try for instance her staccato playing between 11:12 and 11:36 in the first movement. I don't think I've ever heard such a precise rendition of what Beethoven wrote. And what's that thing with a purported contradiction between her use of vibrato and the orchestra's vibrato-less playing? When she uses it her vibrato is never obtrusive, and then - listen again, and tell me if, at 10:35 and again at 11:52 in the first movement, she is using vibrato? She's not, and there is no "contradiction".

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