COMPOSERS: Albeniz,Brahms,Buarque,Dvorak,Falla,Francescatti,Grappelli,Lenoir and Charles,Piazzola,Portal,Ravel,Tchaikovsky,Wieniawski
LABELS: NAIVE
ALBUM TITLE: Danses
WORKS: Violin works
PERFORMER: Laurent Korcia, Jean Efflam Bavouzet, Michel Portal, Cyril Dupuy, Gergana Terziyska, Julie Depardieu etc
CATALOGUE NO: V 4978
The borderlines between 19th-century
virtuosity and café music are distinctly
blurred in this highly entertaining disc.
Laurent Korcia has all the technical
bravado and interpretative charisma
to breathe new life into such tried and
tested violin warhorses as Wieniawski’s
D major Polonaise, Tchaikovsky’s
Valse-Scherzo and the Kreisler
arrangement of Falla’s Danse espagnole.
He turns on the seductive charm for
Albéniz’s Tango and spins a suitably
languorous melodic line in Ravel’s
Pièce en forme de habanera. But Korcia
also has a natural affinity with more
overtly popular idioms, delivering
wonderfully fluid renditions of
Stéphane Grappelli’s Les valseuses and
Piazzola’s Café 1930. He provides an
equally irresistible backdrop for the
final item on the disc featuring the
captivating Julie Depardieu in the
chanson La villette.
The programme cunningly
juxtaposes items featuring the usual
combination of violin and piano
with more varied and imaginative
instrumental accompaniments, none
more striking than the combination
of double bass and cimbalom which
brings an extra ounce of paprika to
the violinist’s brilliant arrangements
of a sequence of Brahms’s Hungarian
Dances. Fifty-two minutes may seem
a little short for a recital disc, but
with playing and a recording of this
distinction, nobody should really
complain. Erik Levi
