Henryk Wieniawski: Violin Concertos Nos. 1 & 2

On this CD:

1. Violin Concerto No. 1 in F sharp minor, Op. 14
Composed by Henryk Wieniawski
Performed by Sinfonia Varsovia
Conducted by Grezegorz Nowak

2. Violin Concerto No. 2 in D minor, Op. 22
Composed by Henryk Wieniawski
Performed by Sinfonia Varsovia
Conducted by Grezegorz Nowak

Tracks:

Concerto For Violin And Orchestra No. 1 In F Sharp Minor: Allegro moderato
Concerto For Violin And Orchestra No. 1 In F Sharp Minor: Preghiera. Larghetto
Concerto For Violin And Orchestra No. 1 In F Sharp Minor: Rondo. Allegro giocoso
Concerto For Violin And Orchestra No. 2 In D Minor: Allegro moderato
Concerto For Violin And Orchestra No. 2 In D Minor: Romance. Andante non troppo
Concerto For Violin And Orchestra No. 2 In D Minor: Allegro con fuoco - Allegro moderato (a la Zingara)
Legende in G minor op. 17: Andante - Allegro moderato - Tempo I
Zigeunerweisen Op. 20: Moderato - Lento - Un peu plus lent - Allegro volto vivace

Amazon.com

Good violin music and good music are not always the same thing, and Wieniawski's violin works are a case in point. Though extremely effectively written for the soloists, in most other departments--orchestration, melodic interest, formal ingenuity--they remain distinctly second-rate, which may be why they seem to have fallen out of favor recently. Given great fiddling, however, they can be made to sound like great music, and Gil Shaham is unquestionably a great fiddler. He glides through the quick music with the ease of an Olympic bobsled champion, and injects real soul into Wieniawski's meditative moments. Sarasate's works offer many of the same strengths and weaknesses as Wieniawski's, and Shaham dispatches the music's numerous technical challenges with similar boldness and zest. There's always room in the catalog for playing that is this accomplished. --David Hurwitz

Customer Reviews:

Pretty Definitive Wieniawski .......2006-06-02

I usually prefer to review CD's that have not been reviewed, but for Wieniawski I shall make and exception.

These two concertos actually do not begin with Wieniawski, but with Nicolo Paganini. Paganini, with his 6 violin concertos actually pioneered and epitomized a whole new type of concerto form, the showpiece. The showpiece concerto emphasized the fantastical, the showmanship, and the virtuosity of the performer. This came largely at the expense of depth or any great profundity. Wieniawski borrowed heavily from his predecessor whom he greatly admired.

The first concerto, (Which you really could call Paganini's 7th) is far and away the superior of the two in terms of compositional structure. I also feel it is the far more enjoyable and interesting musically. It is beyond me as to why the second is far more popular. The opening movement, with its flowing strings and orchestral adornments is a masterpiece of form, and the closing rondo of the first concerto could have been written by Paganini himself. The second concerto, while clearly an inferior work to the first, is still good. It is certainly not bereft of catchy melodies, or dazzling displays of performer virtuosity, both the principle hallmarks of Wieniawski. So if that's your shtick you can't go wrong with this CD. And for the conscientious listener, I would also strongly advise buying it with the complete Paganini concertos as played by Accardo and also done for the Deutsche Grammophon label.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy of all is the fate Wieniawski's Legende. I heard it first on this CD and have decided that it is one of the most beautiful pieces I've ever heard. Wieniawski wrote it for certain girl who he was infatuated with. It is almost never performed by orchestras today and is largely removed from the standard repertoire. This is very sad. It is not a showpiece work like the concertos. It is filled with deep emotion and expressive lyrical content. The Legende is juxtaposed against Sarasate's "Zigeunerweisen," a markedly inferior violin concert showpiece which is not really worth any further mention.

As to the quality of the performances themselves one could conceivably nitpick forever over the tiniest of details. Is Isaac Stern's Wieniawski vastly superior to Shaham's? The answer is no. Maybe Stern with his age and experience slightly outperforms Shaham on the second concerto.......slightly. But we should keep things in perspective. Gil Shaham is not a flavor of the month violinist or a performing monkey. He is internationally recognized by audiences and critics alike as one of the finest violinist living in the world today. And that's good enough for me.

This CD is a must have for any violin aficionado, or anyone who can appreciate what they have to offer.

Highly Recommended

Rembrandt Q. Einstein

initiation for me..;-).......2006-04-16

My favorite classical CD when I started listening to clasical.... now, 8 years later, I haven't found another classical CD That is more dearly loved.. I searched out other violinists because of some critics about Gil... If anyone is better, hell that will be unthinkable!!But, I never ever love anyone else more than gil playing all the songs on this CD.. a king of violin to me.. I have listened to this Cd with many many high-end audio systems costing $20,000 plus and many systems couldn't really express the dynamic and details from Gil.. Good solid state systems are actually better than tube systems for the tiuny details on this CD..I guess that's the problems for the bad feedbacks...happy Happy listening.. passionate, dynamic, sweet tone, heart-breaking emotion and great technigue/sound quality....

Great Performances!.......2005-10-18

Although I do agree with many points presented by the reviewer below, I find his criticism somewhat excessively harsh against someone of Shaham's talents. Although perhaps he is somewhat of a cruder mold of Perlman, Perlman as with Heifetz sets a standard so high that it's very hard to meet. I think this was a great performance in which Shaham's specialties were best demonstrated. First of all, he's playing a Stradivarius here and so cannot possibly be the amateur some reviewers have made him out to be. As with Perlman, his method is founded in the Polish Romantic tradition of violin as led by Joseph Joachim to whom almost every composer turned to for drafting a violin concerto. There are certain deficiencies as the previous reviewer mentioned but they are rather academic at this level and such matters are ethical questions for musical groups, the music industry, and musical academies as opposed to the general buying public. The best performance on this album is The Gypsy Airs where Shaham demonstrates all of his great talents.

Passable but not great.......2005-08-12

I don't think Shaham deserves all the praise that appears here. His technique is good, but his sound productions is barely competent: his sound often comes out as too thin, the passionate parts lacking the intensity that puts them above the rest - the contrast that marks the difference between merely reading music and interpreting it. No doubt Shaham tries, and the feeling and a little passion comes through, but compared to a master like Oistrakh, he's a factory worker, that is, someone who belongs in an orchestra.

Comparing his performance of the Legende with Oistrakh's (David, not Igor, btw!), Shaham's lacklustre playing comes out most clearly in the 'dark' parts where the melody drops in pitch. By listening to Oistrakh play these parts, I know that the solo violin is not supposed to fade out and let the orchestra (or piano, in Oistrakh's recording) overwhelm it. The intensity goes down - after all the dark part is supposed to express despair - but the playing is there. In Shaham's case, his playing is absorbed by that of the strings in the orchestra, whose playing (as a whole), by the way, is superb. When a solo violinist lets this happen, something is wrong, and I doubt it is the hall acoustics, the microphones, the conductor or the composer that is to blame. I have listened to a recoding of an old Oistrakh perform both Shostakovich violin concertos, and though I could easily sense the diminished energy in his playing, rarely did the orchestra overwhelm the solo violin. In this recording, Shaham, with more juice to spare than Oistrakh in his best years, performs like an anemic.

Going back to the matter of praise, I really think it should be granted sparely, for otherwise, like currency, it will lose value. And when officially sanctioned critics and reviewers get into the business of manufacturing raves, mafias are not long in appearing, as they have done in American poetry contests. Remember, in music, unlike other arts, unless you are a cognoscenti who can translate notes on the page into music in your mind - or of course if you are a musician -, interpretation is the other half without which a composer's work is nothing more than meaningless scribbles. If we don't want to become the ideological hostages of often pretentious academics and reviewers, some of them with hidden agendas (note that Shaham is a protege of Perlman, a man who, like Zukerman, lately seems more concerned with increasing his celebrity than with perfecting the quality of his playing), we better learn to tell the wheat from the chaff. And obviously, only by knowing both of them can we tell them apart.

Wonderful.......2005-03-21

This is an excellent disc. I had never heard Wieniawski's first concerto before I acquired it, and I was amazed at how beautiful it is and how splendidly Shaham performed it.

The recordings of the Second Concerto and the Legende are terrific as well. They're intense, lyrical and clean.

This spellbinding recording finishes with Sarasate's Zigeunerweisen, a composition that makes one wonder if Sarasate was truly Spanish and not Romany or at least Hungarian! Shaham shows his versatility with a terrific rendition of it. One can picture sipping wine in Budapest in a restaurant at the edge of the Danube and hearing such music. No, one can't. The violinist wouldn't be anywhere near as good as Shaham.

Average customer rating:

not good

Wieniawski: Violin Concertos Nos. 1 & 2

Manufacturer: Naxos
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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Similar Items:

Wieniawski: Violin Showpieces
Paganini & Viotti: Violin Concertos
Vieuxtemps: Violin Concertos Nos. 1 and 4
Vieuxtemps: Violin Concertos Nos. 2 and 3
Vieuxtemps: Violin Concertos Nos. 5, 6 & 7

ASIN: B0000014E5
Release Date: 1997-02-04

Tracks:

Faust Fantasy: Violin Concerto No. 1 in F Sharp Minor, Op. 14, 1. Allegro moderato
Faust Fantasy: Violin Concerto No. 1 in F Sharp Minor, Op. 14, 2. Preghiera, Larghetto
Faust Fantasy: Violin Concerto No. 1 in F Sharp Minor, Op. 14, 3. Allegro giocoso
Faust Fantasy: Violin concerto No. 2 in D Minor, Op. 22, 4. Allegro moderato
Faust Fantasy: Violin concerto No. 2 in D Minor, Op. 22, 5. Romance, Andante non troppo
Faust Fantasy: Violin concerto No. 2 in D Minor, Op. 22, 6. Allegro con fuoco - Allegro moderato
Faust Fantasy: Fantaisie brillante on themes from Gounod's 'Faust' for Violin and Orchestra

Customer Reviews:

not good.......2002-01-22

what was that performer thinking. ok, i admitted tha concerto 1 is very hard, but toooooooooooooo slow. go listen to the one played by gil shaham, it's one of the best. also, you can hardly hear the bass! and...tooooo slow. even i could play that in that tempo. the orchestra was out of order, very messy, just like a big blah.