Customer Reviews

Elgar: Violin Concerto / Vaughan Williams: The Lark Ascending

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

While other reviewers carp about the Elgar Concerto as a flawed composition, I've always found it rather beautifully melancholic. Hahn is a superb technician (in the tradition of Grumiaux) and plays here with the flawless technique one also recognizes in her Bach recordings. Levine, in his review, faults Hahn for playing too "cool[ly]" in a piece known for its rather hot-house emotions, but I find her restraint, a quality found in all her recordings, noble in the Elgar. I've heard Hahn play this concerto in performance and found no difficulty experiencing the emotions Elgar recreates in his music, so, perhaps, that colors my listening to this disc. Yet one need only listen to the Lark Ascending to hear that Hahn has no difficulty communicating the rapturous emotion VW caught in this piece. No, Hahn doesn't gush as a player, but then, she produces such a beautiful tone through her faultless technique and lancet intelligence that gushing seems beside the point (and rather vulgar).

I have to admit that I own every Hilary Hahn CD and yet now, this one, along with her CD of solo Bach might be my favorite; but about the Elgar... Until this recording came along I thought I would own no other version than the 1949 recording with Jascha Heifetz. And now Hilary Hahn records a brilliant version of this somewhat "difficult to know" piece. Her playing perfectly matches the dark and emotionally wrenching Elgar concerto making it more accessible than it perhaps has ever been. The London Symphony Orchestra, as on the 55 year old Heifetz recording, is wonderful and shows why they are one of the finest ensembles in the world. And if the the Elgar is too dark, Vaughn Williams Lark Ascending brightens things greatly. Hilary Hahns playing is as light and as lovely as I have ever heard and soars just as the title of the piece suggests. This is sweet romantic music to listen to and daydream by with your eyes closed. This is a wonderful recording all around and worth repeated listenings. You will love this one.

I did have great expectation on this recording as I think Hilary Hahn is definitely the best violinist to appear in the past 10 years as witnessed from her interpretation of Bach's partitas, Brahms, and Shostakovich. She is a rare instrumentalist in the present music scene with both flawless technique and remarkable interpretative power.

To review the present set, the most convenient comparison would be Kennedy/Rattle as this is a key digital era recording of Elgar (as mentioned by many reviewers here) and both discs pair it with Lark Ascending.

Hahn's entry is lyrical but restrained, definitely unexpected if you have heard her Brahms (that's why Amazon review writes "oddly cool"). And you expect the tension to build up but the atmosphere remain pretty the same in the final part of the first movement and even toward the end of the whole work. Though having a cleaner, more assertive and powerful tone than Kennedy, Hahn lacks the heat here. She is like a storyteller telling a story about a man and his destined to be in vain affection to a woman. But it is in past tense thus the mood is nostalgic. On the contrary, Kennedy thinks of himself as the hero of the story, his playing is intense with emotions keep pouring out. And along passages he can display unforgettable contrasts between painful love and extreme tenderness. This fits the spirit of the work when you think of Elgar's affection toward Alice Stuart-Wortley (the ..... and the soul being enshrined) when he wrote this music. Kennedy gives a more impressive interpretation here.

The key of playing Lark Ascending, in my opinion, is to deliver a soaring mood with beautiful tone color, especially in the high register. Hahn wins here with her clean intonation even though both play the work brilliantly. I also think that this piece somehow fits Hahn's character, at least part of her present persona. She likes to describe herself as a traveling violinist in her online journal (in this case I better use "A Flying Violinist"). So it is natural to see her expressing a yearning for freedom in the music.

After all, it is still a very nice recording to own.

I'll admit it - when I first listened through this recording, I felt a bit alienated. The concerto seemed to lend itself to a much more "emotional" performance than Ms. Hahn delivered, and as a result I almost wrote her off as a technician. The more I listened to the album, however, the more i came to realize that I never would have lasted through an overly emotive reckoning of the Elgar Violin Concerto. Hilary Hahn is miles more than capable of tugging at the heart-strings, as evidenced by her almost painfully sensitive interpretation of Vaughn Williams' "The Lark Ascending", so obviously her restraint throughout the Elgar concerto was intentional. (Not to say there are no melodramatic moments - the cadenza is fantastic, for example). Please don't misunderstand me: this is not a tentative performance by ANY means, and the virtuosity present is unlike anything else I've heard from ANYONE. After literally dozens of listens, I feel I've truly grown to appreciate this interpretation. It takes a rare restraint to play so technically challenging a piece with such an easy fluidity, allowing me to almost forget the violinist and lose myself in the music entirely. Ms. Hahn never allows herself to be trapped and bogged down by an overly emotional performance - far too often I come across young players who make their performances more a study of their interpretive and empathic prowess than a projection of the composer's will. Perhaps I'm just too young and jaded myself; I have a number of recorded versions of Rachmaninov's 2nd Piano Concerto, for instance, and I invariably find myself searching out the most "mechanical" performances in my collection. Rachmaninov himself played the piece impossibly fast, preferring the music itself to convey the emotional power rather than clouding the performance with his own heat and passion. Hilary Hahn does a wonderful job of containing her own musical ego on this recording, letting the music ebb and flow naturally rather than drawing every last drip of sap from an admittedly sappy composition. For once I reached the end of an Elgar piece without being dizzy from all the eye-rolling. I consider this a "must-have", especially for young fans of solo violin who, like myself, love the passion and fire of orchestral music but always find themselves wishing the soloist would get over him/herself.

This is a most enjoyable disc, it brings back many memories for me when I first discovered classical music, it should be a "must" for everyone to hear, especially troubled humans, it has a quality of relaxation and helps one reflect on nature and the imagination a composer has to convey to the listener just what he has in mind.
I am totally at peace when I listen to this classic, most notably when I have a challenge or a problem that needs some rational thinking to resolve.

I bought this CD to get the Ralph Vaughn Williams piece and, had I been paying attention and seen that the remainder was Elgar, I would not have bought it -- I've never been much of an Elgar fan as I've always found his compositions to be a bit stiff. BUT, boy did I ever change my mind when I heard this! The Elgar Concerto was unlike anything I've ever heard of his before, perhaps even paralleling the superb ambiance of some Hovhaness that I've heard lately.

This is one of those classical CDs on which every track is a pure treasure. Now, I've come to enjoy the Elgar Concerto as much as I do the Vaughn Williams. I savor this music as wallpaper while reading and for that it is perfect. All tracks also make for the VERY BEST dinner music. I play it over and over.

Regarding Hahn's performance, yes, I think at times she might be just a tad light on the strings but I found her rendition, in terms of delivery, to be quite fluid and otherwise flawless. And here's the thing.... perhaps the sheet music reflects one f where I happen to think that there should be two. But I'm neither the composer nor the conductor. So maybe she played it exactly correct. I don't know -- I can't read the first note of sheet music but I know what I heard and I liked it a lot! And, uncultured Redneck that I am, after gawking at that cover photo for quite a long time, it's undoubtedly an understatement to say that I'd really love to meet Hilary Hahn in person *.*

So, I'm up to about 400 classical CDs now and this one is in the top 20 for me. I think that the sound quality is above average and the orchestra is tight, yet atmospheric as well. No one will get hurt by buying this CD -- it's musical gold as far as I'm concerned.

Hilary Hahn's rendition of the concerto brings it alive for me. I have listened to Kennedy's recording which has gotten rave reviews, but was too frenetic for my taste. Hahn's version was more convincing. I got the sense that she was just confident of the music (and her technique) and did not need to put anything there but the music. By the second time listening to it I got more & more of a feeling for the musical lines. It's a recording I could listen to a bunch of times. In summary, her playing seemed solid and present - of course with great technique & intonation. The music soared when it needed to & has life.

The buzz around this recording, that being it is an unusually cold performance of this epic romantic concerto, is somewhat true. However, for me this is an ideal interpretation. Simply because, in overwraught, gushingly emotional performances of this concerto the listener stops feeling all the performer is giving simply due to the sheer length of this work, close to 50 minutes. Ms. Hahn makes the work sing and emote in a much more Apollonian way and her light touch makes the work seem so effortless which is something quite difficult in music like this. I will listen to this right next to Menuhin and Perlman, she definitely is on their level and to me in many ways surpasses them. However, as one reviewer has already noted, the true gem here is the Vaughan Williams. For me there is no comparison, this is the best recording I have ever heard. Here Hahn is sensitive to every gesture, every dymamic, and every color in the orchestra behind her. She captures the spirit of the piece and sounds great doing it. The interesting part of this recording is not Hahn, she always plays brilliantly musically. What I was most surprised about is the fantastic accompaniment from Davis and the LSO. While I don't have a bad word to say about the man, it is often the case with me that his recordings are great, solid, and musically very well put, but they are rarely anything particularly special. This is a special recording in every way. Not only does Davis keep up with Hahn and stay musically in tune with her, he makes her sound better as well. Along with some fantastic solo playing from the orchestra, especially clarinet in the Vaughan Williams, absolutely stunning, these pieces become spellbinding.

Where I have found Hahn rather robotic and mechanical in some of her other albums, here she sings beautiful lines and brings a unique character to her part of the dialog with the orchestra. (Some of the other reviewers here, however, still find her overly reserved and emotionally detached... but this is British music, after all. I think her intellectualism, as you might call it, works very well in these pieces.) And where I was disappointed with her Brahms and Stravinsky album because it deemphasized the orchestral playing to the point that the balance was closer to that of sonatas for violin and piano than of concerti, here the London Symphony is well-recorded and Hahn is aurally placed as the first member of a wonderful ensemble.

Elgar's concerto is an sprawling piece, like a long, epic novel with widely varied and contrasting chapters. You owe it any number of repeated listenings. Vaughan Williams' Lark Ascending is a poignant, autumnal work, song-like in its structure and here played ravishingly. You'll enjoy this disc.

I have to admit that I have pretty much avoided this concerto for the last 40 years. I am not a fan of Elgar, except for the magnificent Enigma Variations, the Cello Concerto, the Cockaigne Overture and lots of short pieces. But I decided to purchase this CD after hearing parts of it on XM radio. While I enjoyed it, I still find the work way too long for the material involved. However, Hillary Hahn is a great violinist and her performance is powerful and not sentimental. I like my music played straight, especially violin concertos where too much vibrato will drive me crazy. This is just my personal feelings. Other writers here, including the Amazon professional, feel differently.

As for the Lark Ascending, it has been a favorite of mine for years and the Hahn performance is simply magnificent.