Cheap Violin Concerto (Music) (Rochberg, Skaerved, Lyndon-Gee, Saarbrucken Rso) Price

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Customer Reviews of Violin Concerto

Rochberg's Violin Concerto As It Was Intended!
This concerto has long had a special place in my affections. I heard its dedicatee, Isaac Stern, play it twice not long after its première in Pittsburgh in April 1975. Once was the original version, but the second time was after Rochberg had made major cuts - at Stern's request - and shortened it considerably. I remember preferring the original version. When Stern recorded it a couple of years later with André Previn and the Pittsburgh, it was the shorter version he played, and that's what I've been living with ever since. That was an outstanding performance. But here, in this recording by Peter Sheppard Skaerved accompanied by Christopher Lyndon-Gee conducting the Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra, we have what is essentially the original version again, and I say 'Hallelujah!'

Lyndon-Gee's notes detail his preparation for this recording. He had spoken with a former student of Rochberg's who told him that the composer had been anguished at the time the cuts were made. Lyndon-Gee contacted the composer and proposed to record the original version; 'Rochberg reacted as if a long-lost friend had turned up from prisoner-of-war camp ... hardly daring to believe in the possibility.' It turned out there was only one surviving copy of the original and that resided at the Paul Sacher Foundation in Switzerland to which Rochberg had given it. Lyndon-Gee examined it, made proposals to Rochberg about what to include in this recording and Rochberg told him to put all the excisions back in. Here is a comparison of the timings of the Stern recording vs. the present performance:

Stern:
I 5:41
II 6:49
III 6:36
IV 13:49
V 4:50
TT=37:45

Skaerved:
I 6:53
II 8:07
III 7:39
IV 18:35
V 10:26
TT=51:44

The basic tempi in the two performances are similar, so you can see that a total of about 14 minutes were cut (primarily from movements IV and V) when Stern made his recording. There are major organizational differences, too. For instance, in Stern movements I and V begin with the same material. Not so with Skaerved. Also, in the Stern version there had been some simplifications of the solo violin part (e.g. quadruple stops), even with some of the soloist's lines being written into the orchestral texture.

This is a major late 20th-century violin concerto, written in Rochberg's big-hearted late-Romantic style tempered by his astringent harmonies and Bartókian formal procedures. From the unaccompanied violin's anguished opening of the Introduction, through the cleverly-handled passacaglia-like theme (C# C / B A# / A G#) with its boozy circle-of-fifths harmonies in the first Intermezzo, the violin's searching in the Fantasia, the magical harmonies and dramatic thrust of the lengthy Second Intermezzo, and the autumnal finality of the Epilogue this concerto carries us along on a journey of seeking, discovery, understanding and wisdom.

Peter Sheppard Skaerved is a violinist previously unknown to me; he is a Briton, the first violinist of the Kreutzer Quartet. On the basis of this performance I would judge that he is a true musician who also possesses technique to spare. I understand he has recorded Rochberg's solo violin masterpiece, the Caprice Variations, and I know that I will have to seek that out. Lyndon-Gee and his Alsatian orchestra give outstanding support.

This is, in my opinion, a major release for which I am exceedingly grateful. Hats off to Naxos for undertaking to restore to us the complete Rochberg Concerto in such a fine performance as this.

Scott Morrison