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Mozart: Violin, Piano and Flute Concertos

Joséphine Olech (flute), Ludvig Gudim (violin), Jeneba Kanneh-Mason (piano); ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra, Wien/Howard Griffiths (Alpha Classics)

Our rating

4

Published: December 1, 2022 at 3:13 pm

Mozart Violin Concerto No. 4, K218; Piano Concerto No. 6, K238; Flute Concerto No. 1, K313 Joséphine Olech (flute), Ludvig Gudim (violin), Jeneba Kanneh-Mason (piano); ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra, Wien/Howard Griffiths Alpha Classics ALPHA 882 69:48 mins

This release reflects the professional opportunities – such as album recordings – that young soloists can pursue today, much earlier in their careers than would be possible several decades ago. All three players feature here under the auspices of Switzerland’s Orpheum Foundation, which provides this kind of infrastructure of mentoring, concert-giving (usually in Zurich’s Tonhalle) and recording. The results on display in this all-Mozart concerto programme – conducted by the Foundation’s artistic director – are consistently impressive.

In the G major Violin Concerto, K218, Norway’s Ludvig Gudim offers lustrous and sharp-focus tone (on a loaned Stradivarius violin), phenomenal precison of tuning and an ideal feeling for the music’s idiom, at once incisive and poised. France’s Joséphine Olech, principal flautist of the Rotterdam Philharmonic since 2017, shows how likeably her nation’s particular tradition of flute playing continues to thrive. Her soft-grained tone is different from the sumptuous amplitude preferred in other areas of the musical world; yet it projects clearly and easily in the Flute Concerto, K313, and delivers beautiful results in the Adagio non troppo slow movement. In the Piano Concerto, K238, Jeneba Kanneh-Mason does not quite produce the range of expression and colouring that the music ideally needs; but the engaging composure of her playing is a pleasure in its own right, as is the fortepiano-like tone she convincingly draws from a Bösendorfer piano. Crisp and alert orchestral accompaniments – on modern instruments, but exactly in style – add a further layer of excellence to all three interpretations.

Malcolm Hayes

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