Järnefelt • Sibelius • Szymanowski
Järnefelt: Berceuse; Sibelius: Violin Concerto in D minor; Szymanowski: Violin Concerto No. 2
Lea Birringer (violin); Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie/Benjamin Shwartz
Rubicon RCD1193 56:40 mins
Clip: Järnefelt – Berceuse in G Minor (Lea Bringer)
It’s becoming hard to remember that Sibelius’s Violin Concerto once used to be thought of as a notoriously difficult challenge for its soloist. Today’s playing standards are so high that the concerto has become a standard work for violinists, and one that can be approached in many different ways besides its reputation as a spectacular showpiece. Not that Lea Birringer falls in any way short in this department. She handles the finale’s near-fiendish passagework with a panache and precision suggesting that the music’s technical issues seem hardly to exist. And her tuning at every point has a laser-like flawlessness.
But what makes these recordings special is the character of Birringer’s musicianship. She evidently isn’t concerned to make a particularly immense sound, yet her playing is never crowded out by the elaborate orchestration of Szymanowski’s Second Concerto, whose idiom filters folk-music influence through sumptuous late Romanticism; her way with the music is so engaging that it here sounds close to Bartók’s directness of manner.
At every point in this remarkable release, her tone has a warmth, spontaneous poise, and beautifully varied range of light and shade which make the first movement of the Sibelius, especially, a memorable experience. The Berceuse by Armas Järnefelt, Sibelius’s brother-in-law, is a short and likeable interlude between to the two concertos. And the accompaniments by the Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie under Benjamin Shwartz offer their own level of quality, with excellent clarity brought to the intricate soundworld of Szymanowski’s concerto. Malcolm Hayes