Beethoven Violin Concerto - Kreutzer Sonata

Beethoven (Composer), Muti (Conductor), Repin (Performer), Argerich (Performer), Vpo (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Repin, Argerich, Vpo
• Conductor: Muti
• Composer: Beethoven
• Audio CD (September 25, 2007)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 2
• Label: Deutsche Grammophon
• ASIN: B000S0YKQ2
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #106,367 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A tepid Beethoven concerto -- where's the fiery Russian we expected?, September 25, 2007

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Santa Fe Listener (Santa Fe, NM USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Beethoven Violin Concerto - Kreutzer Sonata (Audio CD)

Vadim Repin, now a veteran of the concert stage, deserves his shot at a big-time recording career. He's been present at the margins, overshadowed by Mullova and Vengerov among Russian exports and by more glamorous non-Russians on the order of Mutter, Hahn, and Bell, not to mention critical favorites like Zimmerman, Kremer, and Tetzlaff. Who would think that having world-class technique and fine musical instincts could make you an also-ran?

My reaction to Repin's Beethoven Concerto is colored by dislike of Muti's blunt condcuting, which fails to find depth in the all-important orchestral part. Listening beyond that, Repin's playing is clean, tasteful, and efficient -- temperamentally a bad fit with Muti. To his credit, Repin avoids the self-conscious mannerisms that spoiled starry Beethoven concertos from Nigel Kennnedy and Vengerov, but you don't feel that he has a strong point of view. For a soloist who can swagger through Tchaikovsky, he's surprisingly polite and small-scale here. If Repin feels the grandeur of Beethoven's masterpiece, it barely comes across. Phrases of enormous expressive import slide by decorously one after another, and by the time we arrive at the finale, Repin is walking on eggshells. I suppose that the violinist takes the position asserted by some writers that Beethoven's only violin concerto is more about classical grace than Romantic feeling.

DG throws in a bonus disc of the Kreutzer Sonata, and since the pianist is Martha Argerich, one assumes that sparks will fly at last. Well, not so much. Rather than being carried away by her passionate spontaneity, Repin seems to tame Argerich. He keeps his tone small and elegant, without any attempt to bring out the heroic side of this most heroic of Beethoven's violin sonatas. Part of this reticence, I think, must come from Repin's refusal to abandon a polished tone in favor of something grittier and wilder. Whatever the reason, the Kreutzer falls into the same class of tasteful performance that I can admire but not love.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Classical Elegance, December 22, 2008

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R. Wood "word lover" (Portland, Oregon USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Beethoven Violin Concerto - Kreutzer Sonata (Audio CD)

This is a comment on the Beethoven Concerto only. I appear to be in the minority here. I really like Repin's interpretation. It's precisely because Beethoven's violin concerto is so different from much of his other work that I appreciate the restrained "classical" as opposed to "romantic" interpretation that Repin gives us. I hear plenty of emotion in his playing, but it never overpowers the structure, which is elegant and beautiful.

15 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A One-Base Hit, November 4, 2007

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Todd Kay - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Beethoven Violin Concerto - Kreutzer Sonata (Audio CD)

The highest compliment one can pay the Repin/Muti/VPO recording of the violin concerto is that everyone involved -- soloist, conductor/orchestra, and engineers -- is going for the same thing (emphasis on "thing," singular) and they all stick to the script, doggedly. If you want to hear a technically faultless Beethoven Violin Concerto, the sole interpretive characteristic of which is a kind of lofty Olympian reserve, this is for you. Of poetry, drama, whimsy, and any but the most basic and inevitable musical shaping, there is virtually nothing; one would only know from experience with other performances that those possibilities existed in the work. The Repin/Muti reading is "sweet" and "genial" and "graceful" from beginning to end, abundant lyricism adding up to little and pointing nowhere in particular. As implied above, the recorded sound is perfectly matched to the understated character of the performance: warm, generalized, and low-impact, even in the tuttis. This approach may be pleasing to some; my own reaction was disappointment, not only in the soloist but in the conductor, of whom I am a great admirer. This is not what I expected from him, and will do little to counter the oft-expressed opinion that Beethoven is one of his weak suits. Familiar though I am with the hallmarks of his style, I would never have accurately guessed he was involved, if listening to this blind. He conducts as though his whole career has been building to the perfect moment when he could turn into Carlo Maria Giulini.

The accompanying Kreutzer Sonata with Marta Argerich is on a different level: tense, occasionally dazzling, and the best reason to get this. Repin decided against coupling the Beethoven with another violin concerto, on the grounds that any other concerto in the repertory would be dwarfed by Beethoven's. I strongly disagree (and would cite as Exhibit A the RCA CD containing the classic Heifetz/Munch recordings of the Beethoven and Mendelssohn concerti), but in the face of this dashing Kreutzer, I am willing to allow Repin his eccentric view. This is not a "coupling" in the strictest sense, however; the works occupy separate very short CDs within one slim case. I suspect this layout was not the original plan, but some broad tempi pushed the combination a few minutes past the 80-minute mark. DG deserves credit for not trying to sell this as two full-priced discs.