Glazunov • Saint-Saëns Glazunov: Violin Concerto in A minor; Saint-Saëns: Violin Concerto No. 3 in B minor Rudolf Koelman (violin); Sinfonietta Schaffhausen/Paul K Haug Challenge Classics CC72951 45:53 mins
There’s no doubting the pedigree of Rudolf Koelman’s latest album. The sometime leader of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra learned the Glazunov with his teacher Jascha Heifetz, who in turn studied the piece with Leopold Auer, the concerto’s dedicatee charged with its 1905 premiere. As a teenager Heifetz performed it with the composer and twice recorded it, but Koelman pays double homage to his teacher by coupling it with the Saint-Saëns Concerto No. 3, a work Heifetz reportedly regretted never having recorded. As if with nothing to lose by way of comparison, uninhibited, it’s ironically the Saint-Saëns that comes off best.
Sleeves rolled up and business-like, the opening of the Glazunov finds Koelman sounding a little reserved (especially in comparison with Heifetz); but he discerns the overarching line that runs through the piece from the impassioned Moderato to the dance-inflected finale. If the ebb and flow is sometimes under-characterised and under-differentiated, Glazunov’s challenging cadenza proves pre-eminently assured, and is neatly dovetailed into a concluding section in which Koelman gleefully rips into its all’s-right-with-the-world rusticity. But he’s even more rugged and energised in the Saint-Saëns, its contrasts more tellingly observed, and the espagnolerie of the last movement powering ineluctably towards the bright and breezy B major close. Orchestral support at the beginning of the Barcarolle-like slow movement is a touch laboured, but conductor Paul K Haug generally holds ensemble together with a seasoned efficiency.
Paul Riley